Today in Google

Today Google announced their newest tool in an already vast arsenal, Google Wallet has made it's debut. The rumors of such a service have been floating around for a few weeks now after it had been revealed that the big G was looking to secure a new form of checkout scanner in select stores across the country. Also not to mention the fact that they had released the Google Nexus S phone with a new form of wireless communication known as NFC or, Near Field Communication, as it were.


The big news today though isn't necessarily that they have announced the new service in of itself but who they have already partnered up and ready to roll with it. The first big contender is MasterCard and their PayPass system. If you happen to have a capable phone, it will now essentially act as a it's own PayPass MasterCard virtually anywhere that PayPass is accepted. This could mean in many places around the world even, negating the hassle of exchange rates of currency and the like. Very cool stuff.


Next up we also have Citi Bank MasterCards being officially supported. Then we also have Sprint which there doesn't seem to be a lot of concrete details on yet. With the way Sprint has cozied up with Google Voice recently though, I expect some really tight integration of Sprint services (payments, etc) into the Android OS on their handsets.

As far as retailers go we have so far: Macy's, Subway, Walgreens, Toys 'R Us and Noah's Bagels with 'many more in the coming months'. 


The service itself will begin with some trials in New York and San Francisco before spreading around the states, again in the 'coming months' which could or could not happen at this point. Things seem very beta-like to me as it stands now.


Finally Google has announced Google Offers, a new service which will provide discounts to consumers from the various retail partners that have signed up. I'm guessing there will be tighter integration with this and Google Latitude as things start to get rolling full-steam. Latitude has had similar offers for about a month now when you check in to various locations frequently, very much the same way 4Square works.


There's a lot more in store with this and if anyone will really be able to bring the fire, it's Google. This really seems like a natural progression for them being as heavily monetized by ads as they are. Anyway, that's all I really have to say about things now, may write a small followup later on as more information is brought forth.

My Thoughts on Online Identity

I don't know exactly what it was that got me thinking on the subject, doesn't take a lot to get me started though, but I've been going over different ideas for online identity in my mind all day.

It today's times where a person's life can tentatively be lived out on the internet, there is a need to build not only an online presence but a persistent online identity as well. The two concepts straddle a very fine line but I do feel there are distinguishable features between them.

An online identity is a core, an absolute finite representation of one's self in the ever evolving world of the internet. It represents who you are, whom you associate with and what you do.

Whereas an online presence, while also encompassing aforementioned online identity, goes beyond who you are. An online presence is you and what you create, a sphere of new-media and social cliques that at one point would have been unattainable by most.

Essentially your identity is the guy backstage rehearsing his lines and your presence is both you and the character you are playing. (Bad metaphor?)

So far, I haven't found one really great resource for actually creating such an identity online, there are great ways to create a presence. You can blog, you can create YouTube videos, take photos, Tweets and Wall Posts on Facebook; but where does your identity actually reside online?

I've been working on my presence for years, I have thousands of blog posts buried in the depths of the internet, multiple thousands of Tweets from the past 2 years, photos and artwork scattered about the likes of Flickr, TwitPic and DeviantArt but where am I? I suppose with so many little pieces of me spewed about that if one were to gather it all up you could maybe define some sense of who I am but it just won't be quite the same.

I don't know if there will ever be a definite answer to such an issue as this, as little as an issue it may seem to be, right now. I do predict that online identity and the self will become a greater topic of discussion in the coming future. One day people may truly live online. For now, well, we'll just have to keep embarrassing ourselves, putting potential employment opportunities at risk, degrading our sense of self worth, living in pseudo-anonymity while exposing our secrets to the world, playing white-knight, trolling...etc...etc...etc

New Stuff Soon

So for awhile I had vacated this blog to start working more with WordPress and I'm still sort of undecided where I want to go with things.

Keep an eye out here for future posts though, I hadn't been on in awhile and I'm digging some of the new features I was seeing and I do love Google so I may as well use their product instead of a competitor.

Anyway, that's it for now, I need to sleep.