Posts Tagged: claimid

Software / Teaching / Thoughts — 1 Comment
3
Jun 08

Summer 2008

You really know it’s summer when the blog posts start popping up, apologizing in advance for three months of radio silence. Let me join in the fray and apologize – this is going to be a busy summer for me, and unfortunately Unit Structures will suffer. I’m aiming to graduate in the spring of 2009, so this summer finds me writing and defending my proposal. I’ll be running dissertation research in the fall and winter, and hopefully finishing writing in the spring. This also means I’ll be going on the job market this fall – if you see anything interesting, feel free to send it over to me!

In addition to my proposal, I’ve got a few other projects I’m working on. I recently signed a contract with an academic publisher to produce a manuscript entitled “Research and Analysis of Online Social Networks.” This book will bring together many of the research threads I’ve been working on over the past four years. Thankfully, it is a short book, and I hope it will be ready in electronic form by late fall. I’ll also be conducting social networks research this summer. Jacob and I will be analyzing audience perception and cultural processes in OSN’s. We’ll be presenting preliminary findings at ASIST 2008. In another line of research, I’ll be running interviews later this summer, analyzing relationship management in OSN’s.

My summer work is being supported through my work with HASTAC and MacArthur’s Digital Media and Learning Competition. I’m having a wonderful time working with the DML team, and I’m looking forward to working with them on many future iterations of the DML program. Travel will be fairly limited this summer, but I’m looking forward to attending the CSST Research Institute, a NSF-supported program exploring socio-technical systems.

In addition to maintaining sanity and getting to the beach a few times, I’ve got a few goals for this summer. I’d like to do some writing for a popular publication or two – if anyone has advice or good connections, I’m all ears. I’m also hoping to keep productive on the software side of things – I want to build a few more little apps like Freedom, and new ClaimID features are keeping me very busy. I’m also open to consulting opportunities, etc.

With regards to Unit Structures, I’ll be shifting from long-form posts to more link-oriented stuff. I’ll update with interesting things that cross my radar. It will be a little different, a little more reflective. What about you? Do you change your blogging habits in the summer?

Software — 1 Comment
23
Apr 08

ClaimID – New Features and an Update

This week has been an exciting one over at ClaimID. Working with two great companies – JanRain and Vidoop/Confident, we’ve introduced some new technologies that make the OpenID process simpler, and more secure. For us, it is a true win-win! Read more about both announcements at ReadWriteWeb and over at the ClaimID blog:

In case you’re wondering how things are going over at ClaimID (I realize I don’t promote it that much here at Unit Structures), we’re growing at a fast clip – about 10% each month. This has caused a few scaling headaches, but we’ve taken the growth in stride. In the past year, we haven’t vastly changed the product – we’re sticking to the mission we pledged: making OpenID friendly and easy, being a trustworthy provider, and embracing open technologies. The fact that the market embraces that approach is really rewarding.

Over the summer, we’ll be thinking of some ways to streamline ClaimID. We feel that ClaimID can be at the core of a useful, productive identity experience on the web, and we’re going to develop it in that direction. In 2005 when we were brainstorming the project, we knew adoption was a few years off; I’m glad we’ve persevered, as it seems there’s some really great stuff right around the corner. And we certainly look forward to serving you for the next three years (and more)!

Noticed / Software — No Comments
7
Feb 08

Major steps forward for OpenID

There’s big news from the OpenID foundation today: Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined the foundation’s board. This is obviously a major step forward for OpenID, but it’s also good for the entire open identity movement; the major players are seeing the value in consumer choice and control. At ClaimID, we’ve been advancing these themes since 2005, so it’s especially rewarding to see this news. From the OpenID foundation announcement:

By bringing on these companies and their resources, the OpenID Foundation will now be able to better serve the needs of the entire OpenID community. In 2008, we can expect to see a larger focus on making OpenID even more accessible to a mainstream audience, the development of a World-wide trademark usage policy (much like the Jabber Foundation and Mozilla have done), and a larger international focus on working with the OpenID communities in Asia and Europe. Awesome!

