CardGears Announced - A Simple New Way to Issue Managed Information Cards

January 6, 2010

On the ICF mailing list earlier this week, ICF member Markus Sabadello, a leader of several Information Card-related open source projects, announced the availability of CardGears, a hosted service for web sites wishing to issue Managed Information Cards.

As Mr. Sabadello points out, Managed Information Cards can be issued by any website, whether just to provide a simpler and more secure sign-in mechanism, or to expand their brand to becoming part of the user experience every time a card is used. This website issuing a managed card is authoritative for the data on it. Technically, this requires two components:

  • A card issuing component. This produces and sends to the user a card file (in the .crd format) each time a new card is issued.
  • A Security Token Service (STS). This is the component that provides the claim values (identity information) on a card, such as first name, last name, e-mail address, etc. The STS is invoked every time a user uses or previews their card.

Mr. Sabadello explains, “CardGears makes it as simple as possible to operate both of the above components. First, you can design, issue and modify cards by using the intuitive web interface, without any programming at all. Second, you can use various APIs to integrate the CardGears service with your own applications. And you can mix and match each of these two approaches as needed for your site.”

There are currently has four demo sites illustrating various aspects of Information Cards and CardGears:

In addition to providing functionality for issuing cards, CardGears also offers two tools ("Card Inspector" and "Test Relying Party") that allow you to debug and understand the Information Cards you are using.

You can give CardGears a try at http://www.cardgears.com.

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