RIP Dodgeball

Now that I use Twitter for shoutouts (that’s where the audience has migrated) and Plazes SMS for checkins, I have officially (or behaviorally) decided to give up on Dodgeball.

I haven’t checked in in months, around the time I stopped getting notifications from the service and in general just can’t be bothered anywhere.

I blame Google for mothballing one of best emergent communities of 2006. It could come back if they did something cool with buddy-presence and Google Local searching, but as more folks migrate away, I doubt it’ll have the necessary critical mass to make it compelling. Maybe I’m in the minority in thinking so, but Dodgeball is dead.

…Meanwhile I’m trying to hook up Twitter and Plazes so I can “check in” to Plazes via the numerous Twitter APIs.

ZDNet calls 2007 the year of URL-based identity

In its 2007 predictions, Identity World suggests that URL-based identities will take the alpha geek world by storm. I couldn’t agree more:

URL-based identity begins a cycle of real adoption in the blogosphere and alpha geek communities.

URL-based identity overcame many technical and interoperability hurdles in 2006, and got key buy-in from developing communities. 2007 will see the early incarnations of this technology begin a cycle of significant and real adoption in the blogosphere and alpha geek worlds.

I’ve started collecting resources on OpenID over on Ma.gnolia and imagine that in a year’s time, these sources will tell the story of how OpenID, like Firefox, rose from the shadows of former monolithic and proprietary endeavors to become the preferred and predominant open source, decentralized solution for representing oneself on the web. Truly there’s much work to be done and that’s what makes it so existing and worthwhile — it’s young enough and simple enough to still reflect the needs of the individuals whom it serves.

I’ll be writing about this more soon I hope, but I think Identity World has done a group job with their predictions. Now if only ZDNet would follow the advice of their own sages!

Information philanthropy

I hadn’t quite thought about the co-production economy from the standpoint of philanthropy, but in a message from Chris Baskind, the admin of the Lighter Footstep Ma.gnolia Group, he said:

I know there’s nothing more valuable to you than your time, so let me ask for it directly: please contribute great links when you see them. Ma.gnolia’s interface is snappier than ever, and it doesn’t take long to archive a resource that might really make a difference to someone down the line.

It occurs to me that perhaps in the information economy, quality information, links and good ideas really are useful and valuable surrogates in place of donating money, which require centralized bodies, disclosures and other “conversion taxes” (that is, changing your dollars and cents into things that are tangibly useful for an endeavor).

I dunno, thoughts?

10 days in New England

I know I didn’t offer much warning, but now that I’m in town, staying with the imitable Amit Gupta (of many, many fames) I thought I’d put it out there that Tara and I have a few moments of spare time that we’d love to share with our east coast comrades in arms friends.

The tour is like this: from today until Sunday, we’re in NYC; Sunday we fly to Boston and grab a ZipCar to head to NH to visit with my family and then we’re generally around in the Boston-Manchester area until Friday, the 29th. I’ve already pinged my buddies Patrick and Dan to see about getting together, so if you’re in town and want to join in, drop me a note.