I’ve had this link in my drafts for a while now, but it’s still something I want to write a little about. I recently watched the OSCON 2005 Keynote - Identity 2.0 presentation by Dick Hardt — other than having a name that could be any non-descript “actor” in a cheesy 70’s porn film, he does have a good idea and a fantastic presentation style.
The presentation is well worth watching for both its execution and content. It revolves around the idea of having a more centralised identity provider/verifyer for use on the internet., as both a web developer and a heavy internet user I can see the huge benefits and scope for something like this.
Any security/privacy concerns should be put to bed once you realise the huge number of sites you may provide personal information to on a daily basis to help you live your digital life. Sure a centralised provider will be a bigger target for hackers, but it should be more secure and simpler. This is just one of those ideas that when you start to think about you realise how useful and time-saving, when well implemented, it will be.
Until I saw Dicks presentation the original Ruby on Rails blog demo presentation, which I dubbed the ‘whoops presentation’, was my favourite. Unfortunately they seem to have re-done this presentation and take 2 of the presentation doesn’t have quite as much “whoops” as the original and that’s a bad thing where I’m concerned. It is however a good presentation that does well to explain the features and usage of Ruby on Rails and it still has a few “whoops’” in.