Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

For Alexander Wrege, Claim ID, a new identity Web 2.0 project, is a complete success. After setting up a profile on Claim ID, a search for his rare name turns up the new profile in first place:

Not everyone is as lucky as Alex. About half of the claim ID profiles I surveyed did not appear in the first page of Google search results. However, as the domain is nearly a year old, its profile should begin ranking well on Google.

What exactly does Claim ID do? It let’s you associate hyperlinked material (web pages) with your name and a brief personal-biographical statement. In their own words,

ClaimID is a service that lets you claim the information that is about you online. That information is then associated with your name, providing folks an easy way to see what is and isn’t about you online. In doing so, you get to influence the search engines, and provide people more relevant information when they search for you. It’s time to reclaim some power back from the search engines. ClaimID is about letting you have some say in what search engines say about you.

Features

You have control over the following elements of your online life:

• Associate any URL with your name
• Claim websites you own as your own, and verify them
• Associate a biographical statement with your name
• Associate an image with your name
• Organize URLs into groups

There’s also a bookmarklet to help you collect links related to you, a very pretty AJAX-based interface, and a blog to keep updated on Claim ID related news.

Problems

Their privacy policy dictates how account deletion works:

Users may delete their information from our database by deleting their accounts. All personal information will be deleted, but the user’s name will be “locked” so that another user cannot use this name.

This could lead to a large number of names being permanently tied up. Without some form of name recycling, people will have to sign up with “Elliott Back 7889898.” A denial of service attack could be used to void large numbers of names, as well.

Also, the only thing it does right now is create a (name, {url}) binding. While useful, hopefully Claim ID will expand its features in the future.

Conclusion

If you want to see what Claim ID should look like, take a gander at my claim ID profile, which is just a few links and my photo. In a couple years, this will be a powerful identity service.

When I see the following well-produced Apple iPod Shuffle knockoffs, I wonder why anyone cares? If they’re half as expensive and do the same thing, it’s just an example of foreign innovation:

This stack of iPod shuffles was sold on ebay to a poor Frenchman. He complains, “while browsing eBay, I spotted a seller proposing iPod shuffle (with a 40 units stock). He was reporting to have them bought in China, so I assumed he must have had a good deal.” Appleinsider reports that Apple has released a guide highlighting some noteable differences between faked iPods and real genuine ones:

For example, here are things to check:

• Nonstandard headphone jacks
• No dock connector
• The serial number 6U545TK2TJT
• No included USB cable
• Slightly longer screen than the real nano
• Play/Pause symbol on the middle button
• No repeat option on the on/off switch
• No battery or status light

If you’ve experience trouble with fake Apple products, leave your story in the comments. I’d love to hear what’s really going on out there.