Hey everyone. Sorry I've been ages responding to this, I've been away for some time. I've integrated each piece of feedback on this page, thank you all for your input. The app was a quick way of picking up Rails, and I have worked on several larger projects since. Some of it is quick and dirty as I do this in my spare time, and I now mainly use it to test out new ideas. The casual 'key' based authentication was a concept I wanted to try out, and a to do list is a good opportunity as the data is rarely sensitive, and the risk of someone deleting/marking a task complete is outweighed by the convenience of an authentication method that allows for the bookmarking of your to do list (louislouis - I was also using a simple text editor for keepign lists! Now I use my own app to keep track of all tasks from my clark-kent job, personal life, startups, small web apps etc.). Thanks again!