Avatars, Identity, flickr fun and a new podcast

It just keeps on coming and is most covered on the Web by those that be in the US.
A bunch of new services and VC payouts seem to be happening weekly in this areaSpace.
Avatars seem to have come back after a small vacation. Expect to see more offerings here,
as identity companies move to combine the emotional and rational (encrypted identity) to create simpler cross-platform payment systems and authentication services(email, IM). What separates these kinds of new identity players will be that people will finally own their data, rather than let a company store this information on their servers.

The rise and rise of tagging can be traced in this Business Week article with some scant predictions on where it is leading. I just commissioned a programmer to integrate Flickr images into my old flash website. The plan is to activate a timeline which correlates to the category "history". It will target tags based on time and history and then load images onto my site along with user comments and the date. So imagine you move my history slider to the right: result: 1066AD battle of Agincourt, "Whoa, this was a fierce battle in the middle ages between the Norman conquerers and English. The Normans won the day, and you can see their celebration in the Bayeaux Tapestry - Steve". Anyway, i have to wait a few weeks for the programmer to have the time and also get Fickr to move me out of NIPDA (not in public domain) as somehow i'm not in there.

Podcast/webcasts
I heard an amazing podcast yesterday and placed it inside a bunch of video files taken at the Creative Capital Conference in March 17, 2005 in Amsterdam. These have been Webjayed, so click on the link and select which one you would like to hear. The first podcast covers Bush's potential plan to launch an airstrike on Iran in 2005 as part of his wish to "clean up the Middle East". This audio was NOT part of the conference, so forgive me for the mismatch. The other links are video files of some really outstanding speakers.

Going local
The craigification continues. A host of companies : have been heading towards the VCs for that $7-10 million handshake to ramp up things. The numbers sound normal for the US. I would love to hear of any local European stories on startup money. What is happening? Are we still pouting on our lovely theoretical European soapboxes with lots of good ideas but no execution or risk-taking? Send in any news you have of success stories.

j