Now, with the announcement at last month’s Burton Catalyst conference that AT&T has joined OIX, that several new OIX Working Groups are starting up, and that OIX and Kantara have begun collaborating on trust framework infrastructure, the startup phase of OIX is over, and I can finally take off the OIX ED hat.

This does not mean I will be any less involved with OIX, however. On the contrary, as I have been blogging throughout this year, the need for a particular trust framework—one governing data exchange with personal data stores (PDX)—is becoming acute. That need also intersects directly with the work I’ve been doing on the XDI data sharing protocol at OASIS since 2004.

So as fast as I’m taking off the OIX ED hat, I’m preparing to take on another one spearheading the development of a PDX trust framework at OIX. This will be one of the key topics both at the VRM+CRM conference in Boston this coming Thursday and Friday, and also at the Internet Identity Workshop East on September 9 and 10 in D.C. following Gov 2.0.

If you are attending either event and want to know more about PDX and the PDX trust framework, please come to the open space sessions we’ll be holding.

Now we do — immediately following Gov 2.0.

See the invitation. Register. Run a session (or two or three). I’ll look for you there.

I haven’t been posting much about XDI because the OASIS XDI Technical Committee (which I co-chair) is still working on the XDI 1.0 technical specs. But since our philosophy has been to code everything in at least one implementation first before committing it to a spec, and since the core XDI graph model and metagraph model are now very solid, by the time the specs come out there will already be multiple operational XDI services.

I hope to finally get time to do many more posts about XDI this fall. In the meantime if you want to learn more, ping me about different ways to get involved.

He’s been preaching that a paradigm change is coming and he’s dead right (hint: see PDS). That’s why I’m travelling all the way to Boston for the VRM+CRM conference Aug 26/27 in Boston. This despite my standing rule of NO CONFERENCES IN AUGUST. (Damn fool Americans need to learn from the Europeans about how to enjoy life, especially summer, especially in Seattle.)

But I’m making an exception this year (and also for the Privacy Identity Innovation 2010 conference, which is easy because it’s in Seattle) because this paradigm shift is so important.

And because it’s one of the key breakthroughs that user-centric identity has been developed to enable.

Wrong.

It is to three-dimensional stories what Avatar is to 3D effects.

See it. It will play 3D chess not just with your mind, but your heart.

On the DP Project board call this morning I shared the view that Portability Policies are an inevitable first step — and a highly welcome one — towards widespread adoption of personal data stores (see my posts earlier this year about PDS here and here). When PDS finally arrive, the irony is that the policy will turn in the other direction, i.e., the individual will have their own data sharing terms and the vendor will be agreeing to those. That’s the essence of VRM.

Iain Henderson of VRM pioneer Mydex is already working on the terms for such an agreement at the Information Sharing Working Group at Kantara.

Bit by bit, the age of personal data stores and personally-controlled data sharing is dawning.

It’s happening. Look for more news about it by Internet Identity Workshop (May 17-19 in Mountain View, CA). As if you didn’t have enough great reasons to go already.

kd lang: Hallelujah.

Three clear themes emerge from these:

1. The problem is even worse if Google Apps is involved. Apparently there isn’t a solution to merging a Google account and a Google Apps account yet (which frightens me because I’m about to need to set up my first Google Apps account).
2. Using email addresses as primary account identifiers is problematic, period.
3. Internet identity managment, especially at scale, is hard. A lot harder than it looks.

I’m told the good folks at Google have been discussing this. Please feel free to add more suggestions about exactly what you think they should do.

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 typing that answer to his email when I remember The Incredible Internet Answer Machine

I open a browser tab and type into the Google Search Bar “Microsoft Word bal…”

Google’s AutoSuggest completes it to “Microsoft Word balloons”.

I click Search.

In .25 seconds the answer is back and the second entry on the list is:

“How to turn off balloons for comments and tracking changes in Word“

.25 seconds. My brain doesn’t even think that fast.