The OpenSSO feature release schedule has been published on the OpenSSO wiki:

“The roadmap schedule below highlights OpenSSO’s Express builds, which are released approximately every three months, and the schedule for OpenSSO Enterprise 8.1 … to enable OpenSSO to be the only solution in the world to provide access management, federation, secure web services, entitlement enforcement and multi-factor authentication in a single offering.”

This represents a new level of transparency for the OpenSSO development and release process.  This should be very helpful for the growing community of enterprises and developers that are leveraging and betting their businesses on this innovative platform.

Technorati Tags: OpenSSO

Interesting short blog post from Waypoint exploring different methods of reaction and decision making:

X system thinkers react from the gut while C system thinkers generally engage their brains during the decision making process.  To relate the point some psychologists have characterized X system thinkers as Star Treks’ Dr. McCoy and C system thinkers as Spock.

The article has a fun little quiz at the end.  According to it, I am 2/3 Spock and 1/3 McCoy.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Psychology, Star Trek

BBC News reported yesterday that police in the Irish Republic mistakenly established separate identities for over 50 individuals named Prawo Jazdy, seemingly a notoriously illusive violator of traffic laws, before anyone realized that “Prawo Jazdy” means “Drivers License” in Polish!  Thanks to @rjhorniii for sharing the article reference on Twitter.

Technorati Tags: Identity, Identity Management, Digital Identity

This morning, Sun announced the availability of the JavaFX Mobile platform, which “delivers rich content and services across the broadest range of mobile devices – from mass market feature phones to smart phones.”

From a company best known for functionality under the covers, it is great to see truly great user interface technology emerge to complete the virtual last mile to people on the “screens of our lives.”

JavaFX Mobile will be demonstrated at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, from February 16-19.  Coincidentally, today I am in beautiful Pebble Beach, California, for customer meetings where we will demonstrate JavaFX at work with Sun JavaFX partner Malden Labs.  Seeing the Malden “Channel Grid” user interface in operation within a browser, on a desktop and on a mobile phone is really cool.

The Malden Labs 6thSpace technology leverages JavaFX and the entire Sun software stack to build systems that are “Reasonable, Intelligent, Immersive and Pervasive.”  It is a great example of how JavaFX provides innovative new ways to connect users to the rich functionality enabled by Sun’s software infrastructure products.

I’ll write more later about Malden and 6thSpace.  Beside being an great showcase for JavaFX, this system is an excellent example of how Identity plays a critical role in personalizing a user’s interaction with business systems.  Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: JavaFX, MaldenLabs, PebbleBeach, SunMicrosystems

Yesterday, Sun announced a “community day for OpenSSO enthusiasts around the time of the CommunityOne Conference in New York.
All are welcome, attendance is free, and continental breakfast plus lunch will be provided. … Hosted by New York University at the Kimmel Center in Greenwich Village, New York, and sponsored by Sun Microsystems, this is an opportunity for OpenSSO contributors, deployers and users to come together in an informal unconference setting.”

For more information or to sign up, please visit the OpenSSO Community Day page on wikis.sun.com.

Technorati Tags: OpenSSO, Sun Microsystems, Identity, Identity Management, Digital Identity, Unconference

Yesterday, I blogged about an Open Government Workshop to be held at MIT on January 15th to address the role of Digital Identity in modern government.   You can participate in framing the discussion by participating in this online forum.  Please take a few minutes to read questions others have submitted and vote on which topics you think are most relevant.
Here are the five questions I submitted:

• How can personal Digital Identity attributes be leveraged to personalize the interaction a citizen has with a government agency while protecting confidential citizen information?
• How can Digital Identity be leveraged to effectively enable citizen/government interaction without using a National ID card system?
• How can static Digital Identity attributes (e.g. name, age) be combined or blended with contextual attributes (e.g. location, current interest) to enrich citizen/government interaction without compromising confidential information?
• How can confidential Digital Identity attributes provided by a citizen to one organization or agency be effectively used for an overall citizen/government experience without divulging that information to other organizations?
• Are there ways Digital Identity systems employed by private enterprise be leveraged to provide e-government authentication and authorization services?

What are yours?

Technorati Tags: Identity, Identity Management, Digital Identity, eGovernment

An Open Government Workshop to be held at MIT on January 15th,  will address the role of Digital Identity as a key enabler for effective interaction between citizens and government leaders. 

This workshop is being organized by Dazza Greenwood of Civics.com on behalf of the MIT eCitizen Architecture Program, the MIT Media Lab SmartCities Group and the eCitizen Foundation.

The Digital Identity part of the workshop is being directed by Bruce Bakis of Mitre Corporation, Team Leader of the Safeguarding Digital Identity research project for the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection.  In an invitation to Identity Management community, Bruce stated:

“Several goals in the Obama-Biden technology agenda articulated at change.gov fit right into our Digital Identity wheelhouse. Two of these really hit our sweet spot: Create a Transparent and Connected Democracy, and Lower Health Care Costs by Investing in Electronic Information Technology Systems.

“So, here’s what we’re doing: holding several virtual events and one “real” one to compile and present to the Obama-Biden administration a prioritized list of issues, problems and questions.  During the “real” event we will hold three interrelated discussions:

• The use of Digital Identity as a key enabler (for the other two agenda items and so much more)
• How to Create a Transparent and Connected Democracy that’s open, effective, privacy preserving and secure;
• How to Lower Health Care Costs by Investing in Electronic Information Technology Systems.”

You can register here for participation in the January 15th event.  You can participate in formulation of the dialogue that will occur at the main event by using this online forum to submit and rank questions to be addressed during the event.

Technorati Tags: Identity, Identity Management, Digital Identity, eGovernment

The big question is: Now we know he is Ziggy and he is Here.  What does he want in that place and time?  There in lies the secret to Identity-enabled, location based services.

Technorati Tags: Identity, Location, Ziggy

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

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