identity

KnowEm Checks Username Availability Across 300+ Social Sites

1:30AM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you’re particular about your username and want to have a unified personal username or company identity across all the social networks and services you’ll be using, KnowEm makes checking availability simple. More »

Namechk Finds Where Your Username Is Taken Or Available

4:00AM The How-To Geek | Web application Namechk finds available usernames or vanity URLs on more than 80 web sites—so you can own your online presence. More »

Find Out Where A Username Is Already Registered

9:00PM Gina Trapani | When you think up that perfect new handle for storming social networks and other registration-only sites across the web, run it through UserNameCheck.com first. This webapp’s purpose is simple: to tell you whether or not that name is already in use at a pretty impressive list of sites, from Delicious and Digg to eBay and Xbox Live. The developer explains: This site is a quick and dirty solution to a question that I often lay awake at night worrying about. Do I have my username registered across every site that I should? What if the next internet humiliation meme just happens to share the username I’ve been using for years, and suddenly people are emailing me asking “hey, is this you ???”. The site is simple. I have a stack of web app urls, the application pings the site using the username you want to check, if it returns a “no user name” error we return that. The list of checks can take some time, so grab a cup of coffee or browse the news in another tab while UserNameCheck does its thing. Where is Your Username registered [via Webware] More »

Gmail Verification Number Proves Account Ownership

5:00AM Gina Trapani | What do you do when you’re locked out of your Gmail account for no apparent reason? Google says that since it asks for so little personal information when you sign up, verifying ownership is difficult when they’ve locked down an account because it may have been compromised. But there’s one interesting tidbit they offer for quick account restoration you may not have known: Always keep the verification number you get when you sign up for Gmail. When you sign up for Gmail, we’ll ask you for a secondary email address and then email a verification number to that account. This number is the best way to prove ownership of your account, so be sure to hang on to it. Most users probably toss that initial verification email, but this seems like a good reason to save it just in case. What to do if you can’t access your webmail [Official Google Blog] More »