For starters, each person's participation in any online site should be 100% voluntary. That said, as a society right now we are seeing a losing in some areas of privacy. People are more comfortable sharing certain things. If you do decide to join any of the popular sites, then you'll probably spend some time finding “your voice” – how and what you chose to share online.

In regards to what happens to the accounts – thats a good question. Some sites have specific policies, others do not. I made a simple text file with all of my passwords and put it on a USB key in our safe deposit box. Should anything happen to me, that should make it easier for my wife and loved ones to access my accounts.

Google profiles is just a way to aggregate all of your various online profiles. It does not provide a common login system … yet. Both Google and FaceBook have ways of providing login services to other sites. I suspect we'll see a lot more of that in the future.

Sadly, the layout is ugly and there's nothing we can do about it.

Looking forward to following @hksarchitechs – glad we are already connected on Twitter.

I recently read an article about what happens to a persons online after they've moved on. http://www.mylifedump.com/2009/05/13/what-happe... I never really thought about what happens to all this, should I give my wife my user names and passwords so she can close me out? Should I put it in some kind of will or safety deposit box?

Maybe this Google Profile will do the trick.

As for the layout is there some way to setup a theme for it?

Yeah, the profiles may be the ugliest page I've ever seen… pretty unattractive, but hopefully utilitarian.

Quick fix: Your link in your article to your Google profile should be nickpdawson not nickdawson.