You hear a lot about identity theft in the news, but I'm not sure this is an answer to that issue. People who are registered on lots of on-line services may lack a way to publicly state that all those digital identities belong to a single person. They may also want to proclaim that they have nothing to do with other people who may share their name.

One option that has just launched is claimID. You validate that you name is associated with your email address and then you can list all those sites that relate to you. The site works nicely with some Ajax type features to allow easy maintenance. It also allows for XFN relationship links. There's also a link to MicroID that has related aims. My page is here. I'm not sure this gives me much more than I could do by putting the links on this site, but I'll have a play anyway.

Another web feature someone pointed me at was on no-www that basically says that sites should not use the www prefix. Mine doesn't need it anyway. Ian thinks that their philosophy is flawed, but the web technicalities are beyond me.

Meanwhile I have finally joined the cult of the Jerker. This is actually a desk from Ikea. The wonderful thing about it is it's versatility. You can configure it in many ways and add shelves to supoort everything. Mine is pictured here, but I still need to add some parts and to arrange all my kit. We also bought a small desk from them for the kids' PC. The result has been to clear some space that was taken up by the huge table we had before and we also gain some valuable storage space.