The UnSub

BETTER THAN FREE, an excellent essay by Kevin Kelly, Senior Maverick at Wired magazine.

Learnt from the identityblog that Burton Group held a series of Interop events with the third one at Barcelona. The interesting thing about this particular Barcelona Interop is that it was completely held in public view. Indeed a smart move if the intention were to create public awareness of User-centric identity systems (if the public bothers that is).

Having 6 identity selectors, 13 identity providers and 24 relying parties to test together would be quite an interesting event in terms of logistics and test cases. There were also 6 OpenID providers and 5 relying parties that underwent test. You can work out the math in terms combinations.

Recently I stumbled into an interesting local blog through Blogrush that was titled The Facade of Web2.0. Based on the title and content, I somehow get the vibe that says “Web2.0 is a hype and it is not useful”. I think to a certain extent, I agree with ED.

In fact, Blogrush is a good example of hype. Perhaps I am harsh to make that statement but my traffic logs shows and since the last round of login till now, the member dashboard is either down or still in “Temporary Reporting” mode to the time of writing this entry. In this specific context, there is not much benefit when it comes to bringing in new visitors. Of course, we can argue that my content sucks, placement of the widget is wrong and what not. But it really doesn’t matter, to the some disillusioned bloggers who believe blog is big money, it doesn’t work for them. I could go on for a few more pages with this…

It is alot easier to criticize than to be constructive…

There is a simple principle: “What you focus on will expand…”. Web penetration testers use this principle to “dig” holes. Start with one hole, you’ll find more holes. In their case, they propose corrective measures to mitigate the risks. They verify that the customers have indeed patched the holes up. But testers cannot be perpetually finding faults, there must be a point where we say “stop” and if need be, recommend: “your system needs a major over-haul”.

Web2.0 is not a standard, it has become a marketing term. However, there are some principles and practices behind it. The principles and practices are useful if applied correctly. Whether it is applicable to a given context, it depends. Imagine a tall building, different groups of people standing at different areas will look at the building differently because they are looking at different parts of the building. Once you get into the building, it doesn’t mean everyone can make it to the top, some will still remain at the ground floor staring at it.

I remember fondly during the days while playing DOTA with ex-colleagues, someone said “It’s not the Sentinel or Scourge character that determines the game result, it’s the player”. In this case, it is not the platform, but the people who create and use it.

Web2.0 to the end-user is about being in control, collective intelligence/stupidity (depends on how you see things), usability. To the geeks, the use of open-source (or even closed-source), distributed computing, technology stack. To the business people, the Long tail demand/supply, cost and sales, profit/loss. To the entrepreneur, he looks at different angles, tries to provide a solution that benefits people through this “platform” and profits from it.

If benefit is what we are looking at, then is the web platform beneficial for Singaporeans? What kind of benefits are we talking about? How many people find Web2.0 services useful? Benefits from consumer and/or business perspectives? A better question would be is there a Singaporean Web2.0 service????

It’s fair to say that my preference for Gmail doesn’t constitute to a proper statistical study, but still there are people who benefit from the free email service that is more robust than some paid ISP accounts. Again, there is no free lunch, Google indexes my stuff and profiles me. What works for me, may not work for others and vice versa.

After all these blabbling that seems to be heading nowhere, I wonder if it’s better to start looking from another angle and ask:

Singaporeans, how can we add value to our reality with Web2.0?

Or for that matter Web10.0. Then again, for those who don’t believe in it or wants to see result before putting in effort and/or $, why bother to ask?

Somehow I have this affinity with Identity systems. Perhaps it is somewhat related to my own search for identity. From vertical contactless smartcard applications, EPassport and now CardSpace which is potentially a “horizontal” technology that transcends across various applications from web to rich-clients; identity management systems are going to stay.

After climbing on this CardSpace bandwagon, I wrote a paper for my company. The intention is simply to pose questions and inform managers and engineers of the developments. But the most important question is:

How many consumers can really benefit from CardSpace now or even in the near future?

I am really glad Kim Cameron answered the golden question with his InfoCard thermometer. After some live dialogue with Vittorio, it confirmed my understanding that CardSpace is very much a “frontend” thingy. Their stand is “I won’t mandate what technology you want to use, but let’s use some standards to get the ball rolling…”. There are still alot of work to do at the backend, especially when it comes to interoperability!

The Facebook virus has finally hit Singapore. My initial skeptism led me to wonder why on earth would Microsoft valuate FB at such a pricetag. I had an account but didn’t really bothered with it since I assumed it was just another Friendster where people are just into bloating the number of friends. At most it’s just another avenue for people to spam you with nonsensical games and invites.

Boy I was wrong! After some exploration, I can see why some people are addicted to it. Every aspect of the system has viral elements. Users like novelty, users like to connect, users are curious. Now I can really see why developers are flocking to FB. The other social networks are merely subsets of FB. Meaning to say, what Friendster, MySpace or LinkedIn can do (was surprised that Mr Yu added me, wonder what he thinks of FB), FB can provide it via appz plug-ins third party developers.

The feature set of a typical web application is limited by the number of programmers working on it. FB does not have this limitation. The possibilities are only limited by what usability web technology has to offer now, FB’s API and developers’ imagination.

There are a couple of cool apps such as Visual Bookshelf, Flog and a couple that I really like. Take Visual Bookshelf for example, apart from knowing what my friends are reading, it is possible to link to Amazon which may ultimately lead to a transaction. It may not the case for Singaporeans to buy off Amazon, but I am sure somewhere else on the globe does.

It does make alot of sense now why Microsoft wants a piece of FB. Even the concept of Social Operating System begins to make alot of sense now (RT readers pls start re-thinking about identity in a consumer space). The model is no longer “charging the users” but the developers and entreprises that want to latch on to it. It being the Social Operating System.