News Spirals

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Wed, 30 Apr 2003 19:19:31 GMT

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Wed, 16 Apr 2003 18:06:52 GMT

Thinking in public, part 3 - risks and barriers. Got an interesting email from one of my readers, Jack Vinson. I'm reposting it with his permission.

I have to mention a concern that will arise as blogging gets higher on the corporate radar screen.
In today's blog you summarise that weblogs enable people to "think out loud" in a convenient way. This is something that corporate lawyers will wince to read. And prosecuting attorneys will drool. The problem is the way the US court systems have developed: A prosecuting attorney can dig through any and all relavent documents, looking for damning content. And this content is frequently devoid of context. "Look what that manager wrote in the marginalia!" Or "Look what 'evil' comments I found in the original version of this document" (from documents that have used the Track Revisions tool in MS Word). Never mind that the larger context has nothing sinister happening.
I could easily imagine that weblogs could be host to all sorts of "thinking out loud" discussions that would be ripe for the picking.
Of course, companies have to deal with these kinds of things all the time. They must get business done, while at the same time protecting themselves as much as possible. Most will encourage their people to "write smart" when committing anything to a potentially permanent record.

First off, it's clear we need to encourage Jack to join the ranks of bloggers. And I suspect that he's right about what some of the early reactions are likely to be from corporate counsel. How do we work through this objection?

For most companies the focus will remain on doing business and doing whatever best contributes to getting the job done. I remember a conversation a few years back with an attorney who had done some work with Cisco. Cisco managers basically said "we're using email to run our business, we're making commitments and binding agreements with it, and it's your job to figure out how to make that work, so deal with it." While there may be some initial hemming and hawing, the concerns Jack raises won't be show stoppers.

I think there are two reasons to believe that internal weblogs will actually prove to be a better solution than email and newsgroups for this category of concerns. First, weblogs directly address the out of context problem created by email and newsgroup and exploited in discovery proceedings. Weblogs keep the context visible both in terms of the chronological and archive structures of the weblog format and in terms of the practice of linking across weblogs. Second, is the point that Jack raises at the end. The public nature of weblogs does encourage more attention to "writing smart" than email and newsgroup formats. It helps keep you focused on the notion that you are writing for the record. I sometimes wonder what would have happened at Enron if they had done more of their thinking "in public." If an extensive weblog culture had been in place, could they have done wha they did? I don't know what the answer to that thought experiment might be. But if you had a choice between joining an organization with an active weblog environment or one that discouraged them, which would you choose?

[McGee's Musings]

Wed, 16 Apr 2003 17:55:27 GMT

Retort to Dr. Weinberger.

With Friendsters like that.... After two friends asked me to join Friendster, I finally gave in. It's a well-designed site that enables friends to explore one another's social circles and make new friends. Yet I resent it and other sites like it. I think now I know why: I don't like it when a site assumes that what's implicit can be made explicit without loss. Friendster asks me to do so twice over. First, to jump into Friendster, I have to make explicit a social network that at its heart and at its best is implicit. There's an online social network lying unearthed in... [Joho the Blog]

Each identity system is gonna have their own twist on what a fun experience is. That's the essense of the difference between each system. Friendster has all sorts of avatars, fake profiles, spurient data (as we call it) - who become anchor points between 10,000's of friends. I believe this happened as Friendster's exclusive referral system limited the easy entrance of people into the system.

Another fun thing about Friendster - is when you invite somebody and the system informs you that that person has ALREADY joined, they just didn't link to you as a friend. It's a whole new mindtrip. Friendster also supports introducing people to each other, matchs and you can more or less walk up to somebody (virtually) and ask to become their friend - and more times than not - they do (I've now tried it a few times now.) But only to really interesting people. It's all about the inherent referral of someone who is your 'friend'.

People feel comfortable when you're identified back to some "trusted" friend. It works everytime. Systems like this could easily tie into XPertWeb - right? And support PingID? With a Creative Commons license? Using ENT? And XML-RPC, RSS and OPML. Of course.

[Marc's Voice]

Wed, 16 Apr 2003 17:52:34 GMT

Jabber & PingID.

