do it. think it. blog it! ... a twisted world

As a taste of upcoming MIX06 sessions, Kim Cameron presents a thumbnail sketch of how InfoCards bring an architecture for identity to the Internet, a demo of how it works and a peek at how you integrate it into a Web page.

1. 20060209InfoCardKC.EXE
2. 20060209InfoCardKCDemo.EXE

source : MSDN TV

See Kim's full session on this topic at the MIX06 conference.

UPDATE 1 : Also read Johannes Ernst's blog on "There are lots of things that are right about Microsoft InfoCard.

After seeing the infocard demo, I feel that infocard really is a nice thing. I do not want to comment on the "open source or closed source" part as there are several of us in this field who are debating that topic. So I leave that upto those who better understand it and fight for it in the open source community.

Here's my take. Sun has the Sun Java Systems Access Manager. This product really has extremely good visibility and usage in the real world, especially in the corporate sector. Individuals who care about secure identity and those who (by choice or otherwise) use a microsoft windows desktop as the client would end up using infocard for authentication in the future as microsoft plans to use infocard for building what they call a fundamentally secure platform. Now having said that I dont see the entire world not using windows as the desktop client. yep; true; mac's, linux, and solaris have a long way to go to becoming the defacto standard desktop for end users. So. All said and done, I thought of a small project that I would embark on in my free time. I would try to develop a InfoCard Authentication Plugin (using the Microsoft Federated Identity and Access Resource Kit and JAAS) for the Sun Java Systems Access Manager. Well; this may not be a good idea, but I guess it would be well worth my free time. As soon as I finish the module (hopefully soon, especially with Kim's & Kapil's help), I shall distribute the entire codebase and procedure for enabling you to deploy the infocard authentication plugin on Access Manager soon. (This may make for a good demo given that most users happen to have a windows desktop). One main reason for me to embark on this is because I see a strong similarity between this effort and nFactor Authentication (which I had blogged about a long tiem ago).

After all SUN and Microsoft have joined hands for the inter-operability of Liberty and WS-Federation and the results of which have led to the Web Single Sign-On Interoperability Profile & the Web Single Sign-On Metadata Exchange Protocol (which have just been released).

UPDATE 2 : Also read "Microsoft Employees Get Carded" (an old post) by Karen Epper Hoffman