How Secure is My Password?
Here’s a great site for geeks and laypeople alike: How Secure is My Password?, which performs as advertised. Enter a password into the textbox, and you’ll be told the maximum time it would take for a desktop PC to generate that password using the brute force method. (Of course, if I wanted to spend less time cracking people’s passwords, I’d try a dictionary attack, given how many people who use ordinary dictionary words.)
It’s also an example of how some very simple programming – it’s written by people who’d be considered “web designers” rather than developers (although I’d consider them developers) – can still create something useful and even beautiful. How Secure is My Password? is HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript with jQuery and some downloadable fonts; if you’ve been meaning to look into web client development, go visit the site, take a look at the source code, and start crafting your own useful widgets!