Wablet is a new instant message client that builds in new identity features so you can better decide whether you want to talk with people visiting you.

For some, Wablet's rich offering of identity checks may be a really cool thing, especially for those who live online and correspond to all sorts of different people. For others, it may be more than they need -- in fact, overwhelming.

In any case, Wablet's entry into the IM arena is significant. It is the latest in a wave of companies, including Meebo and eBuddy, that are building IM services in an increasingly complex world of Web identity. These IM services, in the form of a little "widget" box, are now being plopped on to your blog, or business web page, or any other site you operate.

This exposes you to all kinds of people wanting to talk with you, many of them strangers. If you are a teenager, and have a hip Myspace profile, you don't want to talk with every stranger that drops onto your site. But you may want to give certain people a chance, if you knew more about them. If you run a business, you want to know what sort of client they are -- to provide better customer service. So Wablet's answer is let you see their profiles: When they visit you, they bring "badges," or links to Web sites they own, and a "karma" rating based on their contact with other Wablet users. David Foote, chief executive, calls it all one big "Web caller-ID."

Wablet has raised a seed round, and has operated secretely while filing a patent. By the end of this month, it plans to launch a test with its first 500 users.

It is based in SF and the Philippines. We talked Foote two days ago. Back during the Internet bubble, he was lead engineer for Portola Dimensional Systems, a company that developed data visualization tools, but joined the dot-bombs by burning through $7 million as fast as anyone.

It hasn't launched yet, and there is a lot of stuff going on, judging from what Foote has shown us.

Here's a thumbnail of how it works. You register at Wablet, and you get a little Web-based console that you can drag anywhere on your computer screen. That Wablet console, in turn, is intelligent. It keeps track of all the places on the Web where you have a sites or a profile (which you have also registered at Wablet). You can have a blog about fishing, and a business retail site, and a MySpace profile, for example. To the outsider, it looks simple. Here's an example what they might see on your page (click to enlarge).

Wablet looks like a Yahoo or MSN IM box, but runs in a browser. It lets you message within all your exisiting IM accounts, but also lets you chat with people at other sites you own (eBay or GoogleBase, would be good examples for business purposes).

Meanwhile, Wablet is monitoring the people who visit all your sites.
Here, one of two things can happen:

1) If the visitor has not registered with Wablet, your console shows them as an anonymous person, with an empty silhouette, and so you don't get much information. They can try to chat with you in the Wablet console they see on the page they're visiting, but you may get bored of them soon.

2) If the vistor has registered with Wablet, then they are given a cookie so that you can see their identity. They show up in your Wablet console with their picture (if they have uploaded one) along with icons from the various sites where they have a profile. So if they have a MySpace profile, they carry a little MySpace icon that you can click on, and go to see their profile. Same with Flickr, or their personal Web site. Once you're satisfied, you can start chatting with the person. In addition to these third-party references, Wablet has its own internal rating system. You can give someone a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, depending on whether you think they are creepy or not, and that person will carry around that rating with them too. There are some algorithms here, based on the number of contacts a person has, and so on.

Here's an image of what your console would show (click to enlarge), showing the main person you are conversing with, and then a bunch of other people on the top bar waiting to talk with you.

But here's the trick: That visiting person can choose, by tinkering with his Wablet settings, which profile icons he carries with him. He can carry his dating profile, to signify he's on the prowl, and turn off his business profile. He can even show up on your site anonymously. Here, you have one last option: Force him to login to Wablet on your site, so that you can see his basic Wablet profile and ratings. If he chooses not to, then you can decide not to talk with him.

We notice that Techcrunch published a piece on Wablet today. David got in touch, and said he wanted to clarify several things.

-- He has developers based in the Philippines, but the company is bound by U.S. and Hong Kong law. His data centers are in the U.S.

-- He also says Wablet's usage of a Flash version of AJAX does not use up as much memory or CPU as some have suggested it does. Flash can be a hog, but the services that Wablet offers aren't that heavy, he says.

-- You console sits on your computer, while you are doing work. People can try to chat with you, but you can switch your presence "status" just as you do with other IM services. You can turn off access to any of your sites. Your fishing blog widget could say you are out fishing. Your work blog might say that you are in a meeting. You can turn all sorts of dials: You can accept all chats from your business blog, but require age, sex, location or other info before accepting chats on your MySpace page.

-- The Wablet widget will not ask visitors to input login information from their accounts at Web sites (Yahoo, Google, MySpace etc). No spoofing involved. The only registration that occurs is at the beginning, when you give Wablet your various passwords, so that it can let you can IM across platforms.

--There's all the other goodies too. Wablet gives you the option of storing chat history, and you can tag conversations and sort them by date.

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