Well, 15 months after starting PingID, I feel privileged to have the opportunity to connect my past with the future. In this phase of the Jabber/PingID relationship, we've integrated Ping's first product (SourceID - www.sourceid.org) into the Jabber's eXtensible Communications Platform (this integration is being demo'd this week at the RSA conference in SF). The integration enables Jabber to 'federate' it's identity & authentication system via the Liberty Alliance Phase I specifications.

What does this actually mean? Well, for starters, it means that Jabber customers will now be able to single sign-on to Jabber (even between companies), or launch a Jabber client from a web page without having to re-authenticate one-self when the Jabber client is launched. But that's just the tip of the iceberg! As the Liberty Alliance specifications progress into Phase II, both the number and power of the identity related applications surrounding identity federation will explode -- and the opportunities for our two companies to collaborate will also significantly increase.

- Andre Durand

About Jabber, Inc.
Jabber, Inc. is the developer of the world's most widely used open platform for extensible instant messaging and presence management applications. Jabber Inc.’s commercial software has been sold and deployed to more than 3 million users. The Jabber Open Source project now has more than 150,000 servers in operation worldwide. Jabber has been adopted in the telecommunications, enterprise and software development markets by customers that include France Telecom, Hewlett-Packard, BellSouth, webMethods, AT&T, Landmark Graphics, and Juniper Networks. Jabber, Inc.’s investors include France Telecom (NYSE: FTE), Intel Capital, Intel’s strategic investing arm, and Webb Interactive Services, Inc. (OTCBB: WEBB). Please see www.jabber.com for more information.

About Ping Identity Corporation
Ping Identity (www.pingidentity.com) is a privately held company developing integrated business and technology services for secure identity federation. Ping Identity is the corporate sponsor of SourceID (www.sourceid.org), the leading open source implementation of the Liberty Alliance specifications for identity federation and the driving force behind the PingID Network (www.pingid.com), the first member-owned, technology-neutral identity network.

[Marc's Voice]

Mon, 14 Apr 2003 17:10:33 GMT

Response to Means and Ends.

The Means and Ends posting has gotten a lot of response. Thanks to both Doc Searls and Eric Norlin for the links and the kind words that brought it to people’s attention. I’ve gotten some great email responses as well.

Carol Coye Benson of Glenbrook Partners responded by saying:

. . . consumer-centric identity is fine in theory, but I continue to believe that the great mass of consumers will expend absolutely zero effort in getting any of this straightened out, organized, etc. But consumer-centric identity systems can’t exist without some active effort on the part of consumers. Most people’s wallets, desktops, kitchen drawers, and old-IRA’s are a complete mess. Digital identities will be as well.

I don’t agree about the government as credential issuer – not completely. I think right now they mean what they say (the feds, in the eAuth gateway). States could but can’t afford to. I can easily imagine a bank issued credential being good enough to file taxes with. On the other hand, I also believe that we are “one incident away” from a “real” national ID system. This one will be interesting to watch.

Within the world of “means” there are interesting distinctions between direct authentication and indirect (inferred, knowledge-based) authentication. That’s a collision of worlds that is coming faster than most people realize.

All fine points.

I do think that customer-centric identity faces a hurdle in creating a value proposition for the individual people. Technology-savvy folks may have a vested interest in managing their identity, but it’s unclear what will motivate everyone else to do so. (By the way, Carol’s comments about customer-centric identity are consistent with her excellent presentation at Digital ID Word in October of last year. She used the analogy of folks who actually use QuickBooks to organize their finances; it’s a very small fraction of the population. Most people don’t bother.) Having said that, however, Doc and other folks that want a customer-centric identity are working for something that's worth thinking about.

The government side is an interesting case. I keep hearing what Phil Windley, former CTO of the state of Utah, said at Digital ID World: He predicted that the federal government would, in the form of an unfunded mandate, make the states turn the driver's license into an electronic ID card, making it the default national ID card (although he thinks they won't call it that). There’s also the need to federate identity trans-nationally. Carol also has a great point regarding bank IDs being sufficient to file tax returns. That's certainly possible.

But sooner or later, it seems likely that governments will get involved with digital identity, especially when it comes to transnational issues. Today, for example, we have treaties to which most countries are signatories that establish the use of passports as identity proofs that work transnationally. International travel and business will one day force some level of digital identity that’s recognizable across borders. But as Craig Mundie, CTO for Microsoft, has pointed out on multple occassions, it took nearly 20 years to negotiate the treaties around passport usage. So we could be in for a long wait.

