Free Software Linux

Since the early 1990s, I’ve been fascinated by the concept of online identity management: what it means to have an identity online, what stays consistent with the offline world, what becomes more fluid, and what becomes more fixed. It’s a very vibrant space right now, with commercial vendors, open source projects, trends, and standards all vying for attention. I’m thinking here of a couple of overlapping categories:

I use BrightKite to update my location via SMS, and it feeds FireEagle, which in turn posts to my lifestream via Movable Type and the Action Streams Plugin. If any of that made sense, keep reading. The problem is that when I send brightkite a message like: @bos It sometimes knows that is Logan Airport in Boston, and sometimes just knows that as BOS, United States, which results in updates like this: Anyone know why this is happening? Brightkite’s fault? Fire Eagle’s fault? Neither?

(Via the TripIt blog) TripIt has launched profiles for travelers, with some pretty good controls on what is public and what is private: The immediate goal is to give TripIt travelers one place to track all their travel information and showcase their travel history. The profile includes basic information about a traveler, including home location, upcoming trip destinations, connections in TripIt as well as important travel statistics like miles traveled, days on the road, etc. It’s got a nice, RESTful public url - mine’s at http://www.tripit.com/people/jeckman