Episode 12 of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast welcomes Steve back to the fold. In this episode we talk to Drummond Reed (a.k.a. =Drummond), a valued participant across the identity and data portability space. Drummond is most well known as one of the pioneers of the XRI (Extensible Resource Identifier) and XDI (XRI Data Interchange) open standards at OASIS where he co-chairs the XDI and XRI Technical Committees.
During the discussion, Drummond identified two key areas needing solutions within the scope of data portability: common definitions and portable authorization. XDI and link contracts solve these problems.
In the context of data portability, ever since I first heard the term when wearing my XDI TC hat, I said, “That’s like the mission statement for the XDI Technical Committee in two words. Why didn’t we just say it’s data portability.” If there’s one headline feature of XDI, it’s data portability. XDI is a protocol for sharing data, just like HTTP is a protocol for sharing content.
Of note, history was in the making during the discussion. While hunting for an appropriate analogy describing the underlying description model, Steve hit upon using the periodic table of elements. Look for Drummond using it in his next series of talks.
Leading the episode, we quickly touch on the following bits of news:
- Graphing Social Patterns East
- Supernova 2008 Conference
- Plaxo Personal Card + Google FriendConnect
- MySpace Data Availability Launches
- Information Card Foundation Launches
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Episode 12: Listen Episode Length: 00:52:59
June 27th, 2008 | 
Spawning a Sixth Sense
Over the weekend I was chatting with some folks totally outside the web tech gravity well. While explaining more about what we do at matchmine, it was interesting to see how they approached the concept of media recommendations. Initially, they didn’t see much differentiation between various techniques, but through some examples started to see some of the nuances.
Here are some example recommendation sets that helped get them to mental escape velocity:
In case it’s not obvious, the sets were spawned from the film The Sixth Sense, each exploring various aspects of it. For example, the first set dives deeper into the “supernatural thriller” subgenre. The films in the second set are examples of “turnaround” films (i.e. surprise endings). And the third set spreads the gamut, each touching a “key element” related to The Sixth Sense (e.g. same director or cast, similar plot structure, same genre, etc.).
In the end, sets like this help illustrate the variety of similarity types available. The set that makes sense within a specific context, and is most valuable to a particular user, is what we are doing at matchmine. While this was only a Gedanken exercise, it was useful when explaining aspects of our value proposition.