Month: May 2009

Hanging at the intersection of Where and I.D.

I spent the day hanging out at WhereCamp09, enjoying the geekdom and learning about great new projects. These folks are really doing amazing stuff.

But it surprised me how little the geo-geeks have done to embrace the social web.

The folks hanging at WhereCamp definitely need to be plugging in to the ID/Privacy/InfoCard/VRM effort. Too much of the cool stuff they are talking about is just creepy without robust controls on private data.

It’s also clear that the Identity folks need to somehow do better at getting the word out about their solutions to some of these problems.

I don’t know if this missing connection is a bigger problem for the WhereCamp folks or for the IIW folks. Is it a symptom of myopia for the mappping crowd, or lack of visibility for the identity nerds? Which effort is hurt worse when they are slow to cross-pollinate their ideas?

Identity basics – The Identity Quartet

Last week I attended the VRM West Coast Workshop and one of the many impressive folks I met there was Joe Andrieu of Switchbook. In a recent blog post, Joe describes the The Identity Quartet – the key services that allow user to express their identity in online services. It’s one of the most clear descriptions of the identifier issues I’ve read. Joe even makes the point:

The Identity Quartet pattern isn’t rocket science. In fact, it makes things simpler when it comes to security, maintenance, and user control. The Quartet makes systems more flexible and more secure while giving users more freedom to manage how they interact and present themselves online. It is one way to turn user-centric Identity services of OpenID and Information Cards into truly user-driven Identity.

[From The Identity Quartet]

His post is recommended for anyone wanting to start understanding the issues of identity and security in internet applications and services. Check it out!