Discovering Identity

It's late on a Friday night. I'm babysitting my granddaughter, reading the newspaper and perusing the web. A few comic strips I read today provide a bit of wry commentary on the state of things in our always-high-tech and often-maddening world.

First, a perceptive Dilbert has a calloused, but dangerously accurate view of market projections ...

Both Louann and Gunther are searching for their personal identities ...

Rat longs for the old, disconnected, but somehow simpler life ...

And big media can't quite let go of the old while it clamors for the new ...

If you can't read the sign, it says "Today in the Times: Print media isn't dead! Go to our website for the whole story.

Call it "Societal Assessment by Comic Strip. A new professional-sounding name for my comic strip addiction.

And have a great weekend! More good comics in the morning.

Technorati Tags: comics

@ 09:30 PM PDT    Permalink [ Comments [0] ]   Trackback Link

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I got a text message this evening from our niece who has lived with us for six months until last week, when she moved into the new home she bought in neighboring Gilbert, Arizona. She was transferred from Southern California to Arizona last year and elected to stay with us while she determined where she really wanted to live. It is great to see Amy, a graduate of Brigham Young University, spread her wings and fly!

In her text message was a new phone number with a familiar 480 prefix. When I called to congratulate her on getting an Arizona phone number, I kidded her, "You took one more step to becoming an Arizona native!

She replied, rather wistfully, "Yes, I guess I'm giving up my California Identity."

A strong part of our sense of personal Identity is often tied to our roots. I am a native of Idaho and tell my kids, who all grew up in Arizona, that "Idaho is the only true state." I haven't lived there since 1976, but I'm still attached through my heart to my boyhood home. Idaho is an integral part of my Identity.

I suppose it will be that way for Amy. Born and raised as a Southern California girl, she is now putting down roots in Arizona. But I'm sure even though physical addresses and phone numbers may change, Southern California will always be a part of Amy's Identity.

By the way ... she bought a house before really experiencing a summer of Arizona "dry heat." Brave girl!

Technorati Tags: Identity, Digital Identity

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I'm excited for the upcoming release of SocialSite, one of the cool bits of Sun's open source technology introduced a JavaOne this week. I've been tracking this project for some time and look forward to actively using it when it becomes available. I'm particularly intrigued by its focus on integration: a social graph database that could be used to integrate multiple social networks and the easy process of integrating Open Social compliant widgets into web pages and applications.

From the Project SocialSite java.net page ... "The SocialSite project is delivering social networking functionality by adding social networking platform support based on the OpenSocialTM standard to any community site. Any social application written for the OpenSocial based social network can be seamlessly and easily hosted on a transformed community site that is powered by the SocialSite project."

My colleague Raja Doraisamy, the Sun product line manager responsible for SocialSite, pointed me to an introductory video on YouTube

I'll keep you updated as the release date draws near.

Technorati Tags: Social Media, Open Social

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It was pure serendipity. Last weekend, I responded to a challenge posted on Sun's internal bloggers alias to find a way to provide an RSS feed of all the known Sun Microsystems Twitter users. Here's what I did ...

I set up a Twitter account "sun_follow" that is now following (or has requested to follow) each person with whose name is listed on the list of known Sun Microsystems Twitter users.

I am monitoring that wiki page and will add new entrants on that page to the sun_follow account. I also set up a new "planet" on planets.sun.com to provide another view of all the tweets from these folks.

This little exercise yielded the following links:

• Composite view of tweets of Sun employees. Subscribe to Atom feed.
• Twitter "planet" view of these tweets. Subscribe to Atom feed.
• The list of twitter accounts being followed.

Now for the serendipity ...

I didn't have the privilege to fly to California to participate in JavaOne this year. But I finished my little "Sun on Twitter" project just in time to monitor a rich stream of tweets from several Sun employees who were particpating in CommunityOne yesterday and the main JavaOne event today. Thank you fellow Sunnies, for your Twittering! And thanks for a interesting little set of technology for making this little project possible.

Technorati Tags: Sun Microsystems, Twitter, JavaOne

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Our son Ryan has been called to serve in the Slovenia/Croatia Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He will enter the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, on July 30th to learn the Croatian language and prepare for his work for the next two years. Ryan has just completed his freshman year at Arizona State University and plans to continue his studies there when he returns from his mission.