Congratulations goes out to OpenID foundation chairman Scott Kveton, and all others involved in the foundation who’ve worked on this initiative. Scott’s blogged the coverage of the announcment if you’d like some more insight. Again, congrats to the OpenID foundation for this huge achievement – today is a very big day for OpenID and open identity work.

Cross-posted to the ClaimID blog.

Noticed — 2 Comments
25
Oct 07

ClaimID in Library Journal

Just a quick note to let everyone know about the great writeup of ClaimID and OpenID over at Library Journal. Written by Michael Habib, this comprehensive piece takes a look at the challenges of online identity.

MySpace, Facebook, and other Web 2.0 tools led TIME to name you, yes, you, 2006 Person of the Year. With such notoriety, you might want to see what your online identity says about you. What do potential employers and friends find when they google you? When was the last time you googled yourself? What impression do your MySpace profile and YouTube videos leave? Your blog? What do other people say about you? How much control do you have over what is written about you on the web?

Check out the piece, bookmark it in del.icio.us.

Software — No Comments
9
Aug 07

MicroID IETF Internet-Draft

Peter Saint-Andre passes along the news that the MicroID specification (view the v0.3 spec here) has been submitted as an IETF Internet-Draft. On the MicroID blog Peter writes:

By popular demand, we have submitted the MicroID specification as an Internet-Draft. Eventually this effort may result in publication of an Informational RFC defining the technology. Please send feedback to the mailing list and we’ll update or clarify the spec accordingly.

Thank you to Peter for his hard work in pushing this spec forward.

Software — 4 Comments
21
Mar 07

On eating one’s own dog food – OpenID networks in ClaimID

So I’ve been spouting about the power of OpenID-enabled social networks for quite some time now. As have others, especially the inimitable Marc Canter. OpenID + social networks make so much sense – though I’ve not yet seen anyone build a truly open, OpenID-based network. This is when I realized that I need to eat my own dog food.

So Terrell and I got to hacking, and today we’ve pushed OpenID-based contact networks into ClaimID. Our logic for doing this is really pretty simple. ClaimID is about your reputation, and obviously your contact networks are part of your reputation. However, what good are contacts if only a small percentage of your friends use ClaimID? So what we’ve done is made it so that any OpenID can verifiably be a contact. Say your boss isn’t a ClaimID user but does have a Wordpress.com blog – they can quickly and easily be your contact in ClaimID, without ever having to register an account.

Doing contacts like this reflects the reality that we’re not all going to agree on one place to keep our identity. Some people are going to want their blogs, or Facebook page, or LinkedIN to be their identity “place”. As long as these are OpenID’s, they can all be your contacts in ClaimID (and any open network). Its a win-win for everyone – you can have the contact networks you desire, and your contacts don’t need to jump through hoops to be your contact.

As far as I know, ClaimID is the first company to take this approach to networks. Yes, others allow OpenID logins, but this is the first I’ve seen with a truly open contact network. And after doing it, I feel even more strongly that this is the future. There’s no reason to put walled gardens around our networks anymore. Our networks are the web – and social network services should realize that.

If you want to kick the tires, browse over to my ClaimID profile, and add me as a contact (top right) with OpenID. Feedback and other cool ideas welcome.

Noticed — 3 Comments
15
Feb 07

I'm wrong. It's 63 million OpenID's.

In the last post, I stated that AOL enabled 20 million users with OpenID’s. I culled that number from a 2006 article in Information Week about AOL’s subscriber base.

I was wrong. Via Sam Ruby, I see that AOL has enabled anyone with an AOL instant messenger ID with OpenID. So we’re not talking 20 million OpenID’s, we’re talking more than three times that – 63 million AIM accounts at last count (and there are definitely more, as that stat was from May 2006). I left an OpenID comment with my AIM screenname at the ClaimID blog – it worked perfectly.

Wow. 63 million AIM acounts = 63 million OpenID’s. Just like that. Scott Kveton, knock number 4 and (a good part of) number 2 off your list.

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