Update: this contest has been discontinued as too few people voted. 11 days into the contest I only had 5 people voting, two of which were me and my wife I am currently writing a Facebook application to make it much easier for people to vote without having to sign up for this blog as well as for Disqus. The application is currently under development at this test page. You can try it if you like to try things but it’s not quite stable yet. I will post a second update here when it is stable.

Can you come up with a clever and appealing name for our complex and difficult project? If you can come up with the best project name you stand to win one of those cute (or business-like) Poken gadgets. I’ll give a more detailed description of the Poken below but let’s first say a little bit about the project I’m starting so your brain gets jump started into thinking about a name.

Enjoy reading!

The Global Identity Management Project

As one of the authors on the 3DN Technology Blog I’ve been writing a few detailed and, to many, pretty boring articles on the subject of ‘Identity Management’. Like a bunch of wise old men sunk in deep thought we’ve been debating off-site about all the possible advantages and drawbacks of a global identity management system.

Without putting you through the hassle of reading and understanding all these articles, the scope of the articles is that I believe people need to embrace and own their online identity as an extension of their offline identity, instead of thinking about the online identity as something isolated and dangerous.

That idea should appeal to most people right? I also find it important for young people to realize the value of their own identity. All too often it happens that people share all sorts of information about themselves with a big corporation because ‘that’s what my friends do too!’. It is a human thing to want to share with others, with friends, with like-minded people, with business relations. But should corporations claim ownership of your identity attributes?

The project is a rather big project as it aims to make identity (but also anonimity) part of the fundamental design of the internet of the future, so it may be a few years before you start to notice. Currently there are no sponsors for the project so it has no corporations or governments instructing us what to do for their money. We do not aim to make the internet traceable by third parties interested in your identity and will stick with this claim! We do however believe that bolting identity management to the internet will make it an even better way for people to learn, share and enjoy without excessive dangers like spam, malware, botnets and virusses making it harder and harder to do so.

So we’re looking for a project name that has one or more of the following meanings, ideas or thoughts to it:

• ‘Identity’
• ‘Make internet better’
• ‘I own my identity, not you!’
• ‘Cybercrime be Gone!’

Of course you’re free to add your own meanings to it! We would like the name to be English as that’s (still) the most used language on the internet.

My Poken, Your Poken

We thought it would be nice to reward your effort with a nice little present so we’ve been thinking hard about something that would be somehow related to identity management, yet not bone dry boring. The ‘Poken’ is a small little gadget with some very clever thought behind it. The Poken has a USB connection, which means it can be hooked up to your computer. After doing so, you can put information about yourself on the Poken and when you’re done you simply hang it on your keychain and it’s always with you. Should you meet somebody whom you find interesting enough to exchange some information with, you just hold up your Poken, the other person holds up their Poken and they exchange the information. Now your new contact has your information on their Poken and you have theirs, but that’s not all!

After you come home and sit down behind your computer, you simply stick your Poken in and you will see the information of your newly found friend. You can friend them on Facebook, LinkedIn, Hyves or some 30 other social networks!

State your Purpose!

So the contest will require you to actually let us know what name you suggest for the project. You can do so through the comments below. To submit a comment you will first need to sign up for Disqus but that’s an easy thing to do and will allow you to post on many other forums and blogs. Feel free to explain why you believe your project name to be the best. After you have submitted your own suggestion I will add your suggestion to the poll below. Voting on this poll will require you to sign up as a blog user first. Unfortunately I’m not smart enough to combine the blog user account and the disqus user account into one and I would like the voting to go as honest as possible by only allowing registered users to vote on this one.

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

I have put in the first three ideas we had so you may see why we’re asking for your opinion instead!

• ‘Genesis’ was supposed to indicate something new, something ‘big’.
• ‘enIgMan’ is supposed to remind people of what a complex puzzle it is and contains the ‘IM’ of Identity Management
• ‘Pamoja’ is the swahili word for ‘together’.
• ‘Merdeka’ is the Indonesian word for Freedom.

Of course, you can do much better than that ! If you would like your friends to vote for your best idea, share this article with your friends by using any of the social sharing tabs below this article! There are some little gotcha’s you need to know as well:

• This contest will close at the end of february.
• Project names that do not get many votes may be removed from the poll at our discretion.
• A minimum of 50 votes in total should be present at the end of february or the results will be considered invalid.
• Depending on the success of this contest we may decide to award more Pokens, for example to the people that voted for the selected project name.
• There is no legal supervision of this contest. The account you create at Disqus is created under Disqus’ rules, not ours. The account you create at this blog needs to have an email address so we can contact you when you win a prize. Your email will not be used for anything else at all; should you desire us to remove it after this contest, let us know and we will instantly do so.