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nTag
This is an interesting way of embedding digital identity into the physical world – narrowing the dichotomy between digital and physical domains. Via BoingBoing.

I’m sure there’s some ways to really integrate this better with net. Perhaps by issuing IP addresses to the nTags so that they can be accessed across the web – all kinds of possibilities open up. It links in nicely with Anne’s take on ubiquitous computing, and more abstractly with this article from the BBC about using physical, real world objects to access semantically-related digital artifacts.

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USB Memory Sticks
These are becoming ever more popular to the point that the bbc have devoted an entire article to them. They are small hard drives equipped with a USB drive that can fit on a keyring, so you can just plug them into any computer (PC or Mac) with a USB port and hey presto – a new drive appears! I’ve got a 128Mb one and it’s saved my life (and others) more than once.

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Note to self
Check the following out:

Unbound Spiral
Wikis
e-location
ichat and faceted identity?

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Reading material
Stuff I’m reading at the moment…

:: Being Real by Judith Donath
:: Sexing the Internet: Reflections on the Role of Identification in Online Communities by danah boyd
:: An Evidential Model of Distributed Reputation Management by Bin Yu and Munindar P. Singh
:: Trust Networks on the Semantic Web by Jennifer Golbeck, James Hendler and Bijan Parsia
:: Is Trust the Result of Bayesian Learning? by Bernd Lahno
:: Body language without the body: situating social cues in the virtual world by Judith Donath
:: A Social Mechanism of Reputation Management in Electronic Communities by Bin Yu and Munindar P. Singh
:: Inhabiting the virtual city: The design of social environments for electronic communities by Judith Donath.

And just for fun:
Liberation Day by Andy McNab.

Oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRUV!!!!

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Anyone on AIM?
Was justed pointed to www.buddyzoo.com via Slashdot. It’s a visualisation tool that uses your buddy list for its input data, providing information about friends you have in common with your buddies, popularity and cliques. Haven’t got any AIM buddies tho so can’t use it :o( Any chance of a conversion to MSN or Y! IM?

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Intellectual Fixes
Was chatting to a mate the other day who works in the same building as me and it turns out that his PhD is focussed on Identity. He’s looking more at the security aspects of online identity, but even so there’s going to be some overlap between the two. I’ve been thinking for a while now that I don’t really practise discussing theoretical and conceptual ideas with people enough – I tend to get most of my intellectual fixes from reading other people’s weblogs, but this is pretty much all 1-way, apart from some of them that allow comments to be added. It’ll be nice to have some 2-way discussions for a change.

Just finished reading David Lodge’s Thinks… over the weekend – was a great book, and allowed me to nestle (surprisingly comfortably) back into my cognitive science background from which I’ve become far too distanced of late. Was a pleasure reading it and great to refamilarise myself with all the issues of cogsci like Searle’s Chinese Room and Frank Jackson’s “What Mary didn’t know” discussion about qualia. 🙂

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Update
Well, I said that I’d get back to you on that MSc. thesis I was talking about in my earlier post, so here ya go. I’m over half way through it now (I’m apparently a very slow reader!). I won’t feedback on the content until I’m done reading the whole thing, but I would like to say at this point that it’s really well written and well argued. It reads very smoothly and if I can get my PhD thesis (or anything else that I write) anywhere near as well structured and coherent then I’ll be a very happy hooman beeing 🙂

Oh, and one of the papers from the project in my last job got accepted to Interact 2003. I helped collaborate on the paper, so it’ll be the first paper that gets published and has my name on it – kinda gives me a warm, glowy feeling inside.