Independent Identity

Reading Doc Searl's Whydentity post and his cover story for this month's Linux Journal on independent identity is a must. Identity management is a huge business opportunity in itself, but it will enable a lot more business potential if it will be implemented and organized in the way Microsoft's Kim Cameron envisions it. If you're in the business of CRM, social networking, etc, pay attention....

"The real problem is the absense of something we've needed all along: Independent Identity, owned by the individual, rather than granted by outside commercial and governmental bodies. With Independent Identity, sovereign individuals could selectively present credentials and do business, anywhere on the Net (or in the physical world, for that matter), without being forced to obtain "membership" or whatever. Their private information (memberships, preferences, transaction histories, attention data) would reside with the equivalent of a bank or a broker, and would be represented to others in a way that revealed only what the transaction, conversation or relationship required."

Stop buying DRM

What's the best way of making sure DRM will go away? Stop buying DRM-encumbered content. Very simple, I have no doubt this is what will happen eventually.

"The whole point of DRM is *restrictions*. The point of all previous audio formats was compatability. CDs play on any CD player. Cassettes play or record on any cassette player. Neither one cares what you do with the audio that comes out. By contrast, DRM is designed to prevent the audio from coming out in any way that the oligopoly objects to. And they even keep changing the rules as they discover new things that annoy them. ...Rather than calling for everybody to implement DRM, which would be uniformly terrible for most musicians, most equipment makers, and all consumers, you should be calling for nobody to buy DRM. We can't stop them from building it "there's no law against companies selling painful products. The only cure is education" of their customers."

Web 2.0

Tim O'Reilly's meme map of Web 2.0 is a nice visual summary of the topics I have been writing about for the past years...;-)

(More) dependent on technology(?)

So we are all depending on new technology and sometimes we're even depending too much on it. How bad or new is that? I don't know how to light a fire without matches or a lighter, I'm sure I would have been able to do that when I had been living thousands of years ago....

"For example, in this blog post, someone from the Institute for the Future notes that his car's GPS navigation system was stolen recently -- and even though he knows his way around the city, he proceeded to feel disoriented and get lost, since he was so used to having the navigation system to rely on. It seems likely that these kinds of "technology withdrawal" situations are going to become more common."

'The girl next link'

Not (yet) sure what to think of this.....

"Even if international relationships aren't a realistic option for most people, online relationships certainly are. Face it. When your chances of settling down with the girl next door are limited by the number of rivals for her attention, where else are you going to go?"

Google's Wi-Fi plans

I don't know a lot of details on Google's plans to enter the Wi-Fi business as a service provider, but given their aggregator role in several other areas it's not such a stretch. Especially not when looking at the recent launch of the Google Talk service.