And I agree with Carol that the both different grades and types of authentication are important facets of the identity issue. In the piece, however, I tried hard not to dive off into the technology, but to make the point that the three areas in which digital identity is likely to grow will develop somewhat independently, but must interact. I look forward to exploring all of these issues in more detail.

John McDowall also has a great take on the different worlds. He says:

I would characterize them as inside, outside and among. Inside is within a corporation and the notion of identity is controlled by the corporate directory(s). Outside are your customers coming into the enterprise and they have the individual identities that are not within the enterprise and also their identity is typically not attached to their enterprise. Among is when two organizations have a relationship the relationship may be managed by users with an identity within their organization but the basis of the relationship is among the two organizations.

His discussion of the “spheres of legal control” that require different approaches “both technologically and socially” is another good perspective.

[Jamie Lewis]

Fri, 11 Apr 2003 16:17:39 GMT

RSS Aggregators Galore.

Haiko Hebig is maintaining a wonderful RSS Feed Reader / News Aggregators Directory that is organized by operating system and includes annotations. Very handy!

"It is suprising to see how many different, yet similar looking Windows feed readers exist - has become writing a .NET feed reader the modern hello world application?"

[The Shifted Librarian]

Fri, 11 Apr 2003 16:12:40 GMT

Will Technology Transform the Modern Corporation?.

Why don't "they" understand KM?. Will Blogging catch on in corporate life?

If you study the development of the British Navy in the 19th century you may find some answers. The ship on the left was HMS Inflexible (what a name!). On the surface she looks modern. She is driven by steam, made of steel and iron and has 16" turret guns. Her first Captain was Jackie Fisher and she was the pride of the navy. In fact Inflexible is not a modern ship at all. At her core was the doctrine of the Nelsonic Navy. She was officered by watch officers who looked down on those dirty engineers. Her battle doctrine was to get in close and pound directly at the enemy just as they had at Trafalgar. Battle was all about weight and courage. Knowledge was sneered at as being ungentlemanly. She just looks modern and has all the new gear attached. But deep inside she is the Victory. I think that this is the "problem" with most organizations. They have all the new attached like barnacles but deep inside, they are the GM of the Sloan era. They have the command and control culture and the Mainframe approach to technology. They believe that they know what is going on and that only they are clever enough to predict what the customer wants. Why would such leaders need KM or value Intellectual Capital? Why should such men allow blogging?

The ship on the right is HMS Dreadnought. Ironically she was the child of Jackie Fisher, he was the first Sea Lord who commissioned her. She is the first true convergence of the new technology and the new culture.Now Dreadnought not only had all the new gear but had a new doctrine. She was designed to stay far away from the enemy and use concentrated indirect fire. To design, build and operate her, you had to know a lot. She demanded knowledge. She had the power to take on the entire German fleet. Just like Dell can take on the entire traditional computer business or the Southwest model take on the entire airline business. By building her Fisher made every ship in the world obsolete.

So what is the lesson for us? Lesson #1 is that on its own technology does not do it. We won't sell KM or blogging etc as a stand alone artifact. What is needed as a driver is a new doctrine. For Fisher it was the issue of asymmetry. A cheap torpedo boat could sink a battle ship. Getting in close was no longer a "good" idea. So he had to find a way of fighting at a distance. Hence a revolution in doctrine. The all big gun ship driven fast by a turbine engine. The technology to achieve this demanded a shift in social culture at work as well.

Once again we have an asymmetry. If you use the new IT well you don't need the bulk of mass production. You don't need to make it first and then sell it. You don't need inventory. So today we see a new doctrine in business. The new doctrine is to set yourself up to know what is going on and then respond quickly. We are seeing this in Iraq. This is the doctrine that Southwest, Dell, Amazon eBay and Wal-Mart are using. Their competitors cannot face this. All competitors who rely on smart marketers at the head office, the GM style, still build stuff and then try and sell it are finished just as the pre dreadnoughts were.

The context for KM is survival.

[Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog]

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 16:39:48 GMT

Social Capital of Blogspace.

Perhaps we are in the Network Age [Ming], following modernism and post-modernism. After obsessing about construction, then deconstruction, we now value the links between deconstructed bits. When those links are between people, they can be valued as social capital.

