Security: Doing away with user passwords? Excuse me? Sounds crazy at first blush, perhaps, but Roger Grimes was involved in one such project that he outlines in this installment of Security Adviser. “The company is trying to remove any instance where an employee would have to put in a password so that it can increase the password length to a far greater than normal maximum,” he explains. In this case, that’s 128 characters, or one more than Windows permits without tailoring. The news beat: Adobe issues an alpha version of Apollo, its technology for creating rich Internet applications, which is a runtime in which applications built with HTML, Flash, AJAX can run offline. Sun Microsystems touts a beta release of its open source GlassFish app server and an iteration of its Sun Web Developer Pack. And a whole host of new gadgets debut at CeBit. Video: Kevin Keating, marketing manager for Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), demonstrates a new Bluetooth spec. “We have three key pieces with the new specification. We’ve made it simpler … enhanced security … and we improved the battery life.” Bluetooth gets a cleaning. Storage: Since he’s not ‘a Blackberry person’ Mario Apicella is In search of a laptop that plays it safe. “Why is it that my laptop and many others still carry data in clear?” he asks. Well, thus far encryption systems have not met his criteria. “I wouldn’t lock any door if that meant having to carry around a 20-pound key. The deciding factor in the next battle on laptop encryption — or more general data encryption — will be easy management.” Security