Digital Identities Now Available

Largecranium writes, "I-names, the only globally unique, resolvable namespace in parallel to the DNS system and compatible with OpenID, are being introduced during Digital ID World in Santa Clara. I-Names are only as useful as the services they enable; the services that are available today are interesting but not life-changing. The ones that are coming in the next 6-12 months could change the way people interact online. I-names and their value (today and tomorrow) are casually explained at iwantmynamenow.com." I-names are the lineal descendant of the technology that began as XNS and continues evolving today as XDI.

Comments

Re:Trust / No Trust

[elFarto the 2nd]

I was looking at OpenID the other day, and if you really want, you can run an OpenID server (there's one written in PHP) on your own webserver.

Regards
elFarto

Re:Could somebody explain it?

[artson]

As it says a little later in the discussion, it's another twenty bucks to register yourself in someone's database.
Supposedly it gives you a permanent internet identity that could be useful for ID and shipping purposes.
See the article in Wikipedia, it has a good explanation and lots of useful links.

They've been trying to get a successful launch of this for some time now and it has so far failed miserably. I'd say it's because many folks on the internet like being anonymous or hiding behind a nym.

Re:A permanent online identity?

[kfg]

I don't want to give them all my SSN. It's private, meant for government/tax purposes, but now everyone claims they need it.

This is what happens when the government sees itself as an interested party in all financial transactions.

KFG

Bad Idea - Reawakens old problems and solves none

[CFD339]

So, now you have another place for "name prospectors" to hunt down all the best names and try to make money by owning the ones that have marketing value. The site's home page even says:

"these names are unique, so those who are paying attention can get the name or names that they want."

That was enough for me to write it off.

This doesn't go as far toward an actual unique and secure identity as an x.509 certificate, isn't as flexible at handling people who have the same name, has no track record for trust or security, and is controlled by a single organization.

This looks to me like someone's way to make money fast on the interweb by having a signup race for cool names at $5 (then $20) per year each.

We know how well regulated, fair, and efficient the DNS system has been.

Re:Big words make BadAnalogyGuy crosseyed

[lavaface]

I think it's a little more than that. I first came across XDI when I was researching open alternatives to Myspace. I signed up for friendster several years ago but never really used it much. When I finally got a myspace account, I had to fill out the same info yet again (interests, etc). On top of that, I found the myspace interface annoying. What would be great, I thought, would be a basic profile that could be shared across different sites. Kind of like a vCard on steroids. Something that would preserve your relationships with other people. XDI makes this possible.

I found the following article on XDI a good introduction: The Social Web: Creating An Open Social Network with XDI I encourage anyone interested in trust networks and reputation systems to read it.

I suppose mentioning Myspace is no way to ingratiate myself with the Slashdot mods but I think that the underlying model paves the way towards The Net in Osrson Scot Card's novel Ender's Game. For those unaware, The Net is a global forum of governance. Different "salons" debate policy issues and are voted upon. It's distributed democracy.

To just wrap up my short post (it's too early still), these issues are rather abstract, but will become more important as our world becomes increasingly interconnected. Another essay on the general subject is by Shawn Murphy, the man behind Nooron. He explains the idea behind nooron in How to Build a Global Brain I've submitted links on nooron and XDI to slashdot before, only to have them rejected in favor of the latest iPod "killer." So it's good to see something finally published . . .

I'll post more later after breakfast and coffee . . .

Re:Big words make BadAnalogyGuy crosseyed

[bogado]

Where is the preview button when you need it... Those are :

& aacute ; = á
& eacute ; = é
& iacute ; = í
& oacute ; = ó
& uacute ; = ú

Without the space, obviously. :-)

Evidently you guys don't have a clue about XRI

[Teilo]

To all you who call this nothing but a database scam, ala the darknet DNS registries, you're dead wrong. i-Names is the popular name for XRI, which is an OASIS standard. Those who sell i-Names are not fly-by-nighters just trying to make a money grab. They authorized by the XRI governing body to do so, and are the exact equiavalent of a DNS registry. There are a dozen or so i-Names brokers. The entire system interoperates. Many of the i-Name brokers are also DNS registries, such as Neustar.

XRI is an open standard, and the only such standard that there is. Saying that an "open source" free alternative will soon present itself is absolute nonsense. That's like saying, "Soon a free alternative to DNS will be available". Almost every post I have seen here is treating i-Names like some company. It's not. Stop arguing with me. You don't know what you are talking about.

I think you guys should stop shooting from the hip, and actually (I know this is asking a lot on /.) do a little research. Yes, centralized authentication is one part of this. But there's a whole bunch more. In XRI, services are user-centric, not server-centric. i-Names have i-Numbers in a similar manner to which DNS records have IP's. iNumbers map to a particular broker's server which obey's the iName's contact restrictions, and allows a person to provide services associated with themselves as a person. These services may, for instance, be include a basic web page, and in that way would be similar to a URL. But the service might just as well be email, a VOIP address, heck a dating service even (who want's a piece of me?). The services do not replace things like email and VOIP. They abstract them. They provide a layer where you control who communicates with you and how.

The key point here is that while the services may have backward compatibility bridges in place to allow interaction with the non-XRI world, they are particularly designed for comunication between two different identities, which communication is arbitrated by the rules which both parties establish. It's a new way of thinking about services on the net, and as such it's going to take you all a while to wrap your minds around it.

Don't let the similarities to MS passport scare you. Yes, there are some common ideas, but XRI goes much further, for it provides a generic framework for a wide variety of open source services, vs. a closed system which is little more than a single-sign-on.