Comments on: Your winnings, sir

By: political forum

political forum — Mon, 12 May 2008 01:14:59 +0000

You would be amazed how much legal threats can do. If someone is posting slander about you, the mere threat of a lawsuit is enough to get most people to take the content down. No webmaster wants to deal with a lawsuit for content that he has no knowledge about. Laws are starting to hold webmasters responsible for any content on their website, even if it was not put there by them.

-Trevor

By: Mary Branscombe

Mary Branscombe — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:31:36 +0000

ClaimID http://claimid.com does a little of this – but I found it quite a lot of work to set up. Plaxo and Facebook are both trying to aggregate my identity for me and bring the streams together; they’re both doing a good job of reminding me that having the personal and professional cross over without me asking them to can be creepy.

By: Scott Hanselman

Scott Hanselman — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 05:23:45 +0000

Where you sit in the Google Ranks also depends greatly on whether you’re logged in with your Google ID. I’m always #1 for “Scott” – but only if I’m logged in and Google is personalizing my results.

By: Between the Lines mobile edition

Between the Lines mobile edition — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:42:41 +0000

[...] Udell calls this kind of linking a “lifebits service” in a great blog post on this very problem. Suppose you’re a [...]

By: Mike Caulfield » Blog Archive » Google rank

Mike Caulfield » Blog Archive » Google rank — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 14:41:56 +0000

[...] bit of a Great Harmonic Google Convergence going on here. Jon mentions in passing his rise and fall from the top of the “Jon” results. Stephen Downes replies in a amusing comment that he [...]

By: Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:55:20 +0000

I feel your pain. For a long time I was tied with Stephen Wolfram for third. Then I passed Stephen Hawking, first on Yahoo, then on Google. What’s he done lately, anyways? Then I finally passed Stephen King. Top of the heap! But when I look at the Google listing today I see the Wikipedia article for Stephen of Blois, (c.1096 – 25 October 1154), the last Norman king of England. And if I can’t beat him now, I guess I’m never going to beat him.

By: Kim Cameron

Kim Cameron — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:53:50 +0000

Cool. Totally agree people are not the only entities with identity!

BTW, I had the same problem when I left RadioLand and struck out on my own. Now when you google “Kim” you see my current blog. But if you google “Kim Cameron”, you also see a strange entry, down the page, titled “300 Multiple Choices”. Look at the link and guess what? It points to my old radioland site, years after I tried to pull the plug on it. I won’t repeat the URL here because I’m afraid that would up its rank in some search engine!!

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:58:41 +0000

“It’s a strong argument for owning your own domain name and putting everything you do online as a cname.”

That’s a start. But consider Michael’s case. He blogs under his own name, but also appears at Resolver Systems, and in comments elsewhere, and so on. How do you aggregate all those contributions to Michael’s identity, or assess his combined reputation and influence? Not to mention assuring that it all continues to hang together and stick around through various personal and organizational changes?

By: engtech

engtech — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:43:17 +0000

It’s a strong argument for owning your own domain name and putting everything you do online as a cname.

By: Michael Foord

Michael Foord — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 15:43:15 +0000

Whilst I agree that digital identity is definitely an ‘unsolved problem’, I maintain my own domain for exactly the reason you describe.

This is also why I like OpenID – it uses domain name to assert identity.