Information Cards at Internet Identity Workshop Spring 2009
The Spring 2009 Internet Identity Workshop concluded three days of intensive discussion of key Internet identity technologies last week. Following an introduction to Information Cards on the first morning by ICF Executive Director Drummond Reed, sessions on Information Card technology were held throughout the week.
Mr. Reed and Kynetx CTO Phil Windley held two sessions on action cards, the new application of Information Card technology to augmented web browsing (for more details, see the ICF white paper, The Information Card Ecosystem). Mr. Windley demonstrated how an action card rule could be written to add a real-time Twitter search to a Google search results page. "With the Kynetx Rules Language (KRL), any Information Card can be used to share user context across two or more sites in ways that provide immediate user value", said Mr. Windley.
Mr. Windley also announced that Kynetx is starting a limited beta of its developer tools program. Interested developers should contact him directly.
On Tuesday, Higgins Project contributor Markus Sabadello gave a detailed demonstration of the new Higgins Cloud Selector. This is a particularly interesting development because it combines the advantages of both OpenID and Information Cards. "Any Information Card selector that stores its cards in the cloud can be turned into a cloud selector, so the user can still employ their cards even from devices where no local selector is installed," said Mr. Sabadello.
A cloud selector works by turning the cloud-based cardstore into an OpenID provider. This gives the user an OpenID identifier they can use to login to any OpenID-enabled website from a standard browser (even without a selector installed). The cloud selector will then display a Web interface allowing the user to select one of their Information Cards for login. The results are returned to the website as either a standard OpenID response, or can be enhanced to include additional Information Card features if the website supports them.
A complete functional test site is available that demonstrates all of the OpenID calls and responses in detail.
On the final day Mr. Windley teamed up with Azigo CEO Paul Trevithick, VP Product Management Tom Carroll, and OASIS IDTrust Steering Committee member John Bradley to demonstrate "OpenID Information Cards". This is a new application of action cards that simplifies OpenID login to avoid what the OpenID community refers to as "the NASCAR problem".
To use an OpenID Information Card, a user first downloads it from their OpenID provider into an action-card enabled browser such as Azigo. Then, whenever the user's browser encounters an OpenID login, it will automatically display the user's set of OpenID Information Cards to choose from-with the OpenID the user last used at this site highlighted. One click and the login is submitted.
"This is just a proof of concept at this point," said Mr. Windley, "However it shows yet another way how OpenID and Information Cards can work together-and how a smart client acting on user-permissioned rules can make browsing easier for everyone."
The next Internet Identity Workshop will be held November 3-5 2009 at the same location, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.