A Universal Roaming Profile?

Arnaud Sahuguet asks: "I have a cell-phone with my phone book, a PDA with my calendar info and my address book. I have my home desktop bookmarks, my work desktop bookmarks, my laptop bookmarks, my PDA bookmarks, etc. They are all mine, but somehow they are not, because they live in different networks (or on the same network but with different operators).Everybody keeps talking about convergence, but I don't see any convergence on the user profile front (data that matters to me). Microsoft is pushing for .NET MyServices, Sun et al. are pushing for Liberty Alliance, Apple is pushing for .Mac. Is it the right way to go?" One of the large major issues surrounding such a system would be implementing it in a way where the user can control the flow of data: where it is stored, when a certain piece of data can be sent, and who is allowed to get it. Sounds like a fine idea to me, what do you all think?

"As a user:

• would you be willing to have your personal profile information stored on the network?
• who would you trust? Your bank, your ISP, your cell phone provider, your company, the EFF, no one but you?
• what kind of guarantees would you require?

I have been struggling with this idea for a while and the best solution I can see is to reuse the Napster paradigm for my generic user profile infrastructure (let's call it GUPster).

Napster is (I should say was) a community of users willing to share MP3 music files, administered by a central server managing meta-data about users and files. I don't know what the exact goal was, but I can see it as a way to free ourselves from the music industry monopoly.

GUPster would be a community of network entities (e.g. servers at Yahoo!, server at SprintPCS, servers at my university, my home machine, etc.) willing to share standardized user profile components, administered conceptually by a central server managing meta-data about entities and components. The goal is to create synergies between network components in order to deploy value added services for the user. (Since I am working for the telecom industry, the goal is to make network operators happy by making end users happier.)

Just like in Napster, my user profile information will be distributed but the meta-data will be centralized (at least from a logical point of view) at the GUPster server. This way, I can decide that my credit card information will be stored at my bank, my calendar information on my Yahoo! account, my game scores on the Sony web site, etc. Network components storing my profile information will have to support the right set of interfaces and protocol and will register to the server the pieces of my profile they are storing.

Note: I will be the one deciding who stores what. Think of it as like moving to a new place. You can choose your electricity, gas, phone, cable and Internet providers.

Applications willing to access any of this information will talk to the GUPster server. And just like Napster, the server will not return data, but referrals (i.e. where this information can be found).

Unlike Napster, the central server will also enforce some access control policies defined by the user (let's call them my 'privacy shield'). If the request for user profile information is not OK (e.g. nobody can access my presence information after 9pm), the returned referral is empty.

Does it sound crazy?"