[andywood]

I struggle constantly with this problem. As I see it, the main practical problem is that services have a 1-to-1 mapping from identity to account. This is compounded by the fact that the services often depend on one another - e.g. when I need a unique email address to sign up for some service, then for every account I need on that service, I also have to go create yet another gmail account.

I wish I could have just one identity, that is me-facing, but many accounts, that are audience-facing. I wish I could log into YouTube as Andy Wood, and manage all my accounts (3D graphics demos, domino toppling, paragliding, etc).

In fact, WordPress.com works just like this, and I love it. Google, YouTube, and Twitter, by contrast, seem borderline resistant to this type of usage - meaning they all force me to keep creating new email accounts in addition to the multiple service accounts, even when I really don't want another email account.

[fgumo]

One relatively easy solution for your email accounts problem: buy a domain, set up Google Apps, create a user and make that email address catch-all.

Now you can have as many email addresses as you want without needing to create them one by one. And if you work it a little more you can even answer as any of them and apply filters.