|
|
 Colin Wallis from the New Zealand Government’s Department of Internal Affairs joins this episode of the Identity Matters Podcast. As the Kantara Initiative eGovernment Work Group Chair, he provides an overview of what the group is doing. He talks about how the adoption of the initial eGov Profile has spurred on development of version 2. He also discussed how the eGov work dovetails with the Kantara Interoperability Review Board (IRB), as well as work taking place outside Kantara.
Currently in Development: eGov Profile 2.0
Identity Matters: eGovernment
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Download MP3 | Episode Length: 0:15:10 | Filesize: 10 MB
NOTE: This podcast was produced in collaboration with the Kantara Initiative Identity Community Update Discussion Group.
In this episode of the Identity Matters Podcast, Eve Maler presents an overview of the User Managed Access (UMA) Work Group. Eve, the UMA WG chair, starts off with background of the group working within the Kantara Initiative and defines the problem space. She then provides an overview of the process the group is taking as well as where they are in their roadmap toward delivering a specification to the IETF.
From the UMA charter: The purpose of the UMA work at Kantara is to develop a set of draft specifications that enable an individual to control the authorization of data sharing and service access made between online services on the individual’s behalf, and to facilitate the development of interoperable implementations of these specifications by others.
Identity Matters: User Managed Access
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Download MP3 | Episode Length: 0:27:41 | Filesize: 18.5 MB
NOTE: This podcast was produced in collaboration with the Kantara Initiative Identity Community Update Discussion Group.
We talk to Paul Madsen, a member of the Technology Expert Group in Liberty Alliance in this episode of DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast. Through the conversation, he dives into SAML and how the Identity Web Services Framework (ID-WSF) and related specifications fit into a comprehensive identity solution stack. In response to the question about implementation difficulty, he points to the work underway by OpenLiberty.org developing a set of deployable ID-WSF libraries. Another project that helps bridge between specifications is Project Concordia.
Leading the episode, we quickly touch on the following bits of news:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Episode 13: Listen Episode Length: 00:31:38
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:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Episode 12: Listen Episode Length: 00:52:59
After a brief hiatus last week as Trent and Steve were otherwise indisposed, the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast is back at half strength. Steve is still MIA, but joining Trent in the virtual studio is Bob Ngu, Founder of Jiggyme.com, a video aggregation startup that is beginning to focus specifically on technology videos.
Bob has been an active contributor to the DataPortability Project since March, and was highlighted in the project’s May report. The spotlight was shined on his DataPortability: In the Wild blog series. In this series, Bob outlines his discussions with various people involved with data portability. Among the areas he’s covered so far include:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Episode 11: Listen Episode Length: 00:17:34
In this very special episode of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast, Trent’s brother R. Mark Adams joins the data portability discussion. He is a genetic engineer who earned his Ph.D. in cell biology and was a pioneer in the field of bioinformatics. He is currently a Senior Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton and runs their bioinformatics group. Of specific interest related to data portability is his work for the open CaBIG (Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid) project, a National Cancer Institute initiative to link cancer researchers and their data.
Up until now, we have focused primarily on the use cases around existing social networking websites. There is, however, a wealth of knowledge and experience to be tapped within other fields. Mark has worked for over 15 years designing and building large-scale informatics systems. Further, his extensive experience within the standards and open source communities place him in a unique position to provide valuable insight into issues being explored by the DataPortability Project.
During the conversation, Mark offered up some cautionary comments regarding the process of defining standards:
There’s a tendency on the part of industry, broadly, to try to skip to a technology stack as a means of adopting standards quickly.
One has to be careful in how one creates standards. This is why I say trying to divorce standards as cleanly as possible from their underlying technology implementations is important to do. The reason being it allows you to determine standards that can be widely adopted and used without the complexity or the risk of lock-in.
Rounding out the discussion was a call to action on both sides. Mark is reaching out to the DataPortability Project to become more involved in the bioinformatics field, and suggests we solicit participation from within their ranks.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Episode 10: Listen Episode Length: 00:49:28
We are joined by Robert Scoble in episode 9 of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast. Currently the Managing Director of FastCompany.tv, he is a well-known and respected technology pundit who got his start blogging at UserLand. He is well known as an early advocate of the DataPortability Project when he tried to download his social data from Facebook.
