April 2009 Archives

I've been catching up with podcasts. Something tells me that I've subscribed to more than I can consume. This morning I listened to one of Jon Udell's Innovator interviews with Andrew Rasiej, who calls himself a Social Entrepreneur.

The interview hit home on a number of levels. One point which was particularly painful: If you have an opportunity to work with a 20 year old or a 50 year old in a project - work with the 20 year old. Sigh... That's a problem at two levels, first because I'm about to turn 62, and second because the network I'm trying to build has no one below 50. Supposedly if you're lifelong learner, you're an exception and you should look for others. Jon...

The discussion touched on a few positives for me as well, how the abundance social networking contrasts with the scarcity of email communications. I won't bother explaining - just listen.

I’ve been following OpenID and the efforts to simplify our username/password hell and build a common "Digital Identity” system. Thankfully, it appears that we’re getting close to finding agreement amongst the major industry players on how to move forward with OpenID, OAuth and other related solutions.

I use gmail and respect Google’s efforts to build a practical range of defenses against phishing as well as spam and viruses. Here is a screen capture of an email to one of the OpenId mailing lists by a Google Engineer.

Was that the Google’s OpenID April Fools Day operation at work? Or just another case of showing how we really need a digital identity system?