Robert Putnam, in Bowling Alone, popularlized the role of social capital. Francis Fukayama, in Trust, principally discusses the correlation between social capital and the prosperty of nations. He defines social capital as the ease in which people in a culture can form new associations.

Network Layer	Unit Size	Distribution of Links	Social Capital	Weblog Mode
Political Network	1000s	Power Law/Scale-free	Sarnoff's Law (N)	Publishing
Social Network	150	Random/Bell Curve	Metcalfe's Law (N2)	Communication
Creative Network	12	Even/Flat	Reed's Law (2n)	Collaboration

As previously described in the Ecosystem of Networks, people use weblogs in different modes: Publishing, Communication and Collaboration. By dramatically lowering the cost for these modes on the public internet -- they are rapidly increasing the value of social capital. Each mode provides different valuation methods:

Publishing: Sarnoff's law says the value of a network is porportionate to the number of subscribers.
Communication: Metcalfe's law says the value of a network is porportionate to the number of nodes.
Collaboration: Reed's Law says the value of a network is porportionate to the number of groups.

Now Sarnoff + Metcalfe + Reed does not equal a valuation methodology, but centering on the value of different kinds of relationships reveals where investment would provide greater return. Enhancing communication and ties between collaborative groups enables exponential growth of social capital.

The above image also recasts the Ecosystem of Networks with the individual as the center, as preferred by many...

From Zack Lynch's forthcoming book:

...Unlike many of his contemporaries, the insightful UC Berkeley sociologist Manuel Castells in his ambitious two thousand page trilogy, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture [retitled the Rise of the Network Society] provided a comprehensive assessment of the impact of information technologies have on culture and global society at large. Castells’ extensive analysis of how "our societies are increasingly structured around the bipolar opposition of the Net and the Self” will remain an important perspective for some time to come. Here, the “Net” stands for the new organizational formations, social and cultural, based on the pervasive use of networked communication media...

Perhaps we are living in a Network Age, building a Network Society. Perhaps Emergent Democracy is as significant as a Second Superpower. But at the least, we are building new relationships-- a connectedness that we should value.

[Ross Mayfield's Weblog]

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 16:37:51 GMT

The Role of Blogs, continued.......In the last few .... The Role of Blogs, continued.......
In the last few weeks we already saw several contributions by Lilia, Denham and others, like myself, discussing whether blogs can actually serve as a place for knowledge sharing, dialogue (or deep dialogue, although I don't really know what that is supposed to mean).

Lilia points to, writes and comments on some new entries into the debate:
Blogs, dialogue and identity building
Blogs, dialogue and identity building (2)
I wonder why it's hard to believe that weblogs are good
Blogs, dialogue and identity building (3)

Denham and Lilia also provide a place to keep track of the conversation as a whole: Is Weblog a Hype?

I really like that Denham Grey has stirred up this conversation, but I don't yet really know what his concrete objections and reservations are. I get the feeling, and I hope Denham will tell me if this is not correct, that the basic point of critique is that weblogs don't serve just the one purpose of deep dialogue and that dialogue is not contained within that single space, and second that the medium is not automatically a place for dialogue, but has to be used as such first. In other words that the medium in itself is not a real catalyst for dialogue.

Both objections I can agree with. But so what? Do blogs need to be?
When I wrote about listening, and knowledgesharing as storytelling and listening, one of the comments I got was that blogs are, since they're published on the internet, per definition broadcasting media.

My reaction to that is, that, yes, some blogs are more the broadcasting type, but some are not, mine certainly isn't. The fact that I'm sitting down with friends in front of my fav pub on the market square for a beer, and have a conversation everyone could potentially listen in to, or take part in, does not make me the town crier. On the internet it's the same difference.

The number of potential audience is irrelevant, it's about the actual returning audience, in this blogs case around 20 people, not counting the passers by. (Ross Mayfield has written interestingly about audience size and blogs: Blogging Bubbles, Repealing the Power-Law, and especially Distribution of Choice).

It is with that core audience that dialogue ensues, or debate. When the audience increases to several hundred 'regulars' one tends to see the author taking a less active stance in taking part in discussing postings, except with the core-group bloggers that have been around for a longer time. That is the transition towards broadcasting. So, no blogs are not automatically fostering dialogue: people have to make an effort, as always. You have to have a group of people around you, not too large, not too small, to have a dialogue. Or different groups for different topics.

