Digital Identity has been brewing for a while now and we are starting to see some significant development in the space.  I was fortunate enough to have both of Microsoft's Mike Jones and Kim Cameron on the same Interview and for me it rolled well with both of their participation.  Both were open, friendly and very helpful in educating the audience on the nuances of digital identity and where the space is going.

I think that this space will get a ton of visibility in the near and long term future.  Weather you know it or not your digital identity is an important part of your daily experience in doing business, especially online.

As networks grow so does the complexity of information and how it is stored and used. This is a Pandora’s Box of sorts and it can be time consuming especially if one’s identity is compromised. In this podcast we cover digital identity from two of the seminal leaders in the digital identity space. Kim Cameron and Mike Jones will fill you in on the landscape and where the digital identity industry is heading.

One thing for sure is that their work at Microsoft will probably touch each and every one of us in some way shape or form. We cover Kim’s 7 Laws of Identity which were endorsed by Bill Gates and Senior Management at Microsoft and widely accepted by digital identity leaders.

1. User Control and Consent
2. Minimal Disclosure for a Constrained Use
3. Justifiable Parties
4. Directed Identity
5. Pluralism of Operators and Technologies
6. Human Integration
7. Consistent Experience Across Contexts

I did ask them about Bill Gates retirement and maybe just maybe Bill is starting a lucrative home based business for the rest of the world to emulate.

Hey teamsters how is life going now?  You've negoitated the US Auto Industry almost right out of business.  Or is it the fault of the executives in Detroit?   This is not about blame, but let's start working together or we will only have foreign owned plants here in the USA.  How much more of this are we going to take?  The funny thing is this is not only happening in the US Auto Industry but several other industries.  As Guy Finley says, "the only 'problem' we ever have is the refusal to learn." 

So how does this fit with the these of this blog?  Not sure, but it really opened my eyes and I felt the need to write about it.  So what can Detroit do today about this?   Invite entrepreneurs to their research labs and share information and come up with 100 MPG cars next year.  If you think this is wishful thinking, it is, but you won't know unless you take action it's ok to fail.

This may be perhaps the most surprising article in this series as few investors realize how huge Toyota Motors (NYSE: TM) is, especially when compared to Ford Motors (NYSE: F). Toyota sports a stock market valuation of $168 billion, 12 times the size of Ford's market cap of $13 billion. In fact, an even more surprising statistic: Toyota is 8 times larger than Ford and General Motors (NYSE: GM) combined!

 

Remember the days of an HR administrative person who sent the spread sheet of the company payroll out to "All" at XYZ Company?  And remember the fuss about it all?  Well that day has evolved into a social network of sorts.  Check out GlassDoor.com Company Ratings, Reviews, and Salaries….yup salaries.

Most definately not.  This is a very brief snap shot of analysis at the current Burton Group Catalyst Conference North America 2008.

With over a decade of sustained development on identity management (IdM) technologies, the market is both flourishing and flailing. As IdM vendors swarm around the most lucrative IT projects, the demand for compliance software in particular has left a permanent mark on IdM landscape. Technologies such as user provisioning, user federation, and directory services do—when judiciously applied—help organizations achieve near term audit and regulatory goals. But the presumption of centralized, command/control built into these technologies is already showing its limitations. Businesses are increasingly relying on partnerships to achieve their objectives, meaning that users and IT systems are rarely all “under one roof.” Instilling control over distributed environments is a tall order for IdM systems, but the reaction can’t be to demand businesses to return to monolithic domains. Instead, the technology must become more sophisticated to enable businesses to collaborate efficiently over distributed systems and with a diversified user population.

When was the last time we saw a technology swarm every user online and off line?  Was it Paypal?  Oh yes PayPal is online only.  This is an interesting book that talks about Identity and the look at what happens when Identity is breached.  Zero Day Threat  author Byron Acohido video.

I wanted to see what the landscape was looking like for digital identity also known as unique identifiers and open id’s and single sign on and managing ones’ identity in a network filled world with several different protocols across several different devices and several different companies.

 

This post only scratches the surface and does not provide any analysis on the different solutions for identity and unique identifiers.

 

Keeping the integrity of information is key, keeping privacy is key, security is key, using a single standard is also key so I don’t have to manage so many unique id’s, phone numbers, passwords, URL’s, membership and account numbers etc.  This is no simple task in our complex lives.

 

With a single digital identity or unique identifier we will have the ability to control the network from the sender, (Linked In, Facebook, Outlook, My Family, Business, Visa, Blue Cross etc) the state of the user (working, traveling, sleeping etc.)  and I will also be able to manage the type and format of content being sent to me. (SMS, e-mail, vmail, IM etc).

 

So I started with this article in the New York Times and started to poke around a little and here are a few people and companies who are attacking the problem.

 

Companies First

 

Microsoft Digital ID for Office 2007

 

Windows LiveID The Microsoft Single Sign On Passport System

 

Windows CardSapce

 

Windows CardSpace enables users to provide their digital identities in a familiar, secure and easy way. In the physical world we use business cards, credit cards and membership cards. Online with CardSpace we use a variety of virtual cards to identify ourselves, each retrieving data from an identity provider.  

 

Information Card Foundation New as of June 2008 Google, Microsoft, PayPal and others collaborate together.

