Tuesday March 01, 2005

Spontaneous mobile relationships through identity

In some recent posts, I've described a number of obvious, or at least obviously conceivable, examples of mobile communities. To raise the bar a bit, what would it take for me to be willing to actually meet a stranger based on some kind of identity-based match?

For example, I've just been through a tremendous wringer; it's called "my child is entering kindergarten next year in San Francisco." Now, it's too late for me to get much additional help as the process is almost finished (I learn the results on March 10 but that really is a whole other story), but I now have a lot of relevant knowledge and experience that I might share with folks.

I might be willing to share this information in person with a few people next year over coffee or lunch or something. But how would I find the folks and who would I be willing to talk to?

Well, I would probably be willing to meet with anybody interested who is a degree of separation away from me relative to some list of friends. Perhaps anybody that is in my "acquaintance list" could serve as an introduction, or perhaps someone who is a parent at our current pre-school could serve as an introduction. Affecting something like this now would be too difficult to even attempt by hand and I'm just not that passionate about this to set up the SFO-Kindergarten Friendster site. But if all interested parties had identity providers we could fairly easily build the relevant connections.

Also, in case it's not clear, I would have paid good money to talk with somebody who could help steer me through this a bit when I got started. It would have saved a tremendous amount of time. There is a business in this.

Howard Rheingold has written a fascinating book, Smart Mobs, that discusses at length how mobile devices have been used to spontaneously generate communities -- without any identity infrastructure. This power is tremendously enhanced by the addition of a trust network. Rheingold also discusses reputation and its management in the age of smart devices.

Digital reputations are already being made and managed out there in net space. Amazon and eBay are the most formal versions of this but the blogosphere is clearly starting to form a less formal version of reputation management through readership and link chains. What happens when this gets well integrated with identity management is staggering.

( Mar 01 2005, 08:57:25 AM PST ) Permalink

Thursday February 24, 2005

HST RIP

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era - the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run ... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of the world. Whatever it meant . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time - and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights - or very early mornings - when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightening across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles and hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherders jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Angeles or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing as right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle - the sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

From Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

( Feb 24 2005, 12:06:53 PM PST ) Permalink

Wednesday February 23, 2005

The ultimate "In" list -- Paris' Phonebook?

It seems that somebody has broken into Paris Hilton's Sidekick. I can't decide if this really rates a CIA/FBI investigation or not, but it reminds us all that no matter how secure the device or platform, you have to be careful with things like passwords. The investigation is ongoing, but it seems that most likely the "hack" was trying "tinkerbell" as a password.

We now know that San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom rates an entry in her phone book. We also know that I don't. I wonder who else we'll find in her phone book? Henry Kissinger, anyone? ( Feb 23 2005, 11:28:09 AM PST ) Permalink

Tuesday February 22, 2005

Blogging as a community and as an identity

Blogging is a remarkable exercise in community building. Most of you already know that, but what you might not have heard is something Tim Bray was telling me about at the Sun Analyst conference. It's the Long Tail effect in the blogosphere.

This is an insight into a statistical fact that boils down to: A relatively small number of blogs get a significantly larger number of readers relative to the rest of the blogosphere. Those not at the top of the readership curve live in its Long Tail. This Long Tail represents a phenomenal number of communities of a relatively small number of inhabitants and while they're small in size they are powerfully cohesive.

The cohesion is due to a tight fit for interest and a high degree of trust amongst the readership. This phenomenon is going to keep the media analysts and academics going for years to come and it seems likely to me that theory will turn to practice as new forms of guerrilla marketing are developed to exploit the Tail.

So what does this have to do with the mobile space? I think a properly deployed mobile federated identity infrastructure is a means to an equally strong community building mechanism.

If I can clearly identify myself to those "like me" for some value of "like me" I have an opportunity to build new communities. Turning all the stuff that appears in a wallet into a collection of attributes associated with your identity will be the initial focus for Identity providers.