Blogging functions both as a place to start building those needed trusting relations, and a place to have the dialogue, and write down the different inputs in to it. That does not take place automatically, you have to be committed, just as in any other setting for dialogue to ensue. The art of dialogue is therefore probably just as widespread here, as in other areas of life, with one advantage: it is easier to spot the willig amongst bloggers, than picking them from a crowd. I see no reason therefore to denounce blogs as unfit for dialogue.

The other assumption, that blogging does not have dialogue as its single purpose, nor that it is the single space in which dialogue takes place, I think isn't of real importance either in my opinion. The point is that I have dialogues with people. One on one mostly, and sometimes it's a multilogue, when there are more people involved. People. Now in my contacts with people I employ whatever means of communication is the most fitting at a given time. Can be face-to-face in different settings, can be e-mail, can be phone, and of course can be blogging. My blog often serves as a starting point, where I write something that has triggered my interests, follow ups by others in their blogs or in my comments-section then come into view. And from that it's a mix of the things I mentioned. I already know that I will probably be talking about dialogue with Lilia and Sebastien when I meet them in Vienna next month, or that I might have a conversation with my girlfriend about it tonight, and insert the results here. It's the conversational cloud I referred to in an earlier posting.

Dialogues in my view will never be confined to one single space, or medium. Even if you put a group in a room for a day to have a dialogue on a certain issue, it will continue and evolve beyond those walls, first during breaks, and then afterwards. To me it seems that the wish to have it all in one place reflects a deeplying command and control issue. Thing is, I'm utterly fine with chaos, as long as I am in command and control of just one thing: me.

And of course blogs do not have being a platform for dialogue as a single purpose. It is about maintaining a thought-record, it is about annotated bookmarks, it is about having a low threshold place to take down notes from wherever I am, and it's about added bonusses of doing that publicly: new social contacts and the resulting trusting relationships from them, some vanity when people say you posted great things, and dialogue. It's the basics that started me going in blogging, it's the bonusses that keep me doing it for you to see. If not for the bonusses I would have returned to the stacks of legal pads that served me well for almost 15 yrs.

[Ton's Interdependent thoughts]

Tue, 08 Apr 2003 20:13:27 GMT

Bottom fishing contunues.

Broadband's Third Wheel. Skepticism remains over power line connectivity [Broadbandreports] This story quotes an analyst stating that power line networking needs 30 percent share of the "broadband" market to be viable. I disagree. If intelligent consumers discover the vested interests crippling the "broadband" offerings of phone and cable companies (to excessively protect legacy voice and content distribution systems) then they could flock to power line networks, where no such vested interests exist, providing power utilities don't start merging with telcos or cable companies (now there's a disturbing idea).

[Scott Mace's Radio Weblog]

I agree with Scott. This consolidation, bottom fishing trend will continue. Warren Buffet is writing a new chapter is the remaking of telcos. Energy companies WILL merge with telcos - as it's all about establishing billing relationships with customers. Not only will digital services drive this trend, but content and hardware will also be part of the play - as well. When Michael Eisner is ready to bail out of Disney, he'll dump the stock and merge with SBC or PG&E.

Just like Cendant merged hotels, rental car companies and insurance - there's no reason to say that telephone, internet access and power won't all be offered by the same company.

[Marc's Voice]

Tue, 08 Apr 2003 19:01:06 GMT

WELL adopts SpamHaus Block List. More and more spam has been slipping through The WELL's email system, which adopted SpamAssassin a year or so ago. So it's good to learn that tonight The WELL will be adopting the SpamHaus Block List.... [JD's New Media Musings]

Tue, 08 Apr 2003 17:18:47 GMT

Weblogs, Information & Society.

This Thursday at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism I am presenting at a Weblogs, Information and Society session. I am planning on introducing some new thoughts on building social capital.

Following my presentation is a panel on Blogging and Building the Information Community with Dan Gillmor, Scott Rosenberg, Donna Wentworth, Ed Felten, Ernest Miller moderated by John Battelle.

[Ross Mayfield's Weblog]

Fri, 04 Apr 2003 22:08:13 GMT

Bandwidth is now officially a commodity.

