Wordlock Review!- 12.27.08
Wordlocks! “Use words, not numbers” is their slogan ~ and honestly when i was first playing with them and chatting with their PR, it really brought out the inner child in me… they said you shouldn’t be able to make bad words with them, so of course for days they became my desk fidget toy as i’d work on things and try to find some… i did find quite a few strange ones even! (anyone on my facebook probably saw pics of these) BUT, that’s not the point… I’m not sure about you, but i’ve always been TERRIBLE with combination locks, not just remembering the numbers but trying to open them even! These pad locks, luggage locks, bike locks, and more make it a bit easier if you come up with a word that works… or better yet, an acronym? I can just imagine coming back to your gym locker watching people playing games trying to guess the word on your lock!
But to geek out for a moment, what i found most interesting is the background behind the Wordlocks… “After 20 years in the technology business as an engineer, most recently at Apple, Todd Basche and his wife Rahn (a Clinical Social Worker) quit their jobs and started Wordlock Inc. They expanded the family of products and created bike locks, TSA-approved luggage locks and recently launched the industry’s first Spanish-language padlock. Not only is the design of the lock patented, the algorithm that Wordlock created that allows for 100,000 word and letter combos on the padlock is as well. Wordlock has patented a number of software algorithms that maximize the number of words the lock can spell on its five dials (note each dial has 10 letters or 9 letters and a blank space on it).” Apparently the apple engineer and his wife have spent ridiculous amounts of time on algorithms to figure out the best letters to put on those wheels for the optimal number of possible “real” words in both english and spanish! The locks remind me of old physical word puzzles i had as a kid where you’d spin the rings to make the words… now if only i could rearrange the rings on these Wordlocks and invent MORE word options! But lets be honest, its not like we don’t have enough passwords to remember from everything online to root passwords to voicemail passwords to…. well maybe having words for bike locks and gym lockers and mysterious storage containers would help? See more pics of them all on the next page, as well as scanned in pages of possible combinations they recommend.
p.s.
much easier to make english bad words on the spanish lock… and i don’t know enough spanish bad 4-5 letter words to try them on the english one!
@nigel - hopefully the people you keep closest to you wouldn’t be suspect to stealing your stuff :)
----- brandon 01.12.11 10:07