But I think we'll will move beyond this fairly quickly. Then there is an opportunity to spontaneously create communities based on likes, dislikes, salient and sometimes transitory facts:

• I'm looking for an apartment
• I want to buy a Mac Mini today
• I'm in London looking for a good used bookstore
• I just saw Neil Young at Rasputin's in Berkeley
• I've got a free hour and I'm at the Peet's Coffee in the Marina -- anyone I know want to join me?
• I've got a kid about to enter kindergarten in San Francisco and I sure could use some advice

Putting people together through attribute matching is a relatively easy thing to do and the most obvious business to take advantage of this is flourishing. Match.com recently released an advanced mobile Java dating application and the Japanese have been introducing matches to each other on the streets through mobile alerts for a while.

House hunting is currently done on the internet but requires quite a lot of work on the house hunter's part for what is essentially a small set of attributes: price, location, size. The fact that I'm interested in looking at houses puts me into a very marketable, though potentially competitive, community. I would likely be perfectly happy to advertise my interest and receive alerts on my phone for open houses nearby. With a Liberty Alliance-based federated identity infrastructure in place, I could provide the real-estate agent with my requirements but withhold all contact information. My mobile operator, sitting between the agent and myself could then manage the relationship by delivering the updates.

To be continued... ( Feb 22 2005, 09:26:36 AM PST ) Permalink

Thursday February 17, 2005

From ringtones to cash, your phone identifies you -- literally

It is well known that ringtones are a $3 billion annual business. Now, I'm the last person to downplay the importance of any multi-billion dollar business (indeed, I'm responsible for products that make it easy to sell ringtones and Java games). But when I think about my phone as an expression of my identity, I'm speaking literally.

Consider that everyday I leave home with a computer that is always connected to a network, fits in my pocket, and has a tamperproof identity token (usually a Java Card). When you enable your phone to reliably and securely identify you to anyone or anything you choose, the possibilities are endless. Oh, and practically everyone I know or am ever likely to come into contact with has one too. A gigantic commerce opportunity? Sure. The momentum behind Near Field Communications (NFC) is focused on taking advantage of that.

The thing I'm interested in is the opportunity to move from carrying cards, keys and cash to carrying a computer with token hooked to a wireless network. As of today the only device I have that fits the bill is my mobile phone -- and with today's emerging technologies, it's more than capable of doing the job. How will this happen? To reasonably replace any one of those things with my phone, the appropriate federated identity infrastructure has to be in place backed by the trust and authority of one or more identity providers. (On a side note, carriers are the ultimate identity providers, which is why they are looking so intensely at identity management software these days.)

With federated identity in place, I find myself in a position to identify myself -- via my phone -- to my bank, my mail reader, my IM chat session, my doctor, my car, my house, my audio system, or -- here's where it gets interesting -- *your* home audio system. Think about that for a second. I've got a bunch of music I'd like to play for you, sitting on a server managed by my music service, that you can connect to. With the right identity infrastructure, I'm able to use your system to play my music and the rights holders of the music are going to be perfectly happy.

As important is the reciprocal ability for you to identify yourself to me, or rather for me to require you to identify yourself before I take some action: read the message your sent me, answer the phone, send you a Wireless ePay payment, engage in a Star Wars Battlefront campaign, or let you fix my leaky faucet. I'm blue-skying a bit but you get my point.

Replacing cash with a mobile device is already beginning to happen with the DoCoMo FeliCa being a great example, but keys and cards are likely to be even more interesting. Among the various cards that I carry (yes, I'm a "card-carrying member") are cards for assorted affinity programs, insurance ownership and random memberships. As attributes attached to my identity membership can easily be verified by someone who asks (electronically or otherwise).

But, more interesting than getting rid of my wallet what comes from the simple observation that identity and membership are the basis of community. The opportunity for both spontaneous and thoughtful broadcast of the various communities that I belong to is where the real action is... ( Feb 17 2005, 10:13:17 AM PST ) Permalink