Day: July 30, 2006

Get over to Craig Burton's blog

Craig Burton is blogging up a Perfect Storm at craigburton.com.  In fact he's posting so many nice little nuggets that you only see about a day and half's worth when you go to his site with a browser.  Make sure you navigate back using the calendar.

Since a couple of the recent pieces concern things I'm involved with, I'll pick up on those.

Let's start with the discreetly named Vendor Lock in Sucks:

Microsoft plans link between directory, Live services: ”

Microsoft is planning to sync its Active Directory with its Live Web-based services to give users single sign-on for applications and services both inside a company network and on the Web.

Technically a good idea. Fewer namespaces and fewer administration models. Reality is, customers are loathe to get roped into Msft centrism. Msft has yet to make the cut to OS inpdependent Internet services.

Trust me, that is the future. The longer they put it off, the worse it is for everybody.

The open source community isn't much better. Politics is winning over common sense.

It will be interesting to see how Ozzie guides the company towards this end. Gates hasn't, won't. Ballmer is worse, Allchin…I have no more to say about that.

Let me talk to Craig directly for a minute.

Craig, take a look at the Windows Live ID whitepaper and let me know what you think of it. 

In my view it is consistent with a number of the ideas you've brought to the industry for a long time now. 

As far as I can see, there won't be anything proprietary about the way Windows Live ID federates with Active Directory or anything else – it will just use the WS-Federation and WS-Trust specifications, which are being implemented more widely, by more vendors, every day – and can be used on a royalty-free basis.

So then how does this initiative lock anyone in? I'm a non-lockin sort of guy.  We need to win customer support by producing products that are cool to use and manage; that have superior reliability and integration with dev tools; and that are open to other implementations.

As for your comments on Bill (and his friends), you just can't produce the kinds of technologies we are about to deliver in fifteen minutes.  Our work has been going on for a while (!) and involved a lot of patient investment.  The truth is, Bill has been a great supporter of ubiquitous Internet identity and I want to stand up for all he's done to help, just as I would do for you.  This said, Ray also brings a lot to the table.

Craig also has a recent post on Cardspace:

A Sandbox to Play In:

“Pamela Dingle, who always has the intestinal fortitude to ask the best darn questions at Catalyst (and other conferences), has posted a good “quick start” guide for anyone wanting to play around with Windows CardSpace. Via that post, I found this CardSpace “sandbox” site, which has some interesting pointers on it.”

Jamie Lewis points to some Cardspace resources. I opened my control panel the other day, and there was a new control panel named “Digital Identities.” It let me create an infocard. I have no idea what to do with it, but I know it came from Kim's group. I will try to find out more about this.

This is getting exciting.  So Craig, now, while you are on identityblog, choose Login.  When you get to the login page, click on my Information Card icon (a placeholder while we all agree on a real icon).  Let me know how that goes too.

UPDATE:  The original link for the Live ID Whitepaper was broken – I have fixed it.

Liberty, Open Space and Information Cards for Apple

Red Hat's Pete Rowley on the recent adjoining Liberty Alliance and Open Space events in Vancouver – and Apple support for Information Cards:  

The Liberty Alliance made a bold statement in Vancouver last week when it opened its doors for the first time to the hoi polloi. Now this was something interesting enough to demand a visit in of itself, but with the addition of an Open Space after the Liberty meeting, well, you knew I was going to be there right?

The first two days consisted of the regular business of the Liberty Alliance where visitors were allowed to attend any session except for the super secret board stuff. I attended many of the technical sessions which were interesting, though sometimes hard to follow as an outsider without access to the documents under consideration. I also took part in a session around privacy concerns that not only assured me that Liberty has them but that they are serious about dealing with the issues. The conversation turned at one point to outside perceptions of Liberty itself and its lack of openess to its internal process and draft documents. Somewhat ironic was the point made that nowhere was there to be found any information regarding the location of the Liberty conference, at least not to those without access to internal websites. A consequence of this being the first open meeting no doubt. In all, an interesting and worthy meeting.

The final two days were spent on the Open Space which was run in unconference format by Kaliya Hamlin and was excellent as usual. Topics ranged from SAML to Liberty People Service to how should we rename this user centric identity thing? Kim Cameron wrapped up with a lunchtime introduction to CardSpace that by popular demand lasted for nearly two hours. At one point Kim was asked whether Apple would have an identity selector like CardSpace and Kim redirected the question to me in my capacity as OSIS representative. As the newly appointed unofficial spokesman for Apple I suggested that if Steve Jobs would call me I’d hook him up.

So Steve, call me.

Gee.  That's an interesting idea.

Like Pete I took Liberty's Open Space collaboration as being a very positive step in increasing dialog and understanding in the identity community.  It was great to speak with a number of the Liberty people who have been leaders in moving identity technology forward over the last few years.  It strengthens my conviction that we are on the road to an Identity Metasystem reaching across platforms and underlying technologies.