SocialPhysics

FTC and OECD

• Paul will be on a couple of panels this April 23-24 at the Federal Trade Commission's "Proof Positive: New Directions for ID Authentication" workshop.

• He'll also be participating in the OECD's Workshop on Digital Identity Management in Trondheim, Norway 8-9

Identity Big Bang

Kudos to Dale Olds and the rest of the Bandit team for their ground breaking demonstration at Brainshare this week.

Novell demonstrated their new Open Source Identity Selector on the Macintosh and Linux that supports the same Information Cards as Windows CardSpace.  Novell is contributing this identity selector to Higgins along with a new OpenID context provider.  Using these and the Higgins STS one can access any site that accepts infocards with an openID account.  See the details on Dale's and Pat's blogs. http://virtualsoul.org/blog/2007/03/23/all-your-infocard-are-belong-to-us/  and http://www.whoireallyam.com/?p=51

Doc's VRM Project

I've long considered that I work for Doc Searls. No, he doesn't pay me much. Well, anything. But what he now calls VRM is a powerful vision, and one worth working for.

Without an interoperable, user-centric/independent identity layer, VRM won't scale. It'll just be a bunch of special cases. Interesting, but no big bang. So that's the part of the VRM thing that I focus on in Higgins and related projects. What we need is an easy, universal way to project facets of yourself onto different "others" (including vendors) based on the context. That's what will enable VRM.

Higgins and Microsoft

<-This is little Higgins. Does he look like something that would pick fight with InfoCard? I don't think so. Anyone who knows what we’re trying to do here at SocialPhysics and especially in the Identity Gang knows that we’re striving for a common language and understanding in an area whose depth and complexity humbles the mighty. Many of us building technology are influenced by how this conversation evolves, where the common ground is, and where we can build interoperability “bridges.” The implications for society are real. The last thing we want here is more division. This blog post is an attempt to put out the flames that have arisen from recent press coverage about Higgins, IBM and Novell:

Is Higgins competitive with InfoCard?

No. InfoCard is the code name for a Windows WinFX component that provides a user interface and related services that allow that Windows system to interoperate with service providers and identity providers using the WS-Trust and related protocols. Higgins, on the other hand, is a software framework that relies on service adapters that connect to external systems using that system’s native protocols or APIs. [If you're familiar with the framework/provider design pattern, what I just called service adapters are Higgins providers.] We expect that in the next few months a WS-* service will be created for Higgins. Higgins when configured with this service and running on Linux, MacOS, etc. will fully interoperate with InfoCard running on Windows.

How is Higgins related to Microsoft?

We are all indebted to Kim for his important work on the seven laws of identity, for his sincerity and tolerance in reaching across traditional divides and “doing the right thing” to make the web a safer place to live. Inspired by Kim, the Higgins mouse has mended his ways, is now completely law-abiding, and brushes his teeth twice a day. We also are grateful for the support Microsoft has given to the SocialPhysics project (of which Higgins is a part) through the Berkman Center.

More stuff: Background on Higgins, Eclipse and SocialPhysics, Introduction to Higgins, Higgins development site.

Social Commerce?

SocialPhysics is focused on creating the "social web" and fostering a new generation of user-centric web applications.  We've devoted the last couple of years to foundational issues such as identity, reputation, and relationship management (you can follow the identity activity in the IdentityGang wiki, for example.) 

One of the areas where the SocialPhysics approach can provide tremendous value is e-commerce. Over the past year, we've been spending more and more of our time re-thinking e-commerce.  Social Commerce is the blending of the "best" of e-commerce with with "best" of social networking.  Social Commerce is also about inverting the traditional e-commerce paradigm.  It is about commerce organized on behalf of the consumer.

Doc Searls had a great post today on Company Relationship Management (the user-centric version of Customer Relationship Management) and thinking "outside the advertising box".  You'll be hearing a lot more about Social Commerce in 2006.

SocialPhysics blogs

SocialPhysics is kicking off the new year by starting a blog.
Many thanks to Kaliya (a.k.a. Identity Woman) for encouraging us to start.