Let us all hope that websites continue to slowly release their stranglehold on our personal data and clickstreams. A vote for openness is a vote for opportunity.

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.

Why do dating sites and social nets make their freeform textareas so small? Do you not want me updating my profile? Given the lackluster performance of Match.com in recent months, I would think they might want to work on the mechanics of the existing site as opposed to getting distracted with mobile initiatives.

Hint, mobile alerts for online dating is only cool if you’re hot and you get lots of emails. Otherwise it’s like having a phone that never rings. Maybe the 20-somethings will use it, I don’t know. I don’t think Match does either.

People do use anonymous calling, or so Match and Jangl want you to know. I can’t talk about the numbers, but what I do know is that adoption rates take a long time. Dating isn’t Facebook and the mainstream online daters are not the Tech Crunch 50k.

Speaking of Facebook, my phone is constantly chirping when people write notes to me, write on my wall or poke me. I like that, and I can regulate what actions get passed onto my phone.

OTOH, Facebook now requires too much of my time to try out all the cool new apps. My home page looks like the Yahoo home page circa 1999, 500 things all over the place, no coherent User Interface or design strategy.

Re: open profiles. Wouldn’t it be great if I could link to my own blog from my dating profile? The pay sites already have my money, why should they care? Because that decreases pageviews? Get over it. Dating site ad inventory is mostly junk that no other sites really want anyway. Unless you are Trojan that is.

The open profile movement is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Scott Karp, who’s blog I read often, states what I have been talking about for years. I could not be more excited, as I have advised and consulted with several companies that have toyed with the concept but never had what it took to execute on the vision. Maybe I should yell a bit louder so the blogosphere can hear me.

Another case of social networking sites kicking the collective ass of the online dating industry, the original social network. Go Facebook! At least until something better comes along, at which time we’ll need to annoy, I mean re-friend everyone.

Moving to Charlestown on Monday, I’m surprisingly packed already. Off to Newburyport for an ocean cruise and fireworks tomorrow, back on the grid on Tuesday.