I think Cardspace addresses the multiple-personality issue quite well, from the user-experience perspective. I’ve been playing around with the identity selector in Firefox on my Mac, which actually works some of the time. Easily selecting a persona based on the context of a given situation (game, blog post, adult content access, etc) is as easy as clicking on an icon.
Interesting to see the verification companies starting to get involved. You need access to a lot of datasources to get out of pocket verification working.
I keep thinking of OpenID like my TypeKey ID. Nothing more, nothing less than single sign-on. OpenID now has something like over 100M potential users. Problem is, there are only a handful of sites that accept OpenID. The lag is killing the potential.
How can we avoid the flamewar that is going to erupt over who owns distributed transparent databases that store our identities?
Cardspace: Behind The Code is a new internal Microsoft blog I heard about from Kim Cameron. Any news is good news about Cardspace, but it kills me to see, after several years, that all the Cardspace can talk about in their initial posts are SSL certificates and other geekdom. Where is the consumer and business advocate/liason? Where is the simple plugin for my blog and Firefox? These issues are discussed here and there, but hopefully the Cardspace team can lighten up on the tech talk and bring the conversation to the end user.
This month’s most overused meme is “social graphs.” We’ve been talking about this for years and suddenly it’s all the rage, probably because you can only get so excited about videosharing sites and all the smart people are back from Burning Man.
Johannes Ernst says that Six Apart, creators of Movable Type, are set to release code to enable open social graphs. Read the We Are Opening the Social Graph at Six Apart and prepare for Web 3.0 to get started. Now, where is Cardspace?
Apologies for the 3.0 moniker, but blog readers are brutally selective when searching for interesting headlines.
I’ve been thinking a lot more about identity, attention and reputation. These reoccurring themes keep popping up in my consulting work and the blogosphere has no shortage of pundits who opine about the role of identity from time to time.
I continue to think Windows Cardspace could be a central theme to open profiles, attention and identity silos. The problem is that the current state of play is that the documentation is for developers, the test suites are stale and most of the blog posts about it are almost a year old. That is definitely not they way you want to roll out a potentially enormous shift in how people are represented on the Internet.
The architects and developers will continue to evolve the underlying protocols, improve security measures and create usable browser plug-ins and manageable datastores.
I want to start talking about how identity, attention and reputation are going to change how we interact with each other, web services, communities and institutions.
I will continue to maintain partial focus on emerging internet trends and the Boston Internet scene, as we are seriously underrepresented in the blogosphere and the MSM (main stream media).
If your company participates in the identity, attention or reputation space, or you’re doing cool stuff in the Boston area, sign up for the feed and keep me updated about what you’re up to.
Have a great weekend.
Kim Cameron tells us that Christian Arnold has created a Visual Studio 2005 Toolbox for Windows Cardspace. The ToolBox provides an easy way to use Windows CardSpace in your ASP.NET 2.0 Web-Application to register and validate your users. It´s also possible to use the controls to receive a SAML token and get the decrypted values of provided claims.
This is great news for Cardspace. I cannot wait for people to start building cool stuff with it. Integrating third-party authentication tools, dating site profiles, advertising and viral marketing are all going to be early implementations based on Cardspace.
This is great news. I’ve been impatiently waiting for sample code for Movable Type and WordPress that works with Cardspace, maybe this will speed things up a bit.
Microsoft to Work With the OpenID Community, Collaborating With Sxip, JanRain, and VeriSign
Sxip, JanRain, Microsoft, and VeriSign will collaborate on interoperability between OpenID and Windows CardSpace to make the internet safer and easier to use. Specifically:
* As part of OpenID’s security architecture, OpenID will be extended to allow relying parties to explicitly request and be informed of the use of phishing-resistant credentials.
* Microsoft recognizes the growth of the OpenID community and believes OpenID plays a significant role in the internet identity infrastructure. Kim Cameron, Chief Architect of Identity at Microsoft, will work with the OpenID community on authentication and anti-phishing.
* Sxip, JanRain, and VeriSign recognize that Information Cards provide significant anti-phishing, privacy, and convenience benefits to users. Information Cards, based on the open WS-Trust standard, are available though Windows CardSpace.
* Sxip and JanRain, leading providers of open source code libraries for blogging and websites, are announcing they will add support for the Information Cards to their OpenID code bases.
* Sxip, JanRain and VeriSign plan to add Information Card support to future identity solutions.
* Microsoft plans to support OpenID in future Identity server products.
The four companies have agreed to work together on a “Using Information Cards with OpenID� profile that will make it possible for other developers and service providers to take advantage of these technology advancements.
Adventures of an Eternal Optimist has a good introduction to the Cardspace Identity System.
Identity services provider Opinity (a client), has announced that you can now use both OpenID and Microsoft’s CardSpace at Opinity.
This means that if you have established an OpenID–for instance, through Verisign PIP or LiveJournal–you can use that OpenID to log in to Opinity and to control your personal profile. Also, if you have created an information card through Microsoft’s CardSpace, you can also use it in the same ways.
Congrats to Ted, Doyon, Bill, Dave and the rest of the Opinity team.