What a thrill it was for family and friends to gather at our house Thursday evening when he opened the large envelope from Salt Lake City.

• Slovenia
• Croatia
• Serbia
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Macedonia
• Montenegro

The mission headquarters in Slovenia are located Ljubljana, which appears to be a beautiful city.

God bless you, our son! Go forth and serve with honor!

Technorati Tags: Family

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Last night from my hotel room in McLean, Virginia, I listened to a webinar lead by Scott Brown of Sun Learning Services to introduce Sun employees to Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking tools. Although I've been dabbling with social networking since before I joined Sun, I spent the hour to get a sense of what was being said to my fellow employees from an "official channel."

I really enjoyed the webinar and active conversation that accompanied it. This is yet another example of Sun's strong support for social networking and other forms of active participation in cyberspace.

One phrase Scott used last night really tells the whole story. When asked why he participates in social networks - particularly in Facebook groups related to Sun - he said, "I like to go where energy is gathering."

"Energy is Gathering!" Isn't that an apt description of emerging virtual communities that draw us in to social networking and give meaning to our online participation? Scott eloquently described my attraction to social networking. What about you? What draws you in?

Technorati Tags: Social Networking, Sun Microsystems

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I wish I could have attended the panel discussions Dave Kearns hosted at the European Identity Conference. His emphasis on Context is very timely. In my current work with telecommuncations operators, the ability to leverage Context in what I call "Identity-enabled Service Orchestration" is a key factor in delivering highly personalized, high value online services.

Technorati Tags: Identity, Digital Identity, Identity Management

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Twistori.com is an intriguingly simple web page that shows a scrolling list of Twitter updates that include the key word you select from a list of six basic human emotions. This presents both an interesting view of people's expressed emotions and an intriguing example of the many little applications emerging around the Twitter phenomena.

The burgeoning collection of Twitter updates from a rapidly growing population of Twitterers represents a huge repository of expressions of human intellect, emotion or inanity. Undoubtedly, psychologists are salivating as they imagine how to mine this veritable corucopia of public information. Twistori gives just one little peek into this possibility.

Twistori leverages a more general Twitter application, Summize.com, which allows you to specify the keywords you want to monitor. These are just a couple of the neat little web 2.0 apps I have seen lately. Tonight I configured RSSFwd.com to send my Twitter updates to EverNote on the web, which in turn synchronizes with Evernote on my deskstop. Getting all this functionality to interrelate in interesting ways is really intriguing.

Is it a stretch to regard this convoluted interrelationship of cyberspace applications an extension of my Identity? I wonder.

In twistori-speak: I love to dabble in social media ... I hate my computer when it crashes ... I think I spend too much time at this ... I believe I will sign off now and watch the ball game ... I feel tired after a long day ... I wish you all good night!

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Social Media, Digital Identity

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Scott Fehrman informed me today that the inaugural Sun Microsystems Identity Management user group meeting for the San Francisco Bay area was held last week at the Sun Santa Clara Campus. Those interested in joining the SFBay user group, please send an email to "REQUEST_SFBAY_IDM_LUG [AT] sun [DOT] com"

By the way, the photo of Sun's campus came from an interesting article about Santa Clara County. The article included this tidbit about the Sun Campus: "Uniting Santa Clara's past with the future, Sun Microsystems has rehabilitated the Agnews Insane Asylum, originally built in 1888 for the humane treatment of the mentally ill." (Photograph by Judith Silva, courtesy of the City of Santa Clara)

We trust that not all Sun employees who occupy the campus are insane.

Technorati Tags: Identity, Digital Identity, Identity Management, Sun Microsystems

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Let me add my applause to the chorus cheering the OpenSSO Fedlet, unveiled and demonstrated by Daniel Raskin.

This represents a great step forward in the ease of deploying federation services, particularly for trading partners that don't have any federation infrastructure in place. Making federation services easier and easier to deploy should definitely accelerate wide adoption of federation to link companies and individuals together in more and more meaningful ways.

Technorati Tags: Identity, Digital Identity, Identity Management, Sun Microsystems, Federation

@ 07:19 AM PDT    Permalink [ Comments [0] ]   Trackback Link

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