British broadband brouhaha British Telecom is being criticized for lowering its wholesale broadband pricing to a point that leaves a £1 ($1.57) a month difference between its ISP fees and what it sells bandwith to rivals carriers. Talk about a thin margin. It only goes to show that the bits are the commodity and content is the value creator. Here's why AOL and MSN, as they face the transition from dial-up customers to broadband, are in such a fix -- they've been selling bits, that's what the marketing has been all about: "Get connected."

Well, now folks are connected and the reason they'll pay for faster connections is more/different content and services. But, because of actions like British Telecom's, connectivity is too cheap to earn a significant margin and they are being forced back on content. The message in the BT move is that the content challenge is sweeping the globe. Yahoo can (and has) taken advantage of this by working with BT to sell broadband services directly to consumers in the United Kingdom and collecting a bounty for new customers, as it has with SBC in the United States. It's already built its business around aggregating content and as long as it doesn't charge for content will be able to take providers' money for bringing an audience, as well as collecting broadband bounties. [RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing]

Mitch hits it on the head. As bandwidth becomes increasingly a commodity, it's gonna be more and more important for ISPs and service providers to provide value added differentiation. I was just telling some VCs that yesterday.

This is why we told AOL as well.......... well whatever, they have every right to tube. It's a free country - right? Stupidity is one of the rights Bush is fighting for.

[Marc's Voice]

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 19:35:40 GMT

Blogs and the Iraq War.

David Brake digs through the The Internet & the Iraq War report released yesterday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project is releasing today a new report:

Despite the media coverage of weblogs, Pew finds they are barely on the radar of most Americans:

"Some 4% of online Americans report going to blogs for information and opinions. The overall number of blog users is so small that it is not possible to draw statistically meaningful conclusions about who uses blogs. The early data suggest that the most active Internet users, especially those with broadband connections are the most likely to have found blogs they like. "
Pew's research suggests between one and four percent of Americans publish online depending on what you ask - 1% "Create a web log or "blog" that others can read online" while 4% "Create content for the Internet, such as helping build a web site, creating an online diary, or posting your thoughts online". That could even just include posting your thoughts to someone else's messageboard.

To my mind this emphasises the importance of making the weblog and other content publishing tools we have easier and promoting the possibilities they offer over making the tools more sophisticated (though we should be doing both).

Of course making them work multilingually is also going to be key to international adoption, and making them work well offline (so you don't have to compose while connected).

The report also found that "blogs seem to be catching on with younger Internet users – those under age 30 – at a greater pace than with older Internet users."

This latest survey is consistent with my estimates of over 3 million bloggers and adoption in significant growth areas such as youth. What the report doesn't highlight is the influential role weblogs have on the media.

David is right that there is much work to be done with the tools, but we shouldn't discount the relative influence of weblogs in shaping (this war) and sustaining (Trent Lott) memes.

[Ross Mayfield's Weblog]

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 15:17:16 GMT

Aaron Copland. "Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self- consciousness." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 15:14:53 GMT

Knowledge Audits. I just received an e-mail from a reader of my newsletter who wanted to know if I knew of any good questionnaires for helping to conduct knowledge audits. I did a quick Google search which did not turn up any questionnaires but it did find this interesting note by Denham Grey which recommends against them. I like Denham's approach. [Gurteen Knowledge-Log]

Sat, 29 Mar 2003 02:13:49 GMT

Social software is everywhere. Social Software Devices

Stuart Butterfield makes a point I really should have made clear, that while social software could impact politics, its applicability is everywhere people are, which also implies the impracticality of precise definition. He goes on to define it by devices;

So, what is social software? By me, it is software that people use to interact with other people, employing some combination of the following five devices:

Identity
Presence
Relationships
Conversations
Groups

Conversations can be real-time or asynchronous. Relationships can be as simple as “contacts” or can be more subtle. There's been relatively little group stuff (yet).

Andrew Wooldridge adds

Reputation
Sharing

[Ross Mayfield's Weblog]

I'm starting to really get off on this notion of social software. In fact - the more and more I think about it - the better it feels. Stewert Butterfield also has a link to eyebees - which looks cool. That's two links in Vancouver in one day!

Here's a question: "Why WOULDN'T social software be everywhere?" Or put the other way "Why should software NOT be social?"

[Marc's Voice]

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 19:05:38 GMT

Blog Aggregators.

