technology

via Doc Searls: Andre Durand : Three Phases of Identity Infrastructure Adoption "I owe my involvement in the identity industry to a similar personal passion, to see that end-users are ultimately in control over their digital identity." Webloggers with online bio's will have the power to create a federated identity system where individuals have control over their own identity online.

Dave Winer: "I'm old school. I think the cool thing about weblogs is that they are not discussion groups or mail lists." What if comments links took you through a wizard that created a weblog for the comment if you didn't have a weblog. If you did have a weblog then a system that posted remote comments to your weblog with a trackback ping. The latter is easier said than done.

Ben Hammersley.com: Trackback in the saddle again

Macromedia Adds Flash to PowerPoint. This allows you to convert Powerpoint presentations into Flash. If you run a browser in kiosk mode, as in the previous post, create your entire presentation in Flash, with a browser as the container. Powerpoint has always struck me as the worst of Microsoft's products, sold for money when it looks like bad shareware. Powerpoint is responsible for a generation of bad graphic design, it almost conspires to produce hideous, cheap looking, presentations with drop-shadowed times roman on blue-blend backgrounds. I loved the apocryphal tale of it being banned at Lotus.

Doc Searls links to a piece by Derek Miller who questions the need to use presentation software like Powerpoint or Keynote at all, just use HTML pages, its the message that matters. Here is a tip if you want to do this with Internet Eplorer on Windows. Locate the executable file for Explorer (IEXPLORE.EXE not a desktop shortcut), create a shortcut and add a -k flag to the target properties (e.g. "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" -k). This will run your browser full screen without chrome, as designed for use in kiosks, ideal for presentations. Ctrl W to shut it down. Derek K. Miller, penmachine.com

Enterprise hosting may be a losing business these days, with a shrinking market and huge over capacity in terms of bandwidth and space. However, lower prices mean that personal managed servers are a reality. The new service below starts at $99 per month: Rackspace founder launches new company offering personal dedicated servers A package with installed weblog software would be a suitable service for emerging business weblogs like Gizmodo. Imagine an entire content management software system, Linux on Intel hardware platform, rackspace, uptime guarantees and burstable bandwidth for $100 or so per month. Compare this with what publishers were spending a couple of years ago with Vignette driven systems on expensive Sun servers hosted at Exodus. As an example of the market for Sun hardware, check Ebay. Not that long ago this would have cost you several tens of thousands of dollars. Current bid, around $500 - it will probably...

From the second issue of Wired in 93: "There seems to be an unwritten rule nowadays that every product announcement must trumpet the fact that the new gizmo is, even if only in some minor way, wireless. We now have wireless mice, keyboards, modems, printers, and networks. The once-esoteric deliberations concerning radio bandwidth auctioning have become front page news in the Wall Street Journal. What's strange is that there is no corresponding consumer clamor for wireless products. In fact, wireless keyboards and printers have flopped every time they have been introduced." It took 10 years, but as Jon Udell said in December, Wi-Fi was the story of the year (oh - and Bluetooth can deal with the other bits and bobs, printers and the like). Perhaps Wired should think about a name change. - But they're in NY now, so are probably more interested in what people are wearing this...

iTrip via The Bloomers

Doc Searls quotes his wife's inspirational, 7 year old, unfulfilled wish list of browser features. "Another was a pull-down menu called ``purse'' that would contain credit cards and other identity items required for doing business in the world. Neither would be owned or provided by one vendor (not even the browser's). Instead they would be features of the user's own identity as an autonomous customer in the marketplace. " The Doc Searls Weblog : Wednesday, January 8, 2003 There have been many attempts to create digital wallets from SET or Obongo (purchased by AOL for their aborted Magic Carpet) to Hailstorm. Just as weblogs have proven the power of decentralized, personally controlled publishing this model extends to the entire realm of digital identities which may only be successful if they are similarly decentralized and user controlled.

Commuter plane crashes in N Carolina A bad start to the year for air travel, all the more since last year found no commercial airline crashes anywhere in the world. [ahem, I have no idea what gave me this idea, but... airline crashes timeline ]. Some things seem disproportionally technologically advanced. Air travel is one of them. Consider that during its lifespan a jet engine turbine is spinning more than not, making it the most reliable piece of engineering on the planet. Imagine a year free of computer crashes.

Apple marketing department take note, webloggers are your friends. As memes spread from the Apple conference. 13 of today's Daypop Top 40 Links are Apple related.

via Dave Winer: Start-up marries blogs and camera phones Dave argues rightly for MetaWeblog API support. The Blogerazzi await.