Identity

I posted a blog on another site entitled Distributed Social Networking requires Secure Online Identity that discusses, among other things, the new "anti-Facebook" Diaspora* and the need for a solid foundation built upon secure, distributed, user-centric digital identity.  There's another, less technical piece of the puzzle.

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Google is announcing Friend Connect tonight, a service advertised to "help website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors." Friend Connect employs OpenID and oAuth which is a good start, but how it puts them together is lacking vision and, disturbingly, may raise significant privacy concerns.

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Listening to Market Place last night, I heard a story about online privacy, and privacy in general. Seems that Privacy International issued a report recently that marks Google as the worst internet company when it comes to privacy. Stop the presses!

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Day one at the Internet Identity Workshop, or IIW2007, began with Eugene Kim - Chairman-elect of Identity Commons ("2.0", now with rounded corners), asking those attending their first IIW to stand up - over two-thirds of the 150 or so people in the room stood up. This is a great trend - the word is getting out!

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This week I was the victim of Identity Theft. I don't think anybody was hurt, but a crime was definitely committed, and the criminals were not caught. On Monday I received a welcome packet from First Data, complete with charge slips and a sticker to put on my business window. The account was in the name of a company I used to own that had at one time processed credit card transactions with a merchant account. On Tuesday morning I called First Data. We decided that this was just a mistake and I should throw the kit out.

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Phil Windley blogged about FreeYourId.com, a full service OpenId provider that gives you access to services off of a single .name URL. This starts to give a taste of what i-names can do, though it is - while clever - somewhat simplistic. When you give someone a YourId.name email address, they can then email you forever, as long as you keep the email it forwards to current.

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So with all the hoopla around OpenID being embraced by Microsoft and AOL, many are asking "what does this mean?" and "what can you do with an OpenID?"

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Alex Iskold has written a fantastic piece on The Road to the Semantic Web "Some people think that the Semantic Web is about AI, some claim that it is more about semantics, while others say that it is about data annotation. All agree however, that we will all be wonderfully more productive and simply happier when it arrives." What is the Semantic Web?

At first glance, the PEW report on the Future of the Internet seemed a bit juvenile. Then jumping in to it, I realized those surveyed included Internet luminaries Esther Dyson and Howard Rheingold (among others), and should be taken seriously... From the report summary: "A survey of internet leaders, activists, and analysts shows that a majority agree with predictions that by 2020: * A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening� world. * Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents� proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey. * Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems. * Tech “refuseniks� will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change. * People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy. * English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence." Read the full PDF report.

What type of searcher are you? Slate distinguishs the seven ways people search using the mistakenly-released AOL search logs of 650,000 members. Or go to Valleywag to search the logs yourself. Like User 1912452, "a psychiatric counselor looking for a job in Colorado, obsessed with quick weight loss. She's turned to the book of Revelation, the zodiac, psychic schools, private investigators, and Victorian poetry. She (or a patient) dreams about being drenched in blood."