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Avast me landlubbin’ rats, t’is that time of the year again arrrr. Yes matey, September 19th is Talk Like a Pirate day.

Unlike last year, I actually (very last-minute) created a shirt to commemorate this very important event, only to find out that I wasn’t getting much chance at wearing it today because I had a day off.

Regardless of that, it is good to see that TLAP day has cast its wave across the web like a new schooner would:

The guys pirates at Iliumsoft are giving you a chance at getting 50% off of any title if you dare to call and speak like a real pirate, arrrrrr!

The land lubbers at CrunchGear are giving you a chance at winning 2GB of RAM, again, for talking like a pirate.

And the rest of the world is simply enjoying the day …

In case you have not gotten your pirattitude on, head on over to the official TLAP page for some information on how to pronounce words like a real sword buckler.

The TLAP team also created a nice video of the 5 As every pirate should remember and a funnny song.

Kudos a free keg of Grog for Emma Rault for hooking me up with this, most lovely, picture, made by Astrid Recker:

Ever since the release of mobile storage devices, people have repurposed their gadgets to store important, often even confidential data on them. While there is nothing wrong with that per se, many users seem to forget the various security issues that could arise if someone were to get a hold of your Pocket PC and its unencrypted content.

Thanks to Ilium Software however, there is an application you can use to get the best of both worlds: carry your important data with you, wherever you go and still keep it safe and protected behind a layer that is as difficult to break as your password.

Wallet Size

On last count, my eWallet storage was 226 cards big (or does that count as huge already?). These cards are made up of roughly 120 logins for various things, software license keys, two dozen of personal items such as drivers license, SSN and all those other numbers you cannot ever remember but still need all the time and also a few select items such as “doing CPR the right way” and other medical items. Yes, believe it or not, that is what I use eWallet for, too.

I consider myself an eWallet power user and as such, I would like to share a hint with you: take a bit of time to analyze the data you use the most inside your eWallet database(s). I have four main categories, in the root of the wallet file and nothing else, no stray cards, no nothing.

Every one of these categories is prefixed with a number so if I have the SIP open or am on a PC, I can just type the number to jump to the category. The naming of the categories is a scheme that is similar to one that I use for email folders and groups in my chat application. This way, I already know the basic structure of the data underneath.

eWallet’s category feature is as simple as it is powerful. Set up the right way, it will save you a lot of time, but if you are not specific enough, you might end up wasting time as opposed to saving it.

Wallet Buddies

Ilium Software’s eWallet is one of those applications that you can use on just about every mobile device you use, including Pocket PCs, Smartphones, Palmtops and even on U3 drives.

The Desktop version of eWallet also includes SyncPro, which handles the various syncing tasks. Besides the standard device-to-device syncing, eWallet also lets you sync your wallet file with a Windows Share, FTP server or iOmega.

To answer a question of paranoid users: yes, the FTP syncing feature is plain FTP, which means that someone could sniff out your password. This does not, however compromise the data stored within your wallet file. That data is protected by a 256 bit encryption, which is twice as much encryption as most banks offer.

Wallet Chain

Apart from the main application and the syncing conduit, there are also two versions of PassBuilder, one that is installed on your device and one that is available online. PassBuilder, as the name suggests, is used to generate secure passwords.

A number of options enable you to generate the kind of password you can remember best, be that in the form of a mnemonic sentence or as part of a dictionary word.

Wallet Design

To visually enhance your listing, eWallet includes a feature that lets you select an icon to represent the content of the card. This works amazingly well with software license cards and even can be used to include a Favicon for a website login.

Besides icons, eWallet also lets you add sounds and (background) images that are played / displayed whenever a specific card is accessed. If you feel like customizing your wallet file even more, you might want to read about a long lost feature on Ilium Software’s blog.

Wallet Shop

In case the message still is not obvious, I love eWallet. I have been using it for years now and you should be using it too. eWallet is as great as it sounds; it protects your data and works across a huge group of different devices (and platforms).

For approximately $30, you can get the professional suite, which makes a lot more sense than just buying the Pocket PC (or Smartphone) version, because once you are hooked on storing data in eWallet, you will not want to be creating your cards on a small slide-out keyboard.

While checking my email today, I was a bit annoyed by my, seemingly, defunct spam filter. It seems that more and more mail is left untagged lately and more and more spam is ending up in my mailbox.

So while looking through the latest messages from people I never heard off and offers about mortgages and medicine I don’t need, I came across one of these messages from amazon.com - considering that I never buy there, cause they discriminate against people who don’t have access to a credit card, I was about to delete the message, when my fast-scanning eyes spotted a name I recognized: Iliumsoft.

Now, if you ever used a Pocket PC or Smartphone (or a Palm Handheld device, for that matter), you have probably heard of their premier application called eWallet. This application provides the perfect solution for people who do a lot of stuff online as well as off line. Me, I use it to store anything that I don’t want to see flying around, including personal details, important addresses as well as license keys for applications I bought.

After 18 months of development, Marc, Iliumsoft’s product manager, put out a call for help on their blog. The company was nearing the RTM stage of product development and needed some people to look at the product and put it through some stress testing to ensure that the application lived up to the expectations of the developers.

Thanks to a business kind-of relationship Marc and I established back when I was a reviewer for a tech site, I was included in the beta and was given a chance to look at eWallet 5.0 before the general public could.

I’ve been beta-testing software for about four years now, sometimes developers say “thank you”, sometimes you even get a license key and sometimes you end up with nothing but a timebombed application that will stop working a couple of weeks after the final product is released.

Iliumsoft however, values their testers. At the beginning of this week, Marc sent me an email with license keys for the whole eWallet range. The total of this “gig” alone comes down to a hefty $70 and to be honest, I wouldn’t have expected that. One key, of my own choosing, say Desktop or Smartphone, yes - but all four? Nope, I didn’t see that one coming.

However, as if that wasn’t generous enough, Iliumsoft also gifted me with this here:

this $20 gift certificate from amazon.com is Iliumsoft’s way of saying “thank you” and it’s awesome. Iliumsoft really wouldn’t have to do this, after all, they have enough momentum going for them as their reports show, yet they did. It seems that not everyone forgets where they “come from” once their sales go up. Keep it that way guys.

Marc and everyone else from Iliumsoft, it was most definitely my pleasure. Your responsiveness, be it in regards of support issues or feature suggestions is truly amazing. My Smartphone would be a useless piece of technology, if it weren’t for the data I collected within eWallet. You guys help me remember the things I am used to forgetting and I’m sincerely thankful for that.