Here is a useful method for creating strong passwords you can actually remember. This information comes from the Tweetlater.com newsletter and was originally developed by Sammie.

This method involves 9 character passwords with the same beginning and ending characters (2 each) and five characters chosen in the middle according to a formula.

Step 1: Pick 2 Starting Characters

To make it easy to remember, all your passwords are going to start with the same characters. But these are not just any characters. Pick 2 characters from the list of special characters that you see above the numbers on your keyboard and to the left of the Enter key.

These characters are: ~`!@#$%^&*()_-+={}[]:;”‘<>?/|\

Pick any two of them as your password starting characters. To show you an example as you read through the steps, let’s pick % and * (pick your own two).

In my example, all my passwords are going to start with %*.

Step 2: Pick 2 Ending Characters

In the same way pick two different special characters that will be at the end of your passwords. Don’t pick the same characters as your starting characters.

For the purposes of my example, let’s pick & and +. That means, all my passwords are going to end with &+.

Step 3: Use the Website Name to Create the Middle Characters

Take the first 6 characters of the website domain name where you want to use the password. If the domain name is shorter than 6 characters, then use the full domain name.

In my example, let’s create a password http://www.agentmapit.com.

The first 6 characters of the domain name is “agentm”.

Now we’re going to substitute some characters and capitalize others.

Substitute the following characters: a becomes @, e becomes 3, i becomes 1, o becomes 0, and u becomes ^.

Now we have “@g3Nntm”.

Now, decide on a standard for yourself regarding which character(s) you’re going to capitalize.

For this example, let’s say we’re always going to capitalize the 2nd consonant.

So now we have “@g3Ntm”.

The next step is to drop the last character (”m” in our case), and append the Ending Characters (*^) that you picked in Step 2.

Our password is now “@g3Nt&+”.

Now add the Starting Characters (Step 1) to the beginning of the password.

The final password is “%*@g3Nt&+”.

A Few More Examples

Domain: http://www.twitter.com, Password: “%*twiT3&+”.
Domain: http://www.tweetlater.com, Password: “%*tW33t&+”.
Domain: http://www.facebook.com, Password: “%*f@C3b&+”.
Domain: http://www.ebay.com: Password: “%*3b@Y&+”

Remember

Pick your own 2 starting characters and your own 2 ending characters.

Make your own capitalization rule (you can capitalize more than 1 character if you want to.)

You can also use more than the first 6 characters of the domain name if you want to. It just means your passwords will be slightly longer.