The show is kicked off with a discussion about his recent speculation that Microsoft could buy Facebook and keep it closed. Scoble talks about the services and tools like FriendFeed that offer alternate news streams to counter the Facebook hegemony. The discussion also flowed around automated behavior tracking, advertizing, and the interplay between control/privacy within various portable data models.
Of particular interest is Scoble’s view of the inevitability of an open flow of user data:
Openness does win in the end. It will just take a little bit of time to get there. We’ll see a lot of new stuff come along to make it easier for users to open these systems up.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Episode 9: Listen Episode Length: 00:26:30
In episode 8 of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast we diverge from the standard format to dive beyond the headlines to explore recent news. We spent the time talking in depth about the Comcast acquisition of Plaxo and Google’s release of Friend Connect.
For Plaxo, we have Joseph Smarr, Chief Platform Architect, and John McCrae, VP Marketing, talking about the acquisition and how it furthers data portability. Specifically, Smarr made it clear that the name of the game in portability is not making everything homogeneous, but rather opening up the flow of communication across systems:
Data portability is about empowering users to connect the tools they use so they don’t have to repeat themselves over and over again. So that the information can flow for others to discover it. It would be a mistake to characterize it as making everything exactly the same.
On the same thread, returning guest Kevin Marks, Developer Advocate for Google’s OpenSocial project, highlights their commitment to the openness of data portability:
One company can’t hold anything hostage because we’re connecting together open standards. All these pieces can be supplied by multiple parties. You can interoperate without having to have a business negotiation because you can write to the standard and the standard works.
In the discussion, Marks also corrects some common misconceptions around Google’s Friend Connect. Some of the reporting about it mistakenly assumed that Google would be siphoning off the friendship graph when using it’s system to connect sites. He clarifies that Friend Connect enables the portability of user data by mapping the connections, and isn’t storing the data itself.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Episode 8: Listen Episode Length: 00:35:41
We kick off episode 7 of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast with the news of the week that MySpace launched “Data Availability” with Yahoo!, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter. Following immediately on their heels was the announcement that Facebook is releasing “Facebook Connect”, an extension of their 3rd party API providing deeper access to their user’s data.
We’re also joined by Brady Brim-Deforest, founder of Human Global Media, talking about the DataPortability Legal Entity Taskforce. He provides a good overview and update on the process underway to formalize the the project under a recognized legal banner.
The featured interview segment is with Danny Ayers, Semantic Web Developer at Talis. He touches on moving from document linking, through microformats, to feature-rich RDF modeling to identify portable data. Contrary to popular belief, he dispels the myth that it’s hard to migrate from a standard SQL data representation into addressable semantic objects.
Danny regularly posts on the following sites:
Also mentioned in the episode:
BONUS: We bring back Danny Ayer’s “Get Your Data Out” DataPortability Project anthem to close out the episode.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Episode 7: Listen Episode Length: 0:45:47
Joining us in episode 6 of the DataPortability: In-Motion Podcast is Paul Trevithick, CEO of Parity and the Founder of the Higgins Project. Higgins is an incredibly well thought-out open identity framework that’s designed to integrate identity, profile and social relationship information across multiple sites, applications and devices.
We were excited to talk with Paul about Higgins, especially since they released version 1.0 of their complete identify framework in late February. As it’s been a few years in the making, it might seem like the system wouldn’t play friendly with latecomers like some of the solutions being promoted by the DataPortability Project. Not so, however, as Paul talks through how they’ll plug into OpenID and newcomers Project VRM.
We’re often asked what the DataPortability Project is doing to help the development community, and this is a prime example. We’re helping tie the pieces together of existing solutions and promoting their utility. To that point, I circled back with Joe Andrieu to get his take on VRM hooking in with Higgins:
Higgins plus CardSpace means we have both a soup-to-nuts, open source Identity stack and a built-in client application on every .Net 3 machine. With that breadth, it’s just a matter of adoption time before the Identity-enabled net, and THAT will make VRM possible across the board.
NOTE: For more about VRM, check out In-Motion episode 2.
Before getting into the meat of the podcast, however, we hit some relevant news points:
- Yahoo! Rewires for the Social Graph and Data Portability
- Microsoft Announces Live Mesh
- SocialDevCamp coming up in Baltimore
- DataPortability DIY Project for May: “rel=me”
- New DataPortability Logo Challenged (again)
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Episode 6: Listen Episode Length: 0:31:45
|
|
February 5th, 2010 | 
