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 webslinky: online identity
This week, who are you? Hello there. My name's David – though it might not be, for all you know – and I'm going to talk about online identity. The internet is, of course, a place where you can reinvent yourself. But in order to get any kind of long-term satisfaction out of its more social uses, it's generally easier and more productive to be consistently you.But how? Building an online identity is fundamentally as simple as keeping to the same username. But it's also nice to visually represent yourself (where allowed), and there are plenty of cheery websites that can help you build your own avatar. If you like the pixel look, Stortroopers is the classic emporium for classy avatars, while the slightly less intuitive Otaku Avatar Maker is the place to go if you wish to look cute and Japanese. Many community sites come with simple avatar creators built in, most of which produce simple South Park-esque characters, but Yahoo! have upped the standard with more comprehensive tools. Of course, the problem for those of us who frequent a number of different community sites is keeping all these avatars up to date. What if you want to change your picture from an animated GIF of Mr T to that picture of a kitten wearing a helmet made out of fruit? That's pretty much the issue the founders of Gravatar are working to address. There's an even bigger identity issue here though, and that's the problem of duplication, clashes and impersonation. Don't you hate it when your username has been taken? And what if that person – never mind intentional impersonation – is just behaving shamefully? ClaimID are one of the companies trying to invent a unique online ID to prevent this from happening. You can register your real name and your internet handle with a profile listing the sites you own, each of which you can “verify” by updating with a bit of hidden ClaimID code. This is a great idea in principle, but until more sites (eg, any that you use but don't administrate) can integrate with it, its effectiveness will be limited. And what if someone registers on there with your handle before you? Better get in quick…
David Thair
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 webslinky #103a decade of flash  webslinky #102widgets  webslinky #101web 2.0  webslinky #100directories  webslinky #099cute cats  webslinky #098tiny stickers  webslinkyarchive
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