http://virtualsoul.org/blog "I've proven who I am so many times the magnetic strip's worn thin" -- "Pacing the Cage" by Bruce Cockburn Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:42:28 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en From May 5th to May 8th I attended the 3rd European Identity Conference (EIC). As a testimonial on the front page says, it was “a wonderful and informative event, well run and useful in so many ways.” (If I quote a page quoting me, is that recursion or delegation?) I attended ... http://virtualsoul.org/blog/2009/06/03/eic-2009-and-a-new-focus-on-identity-in-the-cloud/ I know people have widely varying humor styles and many may not agree with me, but, man, I find this XKCD comic to be very funny. I just keep chuckling to myself. Oh, and don't miss the text that pops up if you mouse over the panels -- if you ... http://virtualsoul.org/blog/2009/03/06/now-thats-funny/ As my last post shows, I've been thinking a lot lately about the evolution of identity services over time. I'm currently researching and thinking about how identity services should integrate with the emerging cloud computing paradigm. However, sometimes we get working in the daily grind, the months and years go ... http://virtualsoul.org/blog/2009/01/26/first-identity-selector-in-a-linux-distribution-digitalme-in-opensuse-111/ Eric and Dave have recently written about their views of the waves of identity. Dave's post gave me a wave of nostalgia since it mentioned both the NetWare Bindery and Novell Directory Services. Sometimes it feels like I've been around as long as Dave. Mr Peabody, set the Wayback Machine for ... http://virtualsoul.org/blog/2009/01/23/identity-services-being-vs-doing/ There have been a number of articles in the press over past few weeks about the release of Novell's Access Manager 3.1. The articles by John Fontana at NetworkWorld and by Sean Michael Kerner at InternetNews.com are well worth reading. Both articles mention new features in the product, it's interoperability ... http://virtualsoul.org/blog/2009/01/20/information-card-breakthrough-with-novell-access-manager-31/ Gunnar Peterson is as prolific as he is knowledgeable. It seems like an old post now, due to his steady stream of great content, but a few weeks ago he made some prescient comments about the problems that come from custom security software. The post is humorous as well as ... http://virtualsoul.org/blog/2008/09/23/gunnars-foresight-on-googles-security-hole/ The OSIS working group of the Identity Commons is completing their third interop. In OSIS-speak, an interop is a set of features and a time period where many projects and vendors test with others’ components to ensure that user-centric identity systems actually work together. Interops have always been concluded with ... http://virtualsoul.org/blog/2008/04/19/the-bandit-live-demo-of-user-centric-identity-in-the-enterprise/ Earlier this year there were a number of interesting comments from Eric Norlin and Dave Kearns about the term "user-centric". Since reading those comments I have become more aware of some ambiguous meanings ascribed to the term. I definitely agree that "user-centric" is unproductive as some sort of vague mantra ... http://virtualsoul.org/blog/2008/04/18/getting-to-practical-user-centric-identity-systems/ If you read only one blog post this week, or this month, I recommend this one from Pamela Dingle. I know it's long, but it is well worth it to read the whole thing. Multiple times. My favorite lines: We need a way for communities to form and flourish and decay that ... http://virtualsoul.org/blog/2008/04/18/if-you-read-only-one-blog-post/ The RSA Conference this year was outstanding from the perspective of identity technology, Higgins, Bandit, OSIS, industry connections, etc. I was overly worried all week about getting enough interop testing done for OSIS and about my presentation on user-centric identity validation experiences. Yet I survived. Meanwhile, the reason I sometimes show ... http://virtualsoul.org/blog/2008/04/17/what-i-missed-while-at-the-rsa-conference/