Blog Aggregator, made in Italy.. Something very interesting has been going on in the Italian blogosphere in the last couple of weeks, a lot of smart people has been working and discussing about aggregators, categorization and weblogs. Here's the story. [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog]

In addition to this project and Phil Pearson's Topic Exchange - there's also something called Stereotypography. I'm sure there are others...... These Blog Aggregators are part of a new trend in on-line communities - as folks are figuring out how to use RSS, OPML, XML-RPC and the MetaWeblogAPI in new and creative ways.

This is certainly something that a new kind of distribution system - would eat up.

[Marc's Voice]

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 19:03:44 GMT

Publishing a project weblog.

Configuring Movable Type

A couple of years ago I predicted that Weblogs would emerge within the enterprise as a great way to manage project communication. I'm even more bullish on the concept today. If you're managing an IT project, you are by definition a communication hub. Running a project Weblog is a great way to collect, organize, and publish the documents and discussions that are the lifeblood of the project and to shape these raw materials into a coherent narrative. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] ... [Jon's Radio]

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 19:01:56 GMT

Identity is a Secret.
Identity is a Mystery.
Identity is a Killer.

That's the teaser for a new film, but it conjures up the Digital ID debate. It's a mystery how we're going to keep our identities secret from people we don't want to hear from, and Doc thinks that the right (NEA) form of DigID could be part of a killer app:

"When I spoke at Digital ID World last Fall, I said I didn't believe any of this would begin to happen in a meaningful way until we had an invention that mothered some necessity--a dirt-simple killer application or killer protocol that would spread like wildfire and carry its own default infrastructure to ubiquity. I'm not sure Liberty supports that, but I don't know.

I'm confused about how a commercial, non-NEA form of DigID would roll out. It still feels like the only killer feature of DigID will be to silence the conversation about DigID and the Liberty Alliance. Big outfits that talk about our "Liberty" sound like Ashcroft PATRIOTism.

To be fair, Liberty isn't proposing a new identity database, which was my previous, mistaken concern. They're creating a way that your sign-on to United Airlines' site would not require a separate sign-on when going to the Avis link from the United site, which becomes one of many "Identity Providers" you may depend on. You'll still have separate IDs everywhere, it's just that some of them will take United's word for who you are, sort of like what Yodlee already provides. Does that mean you'll still have to register a new credit card everywhere each time you pass an expiration date?

Dave quoted Sean McGrath quoting (he thinks) Adam Bosworth:

"Every layer of abstraction costs you 50% of your audience."

When you add business alliances and linking commissions to the mix, it gets really hairy. This bad boy feels too complicated for a timely rollout. I must be the only one who thinks the obvious launch sequence for any commercially federated ID will be:

Version 3.2 (or so) of the standard is finally agreed to.
(Wanna download v. 1.1? Here's the 4.1 MB spec in 8 files.)
Participating companies (like these) negotiate and subdivide into their "affinity groups"
(mini-federations linking among themselves)
Participants provide a transition period to the new protocols.
Participating sites patiently explain the new rules to shoppers.
Longer than expected, shoppers click, "Not Now. Do It the Way I'm Used To."
The transition echoes the conversion to HDTV and the metric system.

Won't it take years for this cycle to be played out? Those first 2 bullets really are killers. Both of the people who read my rants are pretty technical, but I bet we don't manage our browser cookies the way we should. I don't see how well we'll manage this byzantine trust matrix:

POLICY/SECURITY NOTE: Implementors and deployers should make allowance for the user to decide whether to immediately authenticate with the identity provider or be offered the chance to decline and authenticate either locally with the service provider or select from the service provider’s list of affiliated identity providers.

The way I read the Liberty Architecture Overview (736 KB PDF), when you deal with United Air Lines, you're set up to deal with United's affinity group of vendors. But when you go over to American, you'll need to sign in again. This feels like a balkanized federation, not the EU. Section 5.7 of the Overview, "Example User Experience Scenarios" lists 3 user scenarios and 4 sub-scenarios, each of which requires the user to remember her user name & password for the designated "Identity Provider" for each affinity group:

5.7.1 Scenario: Not Logged in Anywhere, No Common Domain Cookie
    5.7.1.1 Login via Redirect to Identity Provider Website
    5.7.1.2 Login via Identity Provider Dialog Box
    5.7.1.3 Login via Embedded Form
    5.7.1.4 The User is Logged in at CarRental.inc
5.7.2 Scenario: Not Logged in Anywhere, Has a Common Domain Cookie
5.7.3 Scenario: Logged in, Has a Common Domain Cookie

How do United and Hertz agree that United will be the Identity Provider when Hertz knows as well as we do that United may have bigger concerns than DigID, like, any day now? My guess is that the IT guys designing this beast haven't yet discussed it seriously with Marketing, Legal and the Executive Committee. When they do, They'll surely be sent back to the drawing board.

