i-Names Pick Up Steam

There's been coverage in LJ on the whole "Identity Commons idea. Basically, it's a domain registrar for your unique name - with them on sale already. ASN has published a whitepaper on the topic as well.

Comments

25$ for 50 years ?

[mirko]

But what's the point ? Being identifiable under a name which would look like this ?

Valid I-Name formats

I-names are designed to be as simple and human-friendly as possible. Global personal i-names start with an "=" sign followed by a string of characters (no spaces.) You can use letters, digits, dots ("."), and dashes ("-"), but you can't start or end with punctuation. I-names are not case-sensitive, i.e., "a" and "A" are equivalent.

See these special instructions about internationalized (Unicode) i-names.

Examples:

• =Mary
• =Jones
• =Mary.Jones
• =Mary.W.Jones
• =Mary.Wellington.Jones
• =Mary.Martha.Wellington.Jones
• =Mary.Jones.Phd
• =Mary.Jones-Smith
• =Mary.Jones.2000
• =Pickles
• =Pickle.Sandwich
• =Foo-Foo

Note that although dots are not required (i.e., you could register "=MarySmith"), the standard practice will be to separate real names with dots, just as it has become with email addresses.

For further information on i-names please visit XDI.ORG or the OASIS XRI (Extensible Resource Identifier) home page.