Dan Olsen’s Weblog

There have been presentations on LID and OpenID. Both of these identity systems are centered on the idea of an individual be identified by a URL. The URL is not only a way to get information on the individual the URL represents. Both of these ideas also allow for users of sites to use their URL identity to login instead of a user name and password.

The main question I have about these two ideas is I am still a little fuzzy on how a URL can identify me and that no one else can use my URL to log into sites as me. I plan on going through and reading more on these ideas. Phil Windley gave me a paper reguarding YADIS which is a specification that will make LID and OpenID interoperable as well interoperable with other identity systems. I am also interested on reading more into YADIS as well as LID and OpenID.

One reason I am interested in these two ideas is because they are based on the REST architecture. Since I am looking web services and REST, these are things that spark my interest.

Technorati Tags: identity, IIW2005

Phil Windley has put together an aggregated RSS feed of blog entries by those attending IIW 2005. You can find it at http://www.windley.com/events/iiw2005/.

Technorati Tags: identity, IIW2005

Microsoft’s Mike Jones came and presented the InfoCard which is Microsoft’s identity solution. I have been looking into InfoCard for part of my research.

InfoCard is an identity system Microsoft is building into their new Vista OS. One of the keys behind InfoCard is that a user can submit a selected InfoCard that only gives the service provider the information the user wants to give. Although some providers are going to require certain information to have an account with them.

Kim Cameron, who is also attending and works with Microsoft, mentioned that the idea of InfoCard is to allow the user to make the decisions and not let the sites push things upon the user.

Mike showed an demo of InfoCard using an Amazon demo. After showing how InfoCard was used to login into the site as well to used to make a purchase, a question was asked if the service provider would keep your information you send using an InfoCard. The answer to the questions was “we hope not.” What reasons would a service provider have to keep that data? Does a service provider need to keep my credit card number after I make a purchase? Today it seems the only need for a provider keep my credit card information is for my own convenience.

As I have been reading and looking into InfoCard I have had some questions on it’s implementation. One of my main questions is how can this fit in to non-Microsoft products? InfoCard is to be integrated into Internet Explorer and I am interested to see if there will be any help from Microsoft in providing non-IE browsers.

Technorati Tags: identity, IIW2005

Doc Searls is currently giving his presentation titled “Identity in the Marketplace: The Rise of the Fully Empowered Customer”. He points out that a person makes exchanges with companies, has conversations with companies but a person never really has any sort of real relationship with these companies. Doc considers explains this be saying “the companies won the industrial revolution” and we have lost our identity as individuals.

Doc goes on to talk about companies providing systems that allows the individual to tell them what they want and even compete for their business. The key to this is that things are done on “my” terms. He uses car rental companies as an example where an individual can say what they are going to do and the type of features they want on the car they want to rent and then have the companies compete for that individuals business.

One of the keys to making this idea work is people need to work together and share ideas when developing identity systems. Empowering the customer is an important part of identity to put the consumer back in the driver’s seat.

Technorati Tags: identity, IIW2005

I am at the Internet Identity Workshop today in Berkeley. I am looking forward to the presentations of the workshop and to learn a little more about identity. I would consider myself still in the infant stage when it comes to the topic of identity. I am hoping to learn some interesting things and expand my knowledge on the topic.

I had an opportunity to have dinner with Phil Windley, Doc Searls and few other presenters and attendees of IIW 2005. It was a great experience to sit a listen to some of their ideas on identity and the web.

Technorati Tags: identity, IIW2005