If you’re like me, you’ve got an ever increasing number of passwords to keep track of for online accounts. There’s online banking, shopping sites like Amazon and Ebay, forums, webmail accounts…the list goes on and on.

Now, there’s a new online alternative to keeping track of all these accounts. IDProtectU, an online password manager, stores all of your internet accounts in one place, protected by one username and password combination. At first, this seems pretty dangerous, but IDProtectU takes several security precautions to make sure its clients’ account information is safe.

Access to IDProtectU.com is via a single username and two separate passwords. Once into your account, you see a list of all of your internet accounts. You have the option of changing your usernames and passwords, or simply viewing them. The interesting part of the interface, however, is its legitimate use of pop-ups. For a given internet account, you have the option of clicking an “open” button that opens the account’s website (bankofamerica.com, for instance) in a new web browser, with a small pop-up window containing your login information next to it. You can view your login information directly in this pop-up while you type it in on the site. You can then manually close the window with your login information, or allow it to automatically close after a pre-determined amount of time (which you have control over).

Overall, IDProtectU is quite easy to use and much more convenient than other options that are stored on your hard drive because it can be accessed from anywhere. The price is right too. Monthly use of IDProtectU starts at $1.59.

Earlier this year, Google, Yahoo! MSN and Ask Jeeves all released versions of “local search”. So, what the heck is it and how does it differ from the regular searches you do on those sites?

Local search obviously targets the local area. Whereas before, you might type “St. Petersburg web design” into the search bar, now you can do a local search and type “web design” in the search bar and select “St. Petersburg, FL” as your search location. Instead of retrieving a bunch of websites that the search engine thinks are relavent, this search will actually retrieve yellow page like listings for all local businesses that match “web design”. In addition, the results page will show a map with the various businesses marked, so you can judge which one is closest to you. In some cases, you can even get a satellite view of the business, just in case you want to place it in the scope of local landmarks (or check out their roof).

The search engines get their local search listings from the local yellow pages, and other database companies. In most cases, you can submit your business to be listed yourself. Yahoo! even offers enhanced listings for $9.95 a month. As local search becomes more useful, more and more people are beginning to use it over the more traditional internet search methods. Now is a good time to get a leg up on the competition.