Twitter friend @bzkicks led me to this really cool site that tracks Santa’s progress across the globe.

Why couldn’t this have been available when I was a kid?

Technorati Tags: Christmas, Norad, Santa

Thanks to Mike Wyatt for pointing me to idee Multicolr, which presents amazing sets of photos from Flickr matching color combinations you provide:

Have fun!

Technorati Tags: Flickr, color, photography

On the eve of my favorite day of the year, please accept my wish that the peace of Christmas be with you and yours during this holiday season and throughout the coming year.

Yearning for Peace

We seek for peace this Christmastime
But hear the dissonant clamor of raucous commerce
As the world seeks solace in the glamor of expensive things

We send our youth to fight for peace
As wars within our shores and distant lands loom real,
But grieve when innocents die in the eternal freedom struggle.

We look to government for peace
But see ambitious men and women manipulate puppet strings of power
To feed their insatiable hunger for wealth and fame.

We work for peace in halls of justice,
Battling evil conspirators who exploit and kill and seek addiction of our souls.
But our fair sons and daughters are still not safe to walk alone at night.

We yearn, we fight, we search, we work for peace.
But we cannot find it in the cacophony of commerce.
Not in the clash of war,
Not in the spin of politics,
Not in endless legal conflict.

But we can find eternal peace
In Him who gave his very life and shed his precious blood for us.
The Prince of Peace.

For his words resoundingly proclaim:

“Peace I leave with you, Peace I give unto you:
Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” 
     – John 14:2

Happy Holidays from the Dixon family!

In his NetworkWorld Identity column today, Dave Kearns quotes Ping Identity CEO Andre Durand speaking about the Golden Guardian comic strip. I particularly like Andre’s comments about “life, energy and passion”:

“I believe we’re at an important juncture in our industry, one that will require everyone do their part. If we fail, we could become like so many other industries where life, energy and passion have left, and all that is left is apathy. Identity is so important, it deserves our best.

Yes, Identity is important.  It does deserve our best.  This industry impacts so many facets of our professional and personal lives.  The threats to privacy and security are real.  But the benefits for successful Identity management implementation are also real.  It is a great time to be involved.

Thanks, Andre, for your profound words.  Thanks, Dave, for sharing these thoughts with us.

Technorati Tags: Identity, Identity Management, Digital Identity, Ping Identity

While exploring how Identity is an enabler for personalization of products and services, I recently pondered on the relationship between four interesting words: Identity, Context, Preference and Persona.  Dictionary definitions of the three words include:

• Identity: “condition or character as to who a person or what a thing is.”
• Context: “the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.”
• Preference: “that which is preferred; choice.”

In other words, I might say about myself:

• Identity is who I am
• Context is what I am doing at a particular time
  
• Preference is what I choose to think or do

I propose that the fourth word, Persona, is at the intersection of the first three concepts.  The dictionary defintion:

• Persona: “the mask or façade presented to satisfy the demands of the situation or the environment and not representing the inner personality of the individual; the public personality.”

In other words, a Persona is a personality I choose to project in a particular circumstance.

Graphically, we may diagram the relationship as shown below:

Persona is not just a partial projection of one’s identity.  It must take into account the context in which a person exists at the moment, and the preferences the person makes relative to that particular situation. Personalization of a product or service must be synchonized with the persona of a person at any relevant point in time – his or her current persona.

For example:

1. My interest in photography is one of several attributes of my personal Identity.
2. Last Saturday, my presence in a camera store less than two weeks before Christmas was my context at a particular time.
3. My preference at that time was to find a replacement camera bag.

My current persona was essentially: 1)photography buff, 2)in a camera store, 3)with desire to buy a camera bag.

At that point, to present me with information about dairy farms in Idaho would clearly not be synchronized with my current persona, even though Idaho cows are a legitimate interest of mine.

As good fortune would have it, a very helpful sales person was very synchronized with my persona.  He showed me a great camera bag that would fit my needs, and knowing that Santa was coming soon, let me drool over a really cool, image-stabilized Nikon zoom lens.

Please let me know what you think about this concept.  I plan to share more thoughts in coming days.

Technorati Tags: Digital Identity, Identity, Context, Preference, Persona, Personalization

Yesterday I blogged about the virtual, imaginary man.  Today, Dilbert met with one.  Coincidence?

Technorati Tags: Dilbert, Virtualization

Thanks to Jeff Bohren and Pat Patterson for referring to Typealyzer, which I used to analyze this blog.  Apparently, my writing style would indicate that I have a “Thinker” (INTP) personality.  A brain activity diagram …

… was accompanied by a bit of explanation:

“The logical and analytical type. They are espescially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

“They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.”

If any of this is anywhere near accurate, please accept my apology for my arrogant, impatient insensitivity to you all.

Technorati Tags: Personality

My last working hours yesterday were spent listening to presentations about Sun’s virtual desktop technology.  The first two hours this morning are dedicated to virtual server technology.  Being the word geek I am, I consulted dictionary.com to understand the meaning of the word “virtual”.  I found some interesting tidbits of information.  First, the source of “virtual”:

“from M.L. virtualis, from L. virtus ‘excellence, potency, efficacy,’ lit. ‘manliness, manhood’ (see virtue).”

Does this mean that in today’s information technology world, only real men use virtualization?

Or only that men are really imaginary: “Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact?”

Technorati Tags: Virtual, Virtualization

My colleague Eve Maler (@xmlgrrl) eloquently articulated the feelings of many a road warrior on Twitter this evening:

“When did SJC Terminal C get all these luscious power strips mounted at chair-top height? Awesome. (It’s pitiful what makes me happy.)”

I trust my response to her accurately represents all of us who have spent so much time searching for electrical outlets in airport waiting areas:

“The sign of true techie – appreciation for available electricity!”

Eve’s response:

I noticed they have “power bars” (think “oxygen bars”, in more ways than one) in LAS and DEN…

Yep, Eve passes the test … a true techie!

Technorati Tags: Travel, Electricity, Productivity

A few weeks ago, Bruce Schneier posted an interesting article explaining how Barack Obama will need to give up his Blackberry to minimize his personal “electronic trail” that could prove troublesome or worse:

“When he becomes president, Barack Obama will have to give up his BlackBerry. Aides are concerned that his unofficial conversations would become part of the presidential record, subject to subpoena and eventually made public as part of the country’s historical record.”

Interestingly enough, when I re-visited that article this afternoon, the sidebar list of Most Popular posts listed “Governor is Arrested on Graft Charges” as the second most popular post today. I wonder what Governor Blagojevich thinks about the damning electronic trail he left behind?

Technorati Tags: Blackberry, Obama