A couple of interesting news on authentication and passwords:

• Telepathwords is a (Microsoft Research) website which tests passwords you digit into it, to verify their strength by checking how likely the next character in the password is to appear in common words and password checking tools; at first sight the idea seems nice, but I wonder to the usefulness of writing your passwords in a public website: obviously any password tested in the website cannot be used, so this should be taken only as an exercise to learn how to create good passwords (moreover, I tested it with pseudo-random generated password and the results were not completely clear to me)
• “Nymi Is A Heartwave-Sensing Wristband That Wants To Replace All Your Passwords & Keys”: it is a wristband that measures your unique (but I have no idea how much “unique” that it is) heartwave and, via bluetooth, authenticates you to any (capable) device; it is the first time I hear of this kind of biometrics and I suspect that it shares with all other biometrics authentication approaches, good and bad points.