XML co-inventor Tim Bray's blog today is titled Enterprise Software Wreckage:

"If you go back to the Global 2000, the buyers of big-ticket software, and get the typical CIO hammered and indiscreet in a bar, and ask about failed installations of big-ticket software, you'll get bitter laughter (or bitter tears, depending how hammered). It happens all the time. I'm talking about projects with software licensing and deployment costs adding up into the tens of millions, going nowhere, producing no results, and eventually shutting down."

And that's when everybody works for the same guy...

The Complexity of a Deal...

The complexity of a deal expands to match the available brainpower;
No one can manage a business as complicated as they can design it.
— Blaser's corollary to Parkinson's Law

Even if some immaculate conception births this puppy, we still haven't solved the real dilemma: this model isn't what we want. We don't want separate IDs everywhere, whether singly or in arbitrary affinity groupings. We want a single sign-on, preferably encrypted in our browser, Java ring or biometrics, that works everywhere. But we don't want our data centralized, which would leave us hostage to an identity czar.

Nobody, Everybody, Anybody

Doc's Linux Journal article goes on to say,

What this requires is something we don't have right now: a new identity infrastructure--one provided by open APIs, protocols and other standards that serve no agenda other than to enable useful dealings between buyers and sellers of products and services. Like the Web and e-mail infrastructure that are already part of the Net, this new infrastructure would be a full-fledged service on the Net. And it won't become that unless it's something nobody owns, everybody can use and anybody can improve. Again, like the Web, e-mail and the Net itself. . .

. . . Right now there are other moves afoot, too premature to talk about, all intended to build out a mydentity-based infrastructure. "

Doc also quotes Andre Durand, founder of Jabber and PingID, who is working with Liberty, and who says everyone should be their own Identity Provider. "Hijack the Liberty protocol," he basically says, going on to suggest embedding ID data in a Jabber client, which then would be a full peer to the airlines, banks and other Identity Providers that want to attract you to their fiefdom. Andre's is a profoundly cool idea that I didn't comprehend until Doc told me that, at its core, Jabber is an XML router. Now we're talking: a P2P petri dish that's good for years of innovation.

Just one problem. Which jabber client would your ID live on? You'll need access to it anywhere, not just on your main machine. Surely some universal ID reader will someday be embedded in all devices (fingerprints, smart card, etc.). Meanwhile, wouldn't it be swell if each person owned their own web site to host their private Identity provider? Coincidentally, that's the Xpertweb model.

Doc and Mitch and Flemming and Henshall, Husband, & Patrick and I agree that the role for Xpertweb in all this is to provide the relationship layer on top of DigID. The controversial thing about the Xpertweb model is that it establishes a complete identity file for each user, on the user's own web server. It's an admittedly big conceptual leap, but the problems it solves are legion. Now you own a trusted database served by a trusted script, ready to expose ID info whenever you OK it, but never otherwise. Sure, you still have to deal with the explicit permissions, but that's the case under every DigID model. The important thing is that, like Andre's suggestion, each ID owner controls their ID, but unlike Andre's proposal, it's universally available to any corporate supplicant the owner chooses to bless. Certainly our DigID protocol will be no worse than Xpertweb's!

Smarter guys than I say it's impossible. If they're right, you're wasting your time reading this design study. Keep moving along folks, there's nothing to see here. But most technologists look at our alpha code and beta concept and say the concept's unusual, but the technology's trivial. We like novel, trivial technology.

[Escapable Logic]

News Spirals

test

Identity is a Secret.Identity is a Mystery.Identity is a Killer.

The Complexity of a Deal...

Nobody, Everybody, Anybody

Identity is a Secret.
Identity is a Mystery.
Identity is a Killer.