"I've noticed that whenever I have a photo on Flickr that I want to embed in my blog, I make a local copy and link to that. Flickr may well out-last the Fishbowl, but at least the continuing availability of my webserver is something that I have a say in." -- Me, a few minutes ago.
I registered the pastiche.org domain back in 1997. Since then I've been through a half dozen or more ISPs and hosting services, but I've done so secure in the knowledge that so long as I keep paying my domain renewal fees, my email address, website and whatever other Internet perks I feel like having will follow me wherever I go.
(There are disadvantages, of course. Even for a non-entity such as myself, eight years of being careless with the one email address leads to a lot of spam.)
I had this conversation with a friend, and they told me not to worry: Gmail is likely to survive longer than I'm going to need an email address anyway. But that's not the point. In five years, Gmail is going to be what Hotmail is today, and there will be another service that's cooler and more capable that people will rather be keeping their email in.
"Letting somebody else own your name means that they own your destiny on the Internet.... As soon as you realize you're serious about blogging, move it away from a domain name that's controlled by somebody else. The longer you delay, the more pain you'll feel when you finally make the move." -- Jakob Nielsen's Weblog Usability mistakes, #10.
Recently, Australian politician Malcolm Turnbull proposed that the government give each citizen a lifetime email address. There were obvious flaws: the proposed address scheme -- first name, surname, date of birth -- consists of two pieces of data that can change, and one that people often want to conceal. Regardless, the underlying concept of a permanent 'digital identity' is an important one. After all, cool URIs don't change.
If there's a Web 3.0, it's not going to be about giving you cool sites to put your stuff on "out there", but about giving you the tools to build that cool stuff on top of your own persistent, personal space on the net... in a way that when the services change, the technology advances and the trends turn, the stuff stays where it is.
Charles, Gmail lets you change your from address now. I use it for my crazybob.org email. Plus, it has great spam protection. This is also why I use Blogger--it can publish to my own site but I don't have to worry about maintaining a weblogging tool. Even if you don't want it to publish to a different site, you can still point your domain name at your Blogger blog because of the way the URLs work.
Charles, Gmail lets you change your from address now. I use it for my crazybob.org email. Plus, it has great spam protection. This is also why I use Blogger--it can publish to my own site but I don't have to worry about maintaining a weblogging tool. Even if you don't want it to publish to a different site, you can still point your domain name at your Blogger blog because of the way the URLs work.
I've always been confused by efforts like identity commons which try to sell you a unique key that identifies you online.
I got my unique key about 5 years ago, a domain and an email address. Like you, I get too much spam, but most mail clients now do a pretty good job.
So why would I pay more money for something else?
So where do the cool kids go to buy their domains these days? Godaddy didn't want my money (their web form simply doesn't work and apparently their control panel software is Mac-hostile), 1and1 only want your money if you live in North America (why?). Also, I'm not particularly interested in having my home address in whois, who offers private registration as part of the service?
I just renewed my godaddy domains on my mac last night, it worked fine for me. Of course, I use firefox not safari, so that's probably no help to you.
They offer a service to put their info into whois instead of yours, it does cost extra though.
As an aside, you might be interested in the Identity 2.0 presentation from OSCON: http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/
I don't think it's the case that everyone needs a single, unchanging identity. Identities are like clothes that we wear, different styles for different occasions. And they don't all need to persist longer than, say, a website.
By the way, Turnbull's proposal seemed to be arguing for a direct association between the online and offline identities. I think this is a fundamental mistake: http://girtby.net/archives/2005/09/10/spam-for-life/