As the OASIS XRI Technical Committee heads into the final stages of completing the XRI 2.0 specifications (currently scheduled for a Committee Draft vote on March 11), I’m spending a bunch of time on the XRI Primer, the first general-audience document that addresses the question, “Why would I want to use XRIs? What problems do they help me solve?”

An early preview of the type of content that will be available is the answer I just posted to a question on the Identity Commons i-broker mailing list. It addresses the topic of the advantages of XRIs vs. URLs when it comes to two key areas: persistent identity and semantic integration. (If you have any burning questions about XRIs that you’ve been dying to see answered in the XRI Primer, please let me know via my i-name contact page at =Drummond.Reed.)

Once the XRI Primer is published, I’m working with other XRI TC members on what we hope will be a fascinating series of blog entries that will help shed light on where XRIs fit into the emerging “Identity 2.0” picture, and specifically into Kim Cameron’s enormously powerful Laws of Identity.