May will be conference month for me
Posted on Wednesday, March 29, 2006
at 8:25 AM
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I managed to avoid the conference mania sweeping the Web by not going to Etech and SXSW this month, but it looks like May will be my month for conferences. I already have decided to attend Mesh in Toronto on May 15-16, and of course I am helping to organize OPML Camp in Cambridge for May 20-21. Now I see that there will be an Identity Workshop in Mountain View on May 1-3 (via Doc Searls). Kaliya Hamlin (also known as Identity Woman) is one of the organizers, and since she did such a great job with Mashup Camp, I'm giving this one serious consideration. Identity is one of the next areas of Web technology I need to start spending more time with, along with microformats/structured blogging, and attention.
Get your daily personal identities right here!
Posted on Wednesday, February 1, 2006
at 12:09 PM
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As long as newspapers are eager to criticize the practices of seach engines, I can't resist mentioning this story in today's Boston Globe. It appears that the credit card numbers of 240,000 subscribers to the Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette were "inadvertently" revealed.
"The confidential information was on the back of paper used in wrapping newspaper bundles for distribution to carriers and retailers. As many as 9,000 bundles of the T&G, wrapped in paper containing subscribers' names and their confidential information, were distributed Sunday to 2,000 retailers and 390 carriers in the Worcester area, said Alfred S. Larkin Jr., spokesman for the Globe. In addition, routing information for personal checks of 1,100 T&G subscribers also may have been inadvertently released."
It's moments like this that I am glad to be writing a blog.
A first step in moving our identity online
Posted on Saturday, December 17, 2005
at 8:52 AM
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Marc Canter's blog has reminded me that I needed to view Dick Hardt's identity presentation. I've been seeing links to it for months, but I just got around to watching it. It does a great job of summarizing the issues, but also makes it clear how far we are from a solution.
I don't know how to evangelize Web 2.0
Posted on Saturday, December 10, 2005
at 6:23 PM
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I just got back from a Christmas party thrown by my old boss, Bruce Twickler. I also got to talk with a couple of other people from Andover.net and one of its earliest investors. These guys were all true Web 1.0 pioneers, so they know what a real wave looks like. They also know me and trust me enough to understand that if I am really excited about something it must be hot, and yet I was unable to explain exactly what changes would be brought about by Web 2.0 techniques. Frankly, tagging is an extremely weak thing to explain, and collective bookmarking and looking at other people's pictures also sound scarily geeky. One thing that did resonant with them was the idea of moving your identity online. Whatever that means. We need some really hot exemplars. Google Maps may have caught some people's attention, but there have to be several more killer Web 2.0 apps to really get the public excited. Does anyone have a way of explaining the changes Web 2.0 will bring to the majority of Internet users in the next couple of years that doesn't involve a multipoint bullet chart? I need one sentence and five sentence explanations.
