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Hacking WordPress Login and Password Reset Processes For My University Environment

Any university worth the title is likely to have a very mixed identity environment. At Plymouth State University we’ve been pursuing a strategy of unifying identity and offering single sign-on to web services, but an inventory last year still revealed a great number of systems not integrated with either our single sign-on (AuthN) or authorization […] » about 1700 words

Fly Safe, Fly Without ID

This is an old one, but because I’m in the air again today it’s worth digging up this up. Defense Tech long ago pointed out The Identity Project‘s position on showing ID for air travel:

If a 19 year-old college student can get a fake ID to drink, why couldn’t a bad person get one, too? And no matter how sophisticated the security embedded into the ID, wouldn’t a well-financed terrorist be able to falsify that, too? The answer to both questions is obviously ‘yes’.

Honest people, on the other hand, go to Pro-Life rallies. Honest people go to Pro-Choice rallies, too. Honest people attend gun shows. Honest people protest the actions of the President of the United States. Honest people fly to political conventions. What if those with the power to put people on a ‘no fly’ list decided that they didn’t like the reason for which you wanted to travel? The honest people wouldn’t be going anywhere.

Google Pumps OpenID Too

Following news that Yahoo! is joining the OpenID fray, it appears Google is dipping a toe in too. While those two giants work out their implementations, others are raising the temperature of the debate on IDM solutions. Stefan Brands is among the OpenID naysayers (<a href=“http://daveman692.livejournal.com/310578.html" title=“David Recordon’s Blog - Stefan Chooses to Take the “Fox News” Approach to OpenID Blogging”>David Recordon’s response), while Scott Gillbertson sees a bright future. Let’s watch the OpenID Directory to see how fast it grows now (count on January 19 2008: 446).

Gravatar Acquired, More Features & Better Reliability Ahead

Matt pointed out that Automattic has purchased Gravatar, the globally recognizable avatar service. Om speaks of the economics and Matt’s cagy, but it’s hard not to see the possibility of creating a larger identity solution around this. WordPress’ market penetration is huge, a service that connects those nearly two million blogs could offer real value, especially in connection with Automattic’s Akismet.

Aside: now that Gravitar’s reliability is up, I’ll probably get Sexy Comments running here soon.

Reputation Management At Applied Dreams 2.2

Ryan gave me the drop on this presentation by Dave Chiu and Didier Hilhorst where they do an amusingly effective job of explaining the concept of reputation management. It all went down at the conclusion of the Applied Dreams 2.2 project at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Milano. The project brief begins: Our identities are […] » about 200 words

IdM Takes Lessons From the Microformats Crowd

A tip from <a href="http://blog.ryaneby.com/">Ryan</a> sent me <a href="http://identityfuture.com/story/idm-microformats-microid/">looking</a> at <a href="http://microid.org/">MicroID</a>: <blockquote>a new Identity layer to the web and <a href="http://microformats.org/">Microformats</a> that allows anyone to simply claim verifiable ownership over their own pages and content hosted anywhere.</blockquote> The idea is to hash a user's email address (or other identifier) with the name of the site it will be published on, giving a string that can be inserted -- in true Microformats style -- as an element of the html on the site. » about 400 words

Facial Recognitition Spytech Goes Social

<a href="http://troyb.net/">Troy</a> expressed both great amusement and trepidation in his message alerting me to <a href="http://www.riya.com/">Riya</a>, a new photo sharing site: <blockquote>I don't know whether to say cool, or <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E33W1W/ref=maisonbisson-20/">zool</a>.</blockquote> <a href="http://www.riya.com/learnMore">The tour</a> explains that you upload photos, Riya identifies faces in your photos, then asks you to name them (or correct its guesses!). Then you get all your friends to join up and we can all search for everybody by people, location, and time. So say "hi" to <a href="http://www.riya.com/search?btnSearch=btnSearch&faceID=34848e86a2df7a0a9228e0a3a18f2a9f65841d7d_0&acct=&scope=99 ">Andrejs</a> and <a href="http://www.riya.com/search?btnSearch=btnSearch&faceID=34848e86a2df7a0a9228e0a3a18f2a9f65841d7d_1003&acct=&scope=99">Nora</a>. » about 400 words

Dick Hardt ‘s Identity 2.0 Presentation

I said “identity management is the next big thing” back in September. That was before I’d seen Sxip founder Dick Hardt’s presentation on Identity 2.0. Zach peeped me the link and told me I wouldn’t regret watching the presentation. He was right. Everybody, especially the people who don’t yet care about identity management, should take a look.

Next Big Thing: Identity Management

I might be overstating it, but Identity Management is the next big thing for the open source community to tackle. That’s why I like Sxip, even though I know so little about it.

There are a number of other solutions stewing, but most of those that I’m aware of are targeted at academic and enterprise users. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some federated system of identity management among blogs?

Yes, IdM is the next big thing, but as an infrastructural technology, it will be invisible when it works.

Here’s another link: The Identity Initiative : iname, FreeID, LID, SXIP, What’s Your Favorite Emerging Digital Identity?