Free Software Linux

Since the early 1990s, I’ve been fascinated by the concept of online identity management: what it means to have an identity online, what stays consistent with the offline world, what becomes more fluid, and what becomes more fixed. It’s a very vibrant space right now, with commercial vendors, open source projects, trends, and standards all vying for attention. I’m thinking here of a couple of overlapping categories:

The open source company Ringside had an interesting idea: Ringside enables any website to be a container for OpenSocial applications. Alas, that idea doesn't look like it is going much further, and for a rather interesting reason:

One of the entries in the launchpad competition today was Sun Microsystem’s Project SocialSite. It’s part of the larger Glassfish project, and uses Apache Shindig as an OpenSocial container - they demo’d OpenSocial widgets running inside Drupal and MediaWiki - all running inside a Java Application Server. Video:

It’s a secret how much it cost them exactly, but Comcast officially confirmed it has acquired Plaxo, the social content and address book provider. What are the plans for the Plaxo within giant cable company and how will the lives of Comcast and Plaxo users be enriched?

Bob Bickel of Ringside Networks is always sending interesting stuff to my trusty Thunderbird. His latest exposition is a timely call to arms regarding the Social Web, and is worth five minutes of any Webmaster's time. In essence, Bob's argument is that some version of open social (all rights reserved, Google Corp.) is happening, and that all you Webmasters are going to be dancing in the streets when you see what this thing will do. If, that is, you wake up in time and get to grips with what it means. And part of that, according to Bob, will mean that you're going to have to get savvy with Social Application Servers like Ringside's.