 

“Advance the use of the Information Card metaphor as a key component of an open, interoperable, royalty-free, user-centric identity layer spanning both the enterprise and the Internet.”

 

Open ID Directory

 

VeriSign Identity and Authentication Services

 

OpenID  consolidated a number of internet identity efforts, built an organization charged with promoting and protecting the efforts of this fantastic community, developed an Intellectual Property Process that will ensure OpenID stays open, brought a number of the major vendors as participants in the community and are seeing the first signs of deployment.

 

Parity i-cards contain information about you. Some cards you create - they might contain personal information or your preferences and interests. Other cards you collect - perhaps your driver's license or a credit score. Other cards represent a live link to your favorite web sites for "no-touch" profile updating. I-cards look like real cards, but they are stored in a secure, online wallet that only you can see.

ClaimID
claimID is the free, easy way to manage your online identity with OpenID.

 

 

myVidoop is a browser plug in and an identity provider with robust security provided by ConfIdent and a set of customizable features that are second to none.

 

Identity Bloggers

 

Mike Jones of Microsoft wrote a paper on the digital identity subject in 2005 and here are a few of the links on hoe he breaks down the information:

 

Digital Identity: The Challenge
What is the Identity Metasystem?
Identities Function in Contexts
The Laws of Identity
Roles within the Identity Metasystem
Components of the Identity Metasystem
Benefits of the Identity Metasystem
An Architecture for the Identity Metasystem: WS-* Web Services
Microsoft's Implementation Plans
What We Learned from Passport
Conclusion

 

Identity Woman

 

Kim Cameron’s Blog  

 

Don Schmidt Blog

 

Burton Group Identity Blog

 

Paul Trevithick Blog

Identity Groups

 

Internet Identity Workshop

 

Open Source Identity Systems

 

Microsoft Identity Lab  

 

Open ID and Card Space Demo  

 

Identity Management

 

Burton Group Identity and Strategies Research

Cisco is pushing the envelope with a virtual real life experience in a corporate environment.  If you notice there is synching on the YouTube Video and less synching on the Eyeliner Video.  Next we will see it coming to small businesses and eventually to the consumer market.  The sky is the limit as far as where this can go.  The other interesting aspect of Live Holographic Video Conferencing is the greeness factor and the abuility to be in two places at the same time.

I met a Cisco employee on the plane coming back from SFO to BOS and this was a topic of conversation and he said that companies are lining up to get these systems in place and I can see why.  This is real social networking at its finest.  The one thing they do have to get together are the call signals of passing the ball back and forth together, but hey I give them an A for effort and overall execution.  Nice work Cisco.

With the high price of fuel going up and up and budgets being constrained more and more business people are turning to web conferencing and collaboration tools.  Here is a recent video from the BBC talking about how Gensys Conferencing is addressing the issue.  While audio conferencing is highly popular there are communication limitations.  "They" say over 50% of communication is "non-verbal."  So if you have the ability to share audio, video and desktop as the same time in real time it can be almost as good as beiong there.

One company that has caught my eye is Bradon Technologies who has developed a product called SAViiDesk which is the closest thing I have seen to being there in Web collaboration and Web conferencing tools.  They can accomodoate 1,000+ users, they synch in real time, voice, video and desktop, and oh by the way they also archive the entire session…..and they have a total of a 400K download…..350K is the logo.  The other really interesting benefit from this online conferencing tool is their price……low…..and one more they also deliver video conferencing on Web enabled wireless devices.  This type of web conferencing is the next generation of social media.

David Coleman of Collaborate.com recently posted a review on SAViiDesk.

SAViiDesk Technical Overview

This is what one research copmpany says.  $2.5 Trillion by 2020 with including products, services, applications, components and advertising.

Here are some amazing claims on the social networking space I found today in reading this press release by iSuppli Corporation (I like the name) iSuppli is a trusted provider of industry market intelligence and advice, affording insight to the leading news outlets.

I'd like to see where they pulled their data from, this is 5 times what we have spent on the Iraq War to date.  What do you think?

Weather we like it or not here it comes.  A big ass Tsunami in many forms according to David Walker, US Comptroller General.  I don't want to be a naysayer but we have to pay attention to this.  Check out this video on YouTube about Peak Oil.  Oil prices will become more volatile.  Our defecit will teeter and our exposure in the USA is immense on many fronts.

We are living in uncertain times and it can even be called Peaked Earth.  Check out these videos on YouTube.

Now for those of us that want to look at this another way there is a lot of opportunity here as well with green technologies and services to handle the impact of panic, financial melt down and food and wars and other such related links.  Finding these opportunities is the key.

Interview on the US Economy with Jim Rogers.

 

"Word-of-mouth: Boomers participate in viral or word-of-mouth marketing as much as or more than younger age groups. Ninety-three percent of respondents were very or somewhat likely to share product information or news with friends."

As the article states "this is a big surprise" I think not, but it does reaffirm that we use other human beings to help in making choices.  Why?  Probably less risk.  This is why brands go to all of the "trouble" of building brands.  Brand names build "trust."  Trust wins purchasing decisions.  Face to face is the fastest way to build trust or not build trust.  The only thing surprising in the research is that 93% of boomers will share product information.

They “Social Network” Their Own Way:

“The research clearly shows that boomers are not clamoring to social networking sites the same way younger generations are making new friends in today’s social media playground,” said ThirdAge CEO Sharon Whiteley.