Comments on: Portable Profiles & Preferences on the Citizen-Centric Web

By: Mark Jaquith

Mark Jaquith — Wed, 13 May 2009 05:20:57 +0000

Reluctant to explain the “+apple” in my email address

Bought my wife a book tonight. Had to explain to the checkout clerk “no, my last name isn’t ‘Borders’…”

But instead of “+borders” I use “.borders” because a LOT of places don’t realize that “+” is a valid character in an e-mail address, and won’t let you register with it.

It’s not automated, like with Gmail and “+apple”, but I have a web form where I enter in the alias and it sets up the forwarder… not too much work.

By: Chris Messina

Chris Messina — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:41:33 +0000

@J. Trent: Totally! In fact, I had lunch with her last week. Loads of overlap in our respective projects! Thanks!

By: J. Trent Adams

J. Trent Adams — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:38:57 +0000

Chris -

If you’re familiar with the Mine!, you might want to check out the ProtectServe project cooked up by Eve Maler (@xmlgrrl). Here’s a link to some of her posts on it:

http://www.xmlgrrl.com/blog/categories/protectserve/

There’s a lot of what you’re referencing in there. Give it a look, and I’m sure she’d value your comments.

–
J. Trent Adams
=jtrentadams

By: cocreatrt

cocreatrt — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:05:33 +0000

"Your comment must be approved by the site admins before it will appear publicly."

That should be disclosed before hitting "submit comment".

By: CoCreatr

CoCreatr — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:03:25 +0000

Thank you, Chris. I agree this is important. I have an OpenID, Gravatar and whatnot, but rarely bother to use them because each service and blog comment is different. Sure, would be easier if:

organizing, maintaining, and accruing this information becomes less onerous when it’s all in one place (or conveniently accessible through one central customer-picked source), as opposed to shared across many accounts and unaffiliated services.

The central customer-picked source for my personal profile would not be in the cloud but in my choice of mobile personal storage media. Agree on a format or protocol and you have me as a repeat customer.

By: Adriana Lukas

Adriana Lukas — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:00:37 +0000

Joe, you are right, of course. But I would say, that wouldn’t I?

Incidentally, we do think eventually Mine! will be able to take any level of data sensitivity, precisely because it give you the ability to audit and cut off your data flows. And anywhere where data flows, aka activity streams, have more value than ‘data dumps’, one-off sharing of static data, users will be able to retain fundamental control over it. By control, I don’t mean ‘DRM on their data’, I mean ability to be granular with your data sharing according to relationships.

Chris, I am going to be at the social foo camp next weekend, so we can catch up there. Looking forward.

By: Todd

Todd — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:04:58 +0000

Adding to the encouragement for companies to support portable – Over at Razorfish, Marc M. Sanford Ph.D., wrote a white paper titled ‘Social Media Measurement: Widgets and Applications‘

Paper offers evidence that people are *four times* more likely to buy goods and services they see referenced by people they know ( i.e. their “contacts” )

Would post the URL, but then I’ll get sent to the Factory City spam folder, DM me if you want it!

By: Luca Mearelli

Luca Mearelli — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:07:25 +0000

I think that as we go down the path that you are describing people will see more and more the positive effects of being able to re-join together our online self (as opposed to having our personal data scattered across many services). We’ll get more control and we’ll be able to better engage with our providers, and through the VRM interactions that will be enabled we’ll get better services (and the service providers will get happier users and customers, thus more willing to stay with them).

I fear, though, that the shift will need to be started by the main identity hubs (Facebook, Google, Yahoo, …) as it won’t probably be reasonable to think of users flocking to use a brand new service as their main identity provider…

By: Chris Messina

Chris Messina — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:00:47 +0000

I am aware of the project and have had a conversation with the project’s principals; in general I’m sympathetic to their cause and support their efforts. Would definitely like to see more interaction between MINE and the DiSo Project. Thanks for the reminder.

By: Joseph Holsten

Joseph Holsten — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:32:13 +0000

I do hope you’re keeping an eye on the mine project[1], which is a bit like bespoke activity streams tailored to suit a single audience instead of one size fits all. You probably wouldn’t put your nutrition tracking info into your public stream, but maybe you trust your physician. Stir in a XRD service advertising your willingness to make custom streams and you’ll really be cooking with gas. That’s what, 80% of Canter’s social dashboard?

1: http://themineproject.org/