It's one of the most vexing problems of the information age--you've got different passwords and identification names and numbers you use for your AOL account, your ISP account, your various Website memberships, and for miscellaneous piece of software on your corporate network or hard drive. Then you move computers, boot up a different Web browser, or a cookie malfunctions. Suddenly you're on the hook to remember every silly password you've invented at every site you've ever visited. Sure, you could use one password for all purposes, but that's a security no-no, right?

Enter v-GO Universal Password, a new applet from a little known two-and-a-half year-old Silicon Alley start-up PassLogix, Inc. (http://www.passlogix.com) . Just load up all your passwords into v-GO, set a single universal password to enter and you're off. The v-GO thin client software manages all your passwords. There's a twist with v-GO -- its passwords are graphical, not verbal. So your universal password might be, say, a z-shaped click-pattern on a graphical representation of a deck of cards.

"We have research that shows that half of all Web site customer service calls are from lost or forgotten passwords," said Greg Arnold, president of PassLogix. Furthermore, Arnold says one client he's working with -- a commercial bank --reported that half of its online fraud cases are password-security related. So v-GO is just the first of several software solutions the company has planned to address those problems. "We want to automate as much of the process as possible," said Arnold.

It's a good idea, though a few hours of playing with the software has proved somewhat problematic. First, the software should read all your cookies and configure itself on the fly for all the log-ons you've already registered at various Websites. It doesn't. Surfers need to do so much data entry to configure the applet for various sites that it stands to defeat the purpose of the application. Second, we ran into problems that should be simple to fix but need fixing. For example, when we accidentally shut the software down, there was no way to relaunch it without rebooting our system. Finally, to date the software only works on Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT 4.0.

Still, Arnold foresees tremendous opportunities selling private labeled versions of the software to ISPs or other digital media players as a tool to help them reduce the amount of customer service time they spend holding the hands of people who have lost their passwords. Furthermore a user can assign his or her universal password to any file on his or PC for added personal security. The company also sees a business in selling server and network side versions of the product to system administrators who have the unenviable job of keeping track of multiple users of corporate LANs, WANs and extranets, closing out different accounts for example when an employee leaves a company. They're in the identity management business, said Arnold.

Certainly the company has lured some interesting investors, including Ron Perelman's McAndrews & Forbes Holding Incorporated and GeoPartners Research Inc., a Cambridge, MA-based technology management consulting firm. The company also has investments from heavy hitters on the company's boards of directors and of advisors including Jay Chiat, founder of Chiat/Day Advertising and former Viacom honcho David Horowitz. Arnold wouldn't specify how much money the company's raised, saying only that it's "a couple of million dollars."

The company, which has twenty full and part-time employees, is modeling its business plan on Network Associates' McAfee VirusScan software -- which exists in freeware and up-market paid premium versions. In fact, v-GO is available in a free version or a full service version called v-GO Plus at $29.95. We tried v-GO 1.0, the freeware version.

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