Category Archives: General

This is What a Hole in Your Digital Life Looks Like

10:15PM Tuesday March 27, San Francisco, across the street from Alexander’s Restaurant at 4th & Brennan. I slipped into the driver’s seat of my rental car after dinner with Phil Windley and Doc Searls, took one look in the rear view mirror, and … Continue reading

Posted in General, Personal Cloud, Respect Trust Framework | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Dan Marovitz Shows his Zeal

The more I get to know Dan, the more I like his zeal. Not just his entrepreneurial zeal — which is fantastic by itself — but his zeal for life. Both are reflected in his new post on the buzzumi … Continue reading

Posted in Entrepreneurs, General | Leave a comment

Connect.Me: One Month In

Trust is a very delicate matter — especially online, where most if not all of the cues (location, appearance, diction, body language) we use to make trust decisions in the physical world are absent. To make matters worse, the rampant … Continue reading

Posted in Connect.Me, General, Respect Trust Framework, Social Web | 1 Comment

Update on Personal Event Networks: The Evented API Spec

As a follow-on to my post about Personal Event Networks last week, Phil Windley and Sam Curren have published the Evented API Specification. Phil’s blog post about it gives a good summary, but if you’re a developer just go straight to … Continue reading

Posted in Events, General, XDI | Leave a comment

Phil Windley on Personal Event Networks

Phil Windley has a new post called Personal Event Networks: Building the Internet of Things. The idea is simple but highly compelling: what if the range of products and services you used could actually talk to each other, over the … Continue reading

Posted in Connect.Me, General, Respect Trust Framework, XDI | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Steve Jobs & The Courage of Great Design

There have been many tributes to Steve Jobs over the past few days but I found this short one by Bob Blakley to be particularly eloquent. All I know is that the company headed by this man has created the … Continue reading

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A Love Letter to J.K. Rowling

For me, it all ended — magnificently — in the cozy confines of the Empire Theatre on Block Island, RI. Having raised our two boys reading Harry Potter books out loud, and seeing several of the movies on various July … Continue reading

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The Personal Cloud, Take 2

There’s been a wonderful discussion of “personal cloud” on the VRM mailing list this week. So far feedback is running about 80% positive on the term. But if there’s one point on which everyone has consensus, it’s that our collective … Continue reading

Posted in General, Personal Cloud, Personal Data Ecosystem, Personal Data Server, Personal Data Service, Personal Data Store | 2 Comments

The Personal Cloud

The hallmark of a rapidly growing new space is new terminology. Craig Burton goes so far as to posit that the growth of the space will be constrained until it has a lexicon that successfully incorporates its key concepts. All … Continue reading

Posted in General, Personal Cloud, Personal Data Ecosystem, Personal Data Server, Personal Data Service, Personal Data Store, Social Web | 24 Comments

kd lang: Hallelujah

I’ve been meaning to say this on my blog ever since the opening ceremonies in Vancouver. But since I just had the chance to recreate the experience on the Web, let me say it loud and clear for the record: … Continue reading

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Comments on the Google account problem

First, my apologies to everyone who commented on Fixing the Google Account Problem. For some reason WordPress stopped notifying me about comment approval (I’m using Akismet but I still find the majority of comments that get through it are spam, … Continue reading

Posted in Accounts, General | 1 Comment

The Incredible Internet Answer Machine #2

I receive an email from a friend: Drummond, As my Word expert, how do I turn off the “balloon” captioning of redline changes? I think, “Good question. I have no idea. I’ve often wondered that myself.” I’m about to start … Continue reading

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The Incredible Internet Answer Machine

I know reams have been written about “are we all getting dumber because the Internet is getting smarter?” But still, it does take my breath away, almost every day. In another one for the “new heights of irony” file: I … Continue reading

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Fixing the Google Account problem

Every so often you experience a technical problem you can’t find any information about and which takes you forever to solve. Then, after you finally solve it, you are left scratching your head saying, “I don’t get it­—there must be … Continue reading

Posted in Accounts, General, Privacy | 43 Comments

Sincerely, John Hughes

Someday I’ll tell the rest of the story about why I’m posting the following link. But for right now, let me just recommend you read it. I was never particularly close to John Hughes movies — though I did like … Continue reading

Posted in General | 2 Comments

Star Trek: See It

One advantage of having a 13-year old son is that you have an excuse to go see a summer blockbuster movie on the very first night it comes out. I never did that as a kid, which is one reason … Continue reading

Posted in General, Movies | 1 Comment

Eric Norlin on Conferences Vs. Trade Shows

Having just been to RSA, which is the essence of a trade show, and being about to go to Gluecon, which I’m hoping will be the essence of a conference, I find the distinction between conferences and trade shows that … Continue reading

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Here comes the next Internet Identity Workshop

Spring is around the corner and that means IIW. The next one is May 18-20 in the standard location: the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Early registration is particularly important this year – 75 registrations are needed by the … Continue reading

Posted in General, Identity Commons | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Sensemaking Series on Internet Identity

If you need to understand Internet identity quickly and at a deeper level than you can glean from blog posts and trade journals, but don’t want to hire a dedicated consultant, Eugene Kim’s Blue Oxen Associates has a great answer: … Continue reading

Posted in General | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Bob Blakley's Relationship Layer Paper Now Freely Available

I made a long post about it when Bob first presented it at IIW and then the Burton Catalyst conference last June. Now anyone can get it here. See also Bob’s commentary on its evolution here. Highly recommended for understanding … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, General, R-Cards, Relationship cards | Tagged , | 2 Comments