I’m lucky I have a not-so-common nickname. Flisha, as my father invented it. I get to have a simple username unlike my sister Tricia and Melisse, who often have to use numbers to claim a unique username.
Still, there are a few other people with my name so I’m OC when it comes to signing up for new services. I’ve gotta claim my name first. I’m sure I’m not the only one with this new age disorder, so teh Internet geeks have found a way to help us cope.
UserNameCheck.com checks whether your preferred username is still available or already taken among the many Internet websites they have listed.
I found a lot of new sites I’d never known about and started registering like mad for an hour or so. Haha. Now I have like 20 new accounts that I don’t what I’m going to do with.
The list of services is a bit lacking, though. I would love for this tool to incorporate more searches for social networks. Where’s FaceBook and OpenID? In the Philippines, Friendster trumps all other social networks, although Multiply (listed) is fast gaining ground. Ning is also an emerging player that’s not on the list.
A lot of the included searches are for start-ups like Kwippy and Jaiku, invite-only sites. Flickr and Picasa shouldn’t be part of the search, I think, since these services use e-mail addresses as usernames, so they’d probably be eternally available for the username one prefers.
Still the major sites you’d expect to find are there. The very useful ones are Blogger, Digg, eBay, Gmail, Yahoo, Multiply, MySpace, Stumbleupon, Technorati, Twitter and Plurk.
So if you’re username-obsessed like me, go visit the site. 
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