Identity is important. I want to be scottp@dd.com.au... how do I do this:

• Avatar
• Web site
• Email
• Instant messaging
• File sharing
• SSO
• Social networking

Avatar

An image, of me, that follows me around. It is much easier to see an iconic form than written. Just a flash down a list of comments on a blog and I can see people I know far faster than I can read their names.

See also Avatar

• CURRENT = Multiple
  • Gravatar.com - e.g. http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/c4c6ff88aa59eb1da9284b48061f0c3f
    • Uses my real identity (scottp@dd.com.au) = YES
    • Distributed / Open = NO
  • Various others internal: Facebook et al
    • Uses my real identity - sometimes, mostly not
    • Distributed / Open = NO
• IDEAL SOLUTION
  • Some form of Meta tag on my own site that points to my Avatar
  • Ability to cache these - e.g. Can still use gravatar or similar

Web Site

Not perfect, but I can translate "user@" to "user."

Most of my geek friends would have their own domain. This solution does not scale very well. If your preferred identity is scooterpenrose@gmail.com, then where is my web site. It is at least possible then to be scooterpenrose.gmail.com. Companies can take advantage of this. Each person@dd.com.au can then have person.dd.com.au as their web site.

Subsets:

• Blog
• Wiki
• Photo sharing
• CURRENT
  • http://scott.dd.com.au/
  • Running on: Linux, Apache, Oddmuse
  • Meets requirements:
    • Web page - YES
    • Blog - YES (sort of, I prefer Wiki and Dates)
    • RSS - YES
    • Photo sharing - NO
• TO TRY
  • Improved photo sharing
    • Embed to /gallery/ my current gallery http://www.daddycrumbs.com/
• IDEAL SOLUTION:
  • Currently fairly close...

Microformats

Thanks to Microformats you can now add information you would like to share publicly on your website, using any web site software, even static HTML.

RSS

Want to have a blog, share the blog with others. This is already standard. Use RSS and you can share your blog without needing to depend on any particular software, vendor etc.

HTML Headers / Meta tags

TODO (allow About me, Contact, and other direct links)

Email

This is pretty much a given. And thanks to MX records, we don't even need to host our email with any other service. It is unfortunately that this is not really true for any other service (there are some exceptions).

• CURRENT
  • Hosted externally (currently commercial)
• IDEAL SOLUTION
  • Currently meets my ideal solution

Instant Messaging

XMMP/Jabber. Perfect for everything except voice/video. Currently I still have to have XMMP client and Skype client running. Looking forward to not needing skype.

Fortunately XMMP supports SRV records in DNS. This means you can in theory host your XMMP service somewhere else, just like you do with your email.

• CURRENT
  • Hosted externally
  • NOT MY IDENTITY !!! Need to fix this.

Social Networking

TODO

File sharing

TODO

Media sharing - aka Photos, Video

This falls into two spaces:

• Public or Private albums - Web site or similar
• Sharing / Discussing photos on Social Networks - See Social Networking

Single Sign On

Woow... this is a big topic.

Facebook connect / Google etc

Central is out... I want to use my own id, not depend on any 3rd party, be completely decentralised, open competitive market etc.

Open ID

TODO

Shibboleth

Very powerful, too restrictive, not really an open solution for integrating everyone in the world.

OAuth

TODO

Browser ID

TODO

See Also

• Social
• Distributed Social Networking