Updates on Identities on the web

Some thoughts on identities and their related data , online accounts and related news over the past few weeks.

1. The Data Portability group amidst trying to get the big-wigs to come together and discuss how to share user data ,gets warned twice about infringement related cases in its own logo. But otherwise they've been pretty busy, with several announcements with the right intention, but left to too many influential market dynamics and vested invterests ( as illustrated in the points below)
   
   
2. OpenID, seems to keep itself out of trouble, and with a bunch of active adopters and hackers working together - there seems to be hope after all . Still don't know how long before the authentication itself can be made a asynchronous call, rather than the multi-step process right now. A ycombinator startup called clickPass seems to have some traction in its favour.
   
   
3. Google 's Orkut makes the news with the indian who was jailed for commenting on a particular politician ( im not touching this with a 10 foot pole! :D ) . Rumours from the local Pune papers, also suggest that girifthar'ed the wrong guy! ( that's right , newspapers in Pune report more rumours and Bollywood gossip that actual news)
   
   
4. And as if offering for your product for FREE was'nt good enough, early adopters are ploughing away in a bid to yank their data out as well . Thoughts on who owns your data within the facebook network, have brought in highly-engrossing discussions as well. Its your id, your profile, your pics, on their servers , powered by their cash and their vc's credibility. If the beacon showed what 3rd party developers could do with your data, the latest trend in 'yanking the data out' could give as unpredictable and "no-one-strategy-suits-anyone" results. ( It might also be interesting to check out the school talk / DHH talk on how to make money online - charging your customers works! )
   
   
5. What do you do when a startup's product becomes so popular that people get inspired enought to want to take their data elsewhere or distribute it as well! Thats been the case with Twitter and several comments on how to de-centralise twitter.
   
   
6. FaceBook and Google not hitting it off with the launch of Google FriendConnect, with Scoble 's insights into how Microsoft wants to keep the web closed, and how FriendFeed is trying to filter signal from the noise. Most users are used to the noise btw( when was the last time you went to cnn or bbc VS a twitter or a valleywag) . Facebook also makes news in the #erlang channels btw, for probably becoming possibly the largest erlang powered chat app. Will be interesting to see what technique they're using in handling unicode - something that hover.in is working to integrate as well .
   
   
7. Zoho announcing that you can now login to Zoho with your google or yahoo accounts. Very inspiring to see the pace at which Zoho takes ideas and implements them. Keep 'em coming!
   
   
   
8. And amidst all this , a friend pointed out to me that someone was posting comments under the alias kode, without their full names , giving several blogs and people the impression that it was infact me who was commenting, etc. What happened to the days when stalkers believed in linkback :D . Either ways, I hope its nothing as serious and on the contrary, it does bring up several unique advantages that a sezwho, a disqus , friendfeed or an openid-enabled commenting system can provide.
   
   But it helps to remember that denial is'nt just a river in Africa .
   
   8 )
   

Keep Clicking,
Bhasker V Kode


PS : Btw, if you're a fresher looking to join a startup in Pune , send in a mail to kode at hover dot in