Category: I care about…

MicroID – Identity in a shade of microformat

Doc points to microformat-compliant MicroID (“Small Decentralized Verifiable Identity”) by Jabber founder Jeremie Miller:

…a new Identity layer to the web and Microformats that allows anyone to simply claim verifiable ownership over their own pages and content hosted anywhere. The technology is radically simple and capable of empowering new and unique meta services with only minor effort.

I read over the description, but I still don’t quite get it.

A simpler solution (for web authors at least) is reciprocity using XFN. Essentially if I have access to two websites, I can link between them using the rel="me" microformat — very similar to what Technorati does with its claiming snippet.

So one rel="me" link implies an unconfirmed relationship, two or more confirms, for the purpose of building an exploratory network (non-authoritative), a relationship. Add in an

and you can start building an ad hoc profile that will result with a profile like the one I’m building on ClaimID.

So the way I see it, MicroID allows me to lay ownership to any piece of arbitrary content on the web, provided I can set the class of the object. In cases where that’s not possible, I’m not sure MicroID will work.

With the rel="me" solution, you can claim URLs that you can create links with rel values. Neither is perfect but both are decent uses of microformats for faking identity.

Update: change MicroID from a “.com” to a “.org” . Thanks Kevin!

Will Pate joining the Flock

Will Pate & FlockWill Pate of Canada‘s first day on the job starts today at Flock.

His role will likely be similar to parts of mine, given the mantle he’s taken for himself:

Community Ambassador
They let me choose my own title, which turned out to be more difficult than I expected. “Community” had to be in there because that’s what my focus is: getting people excited about using Flock. “Community Director” didn’t work because you can’t direct a community of the type we deal with. “Community Manager” sounded too stuffy. I took a cue from my colleague Chris Messina, Open Source Ambassador at Flock, and chose that word. I like ambassador because it implies goodwill, diplomacy, and a mission of relationship building. I’ll be talking more soon about what exactly I’ll be doing, but that should give you a general sense for now.

Will’s going to make for a great addition to the Flock family and I know that he and I will have a great deal to discuss and stew on as I transition into my old consulting role.

That and I’ve gotta make sure that he becomes Flock’s de facto Pinko Marketer.

Meaning; innovation; the change we want to see in our world

From the NTEN conference in Seattle, Leda captures something:

But no one else here is talking about meaning, or innovation, or anything having to do with the change we want to see in the world, and in our lives.

And it doesn’t have to be that way.

She has more worth a read.

BellSouth to New Orleans: Let them eat cake

BellSouth Robot

The mission of The Emergency Email Network(sm) states:

“Provide notification to citizens of local, regional, national and international emergencies utilizing the Internet and electronic mail (email) in a secure and expedient manner”

© 1999 The Emergency Email Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

…which is quaint, presupposing that during a disaster, you’ll actually have some form of internet connectivity. Ironic, given that this service (complete with robot teleaid) is linked to from the BellSouth website and that they’re suing the city of New Orleans to prohibit them from offering free 512KBPs wifi to its citizens. Something about the government not competing with private industry.

Okay, well, whatever. Clearly they have to pay the mortgage and clearly competing with the hurricane-ravaged government of New Orleans is a burden no monopoly company should have to deal with:

“Around the country, large telephone companies have aggressively lobbied against localities launching their own Internet networks, arguing that they amount to taxpayer-funded competition,” says the story. “Some states have laws prohibiting them.”

Yeah, alright, them’s the rules and all, ain’t they? I mean, Google has to abide by Chinese law in China…

MuniFiedSuch as it’s the case that the government’s been neutered from providing adequate network services to its constituents, it strikes me that it might just be time, oh, I dunno, to get up and make our own network? And hey, the work’s alreeady begun with community mesh projects like CUWireless and SFLan. So get on a bus and head to the upcoming National Summit for Community Wireless Networks. And add your thoughts, resources or capabilities to the shiny new MuniFied wiki.

I have barely a clue about the technical ins and outs of wifi, but if I know one thing, it’s that we can’t wait around and rely on the public or private sectors to get it right, make it open, make it free and then guard against bullshit maneuvers like BellSouth’s taken against the very communities that need this kind of connectivity the most.

Unrest in French youth

CTE rally

I stumbled upon this after realizing that I’d missed Stewart’s birthday (I’m waiting for his 33 1/3 to celebrate though). Heads down lately, I’ve missed the news that apparently there’s been some crazy shit going on in Paris — at least judging from the photos.

Xyba has an interesting perspective: “French Young people fearing that they may actually have to work for a living have continued their rioting”.

This runs contrary to what photographer Hugo had to say:

The protests of March 18th, all across the country, were joined not only by students but by their families. Unfortunately, as is too often the case, the end of the day was spoiled by 100 to 150 “casseurs” (lit. “breakers”) who provoked the riot police throwing bottles, stones and finally burning down a car.

On March 23rd, a university and college students demonstration also turned even more violent, with various cars and shops burnt, protesters and photographers assaulted and robbed, and the Invalides turned into a battlefield.

After the unrest and riots in the suburbs last year, this is reflecting the growing uneasiness and despair of the youth about the lack of opportunities, and their desillusion towards the politicians.

More than 20% of 18 to 25-year-olds are unemployed (double the national average) and among the poorest communities, it reaches 40%. Half of France’s universities are now under some form of strike or occupation.

The imminent rise of Microformats

Bill Gates on Microformats

It really is only a matter of time before this stuff really takes off. With Bill on the bully pulpit yakkin‘ with TimO about it, dropping references it during the Mix ’06 keynote, Ray Ozzie pimping them at ETECH, LinkedIn coming to the party, folks misrepresenting core ideas already… I mean sweet! I smell a movement on the march.

Update: Kevin “Quicktime” Marks has the transcript and more formats.

CivicSpace finds a sponsor, becomes magical

CivicSpace + CompumentorMeant to blog this yesterday, but you know how that goes.

Zack‘s full of big announcements this month over at CivicSpace, this time revealing that CompuMentor has assumed fiscal sponsorship of the 501c3 arm of CivicSpace (to complement CivicSpace, Inc., which provide hosted services a la Bryght).

So while his press release could use some Pinko Marketing love, I’ve gotta give him props for a great screencast of a project that’s been underway for sometime called Magic Groups (a mashup of Organic Groups and other Drupal modules). I’d love to use this for Barcamps and at it the CivicForge collection of tools.

So besides software announcements, I also discovered that they’re organizing something called Drupal Camp (in case you missed it in my asides). Less Barcamp, more seminar, but still worth checking out!

Free your iPod

Free your iPod - Support state-sponsored piracy

Those French, man, I tell ya… first they take a “principled” stand against Bush’s war (amounting to an “anything but what the US does” strategy) and now they’re takin’ on Apple and DRM.

Is there any rhyme to their reasoning or are they just taking on the causes célèbre et du jour? And are they even on the right side this time or just utterly confused? I know I am!