ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) Registry has officially launched. This is one of the many initiatives to support the problem of name disambiguation. There are many systems like these (and I keep registering for these systems to see how they work, adding links to each one on my CV page). I haven’t been following any of these closely enough to evaluate or recommend one system over another, but ORCID has been anticipated because it seems to have strong backing from the community.
The news release from ORCID is here: http://about.orcidid.com/news/2012/10/16/orcid-launches-registry
2012-10-16