Digital Identity

Cool FOAF things

FOAF (Friend of a Friend) is ...a way to describe yourself -- your name, email address, and the people you're friends with -- using XML and RDF. This allows software to process these descriptions, perhaps as part of an automated search engine, to discover information about your and the communities of which you're a member. FOAF has the potential to drive many new interesting developments in online communities.

Plink (People Link) is like a kinda techie/underground version of Friendster and has links to cool widgets like foaf-a-matic – a javascript application that generates your very own FOAF file from a web form.

C4 ID cards

Now, that's how you do an Identity Card. Well done Foundation 33!

Identity Course

This paper on Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community by Judith S. Donath is a part of the course reading of an MIT course called Who we are and how we perceive ourselves and others... lots of great reading material here. Thanks to Dan Dixon for bringing this to my attention.

Links a plenty

DigID

Ooer! Wired article "The SenSay cellular phone, still in prototype stage, keeps tabs on e-mails sent, phone calls made and the user's location. The phone also adapts to the user's environment."

RFID more privacy and identity issues here... Radio Frequency Identification - tag items with a radio chip the size of a pin head.

IA, ID & Graphic Design

Useful IA and Design Resources for sorting out work practices and process.

Deciding which usability test method to use. Nice overview of different usability methods

Found Gold on colour theory and international interpretations of it in design. Colour Matters, Symbolism of Color in different cultures. Also, Colorcom colour consultants.

"Create-ivity"

The trouble with out of the Box thinking article on Ubiquity magazine site.

Random

Grays Anatomy Online. I always loved the book, now it's online.

Attribution & Blog Currency

I want to document an interesting pheonomenon. When Person A 'blogs' an idea, the reader automatically assumes it is Person A's idea. This doesn't seem strange until you observe the same phenomenon when Person A attributes the idea to Person B. The reader still, even if only subconsciouly associates where they picked up that thought (or 'memes') with Person A's blog.

Case in point: These ideas that I'm presenting here in this post, are not mine. I am now attributing these ideas to both Alice Taylor and Paula le Dieu with whom I work. I have picked it up in conversations from them and am now blogging it. But, from now on when you the reader, recall this idea (if you ever do), I suggest that you will associate it with this blog (if not attribute it to it's author as well).

Furthermore, as Paula points out, if the originator of the idea's name(s) is not hyperlinked, then the impact of stating them is significantly less because they don't have a web presence. This holds true particularly in the case where the readers are more often that not, other bloggers.

I work in the web development industry, which happens to be the same place from where many bloggers and therefore readers of blogs come. The ideas presented on this blog are in large part aimed at an audience of my peers, with whom I work now, or may work with in the future. I am more likely to be known within the web community because of this blog. Therefore ideas on here are of some value, forming a currency within the circles of those readers who might visit this page.

Surely, this means that those in my industry without blogs, are at a disadvantage to those who do. Is this fair? Does that matter if nothing will change? Scholars have been doing this for eons (not to suggest that I or my peers are particularly scholarly). If an idea is not from a 'noteworthy' (literally meaning worthy of observation or notice) source who is known within the circle of alumni peers of the author, then no attribution to the conciever of an idea is usually made within a paper or publication.

This is also a child of its parent phenomenon, the 'digital divide' between the information rich and information poor and between the blogs and blog-nots.

Alice and Paula conceived this idea and pretty well all the other thoughts presented within this post after noticing that some of their ideas were being presented on blogs, by other members of their professional peer group. They don't have blogs or websites, so there's no hyperlink to more about them. Will you remember their names, or this blog?