Blockchain has something of a mixed reputation, mainly as it's the underlying technology used in cryptocurrency applications that are often used by criminals to transfer funds without detection. But cryptocurrency is just one application that the blockchain platform can be used for. Accenture and Microsoft have teamed up to use blockchain as the basis for an identity management platform.

This Saturday, Queensland will decide whether or not to give the Newman government another stab in office. Interestingly, it will also be the first time that Australians are required to show proof-of-identity to cast an ordinary vote. If you live in Queensland, you will need to produce one of the following types of ID to quickly cast your ballot.

Back in April, Microsoft changed the name of its Forefront product to Microsoft Identity Manager and promised the next version would be out in 2015. The first preview release for Identity Manager has now been released, which suggests that schedule should be met.

End users hate having to create new accounts and passwords every time they sign up for a service. Is linking everything into their phone number the answer? That's the bet Twitter is making with its new mobile platform, Fabric.

People search sites can be really useful to help you find people you used to know but fell out of touch with, but unfortunately most of them are for-profit entities that have no real skin in the game when it comes to making sure the information they publish is positive or accurate. If you've found data about yourself on these sites and would rather not have it public, Safe Shepherd is a web service that can handle the job for you.

You want to know a little more about an internet date or a potential new hire at work, but you don't want to necessarily need a comprehensive background check and definitely don't want to pay for one. With a little know-how and help from the world wide web, you don't have to. Here's how to vet someone online for free without being creepy.

People search engine Pipl scours the deep web to find as much personal information as possible on any person, then groups that information into a single identity you can scour for information.

One of the more striking local examples of how Google's real-name only policy with compulsory first names and surnames can seem overly restrictive is when applied to traditional Australian Aboriginal culture, where an individual's personal name is a single word. Google's response? It might get fixed eventually but it doesn't want to talk about it until then.

One of the less pleasant aspects of Google's Google+ rollout has been an insistence that everyone using the service not only have a public Google profile, but also have a "real" first name and last name. It's not hard to come up with scenarios where that's not realistic or fair.

Today Google released an update to Google Dashboard, called Me on the Web, to help you manage your identity online. It helps you create a custom profile to help control how you're identified on the web and create Google alerts on your name to stay up-to-date on any changes.

If you're looking at making a personal landing page for yourself, the seriously popular About.me personal portal opened up to the public this week, making creating a personal website easier than ever.

Existing online means sacrificing privacy, but you might be surprised at how bad it can be. When looking in the right places, you can find out a lot about people, and they can find out a lot about you too.

Does who you are and who you will become depend heavily on the company you keep? Motivational speaker Jim Rohn suggests it does.

If you're not actively building your identity and establishing a presence online, you're letting search engines cobble together information, good or bad, and write your public story. You need to establish and maintain a healthy online identity.

If you're looking to set up an elegant portal for your online identity that brings together social networks and other aspects of your online presence, Flavors.me is as simple and easy to use as it gets.

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.

Web application Namechk finds available usernames or vanity URLs on more than 80 web sites—so you can own your online presence.

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

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