Joeseph Smarr has been using the term Open Stack

He’s forgotten user interface guidelines - but that’s OK - cause it’s right on anyway.

DISCLOSURE: Joseph and myself were the original authors of the “Bill of Rights for Users of Social Media.”

In yesterday’s post on OpenID I implied that OpenID could morph from being a single technology to a brand that encompassed a whole BUNCH of technologies that provided a single point-of-contact for end-user’s solutions, education, and branding.

So this is about branding.  “Will OpenID become the brand or will we need to find another brand?”

Open Stack is a little too general. I use the term open mesh - on purpose - cause I don’t WANT it to be specific.  Open Mesh has to represent the combination of a bunch of different stacks; some open, some semi-open, whatever.

But OpenID sure is a great term - and it could certainly be morphed into THE brand.

This is what we need right now - a  single entry point into solving the ID conundrum.  ID is hard and asking end-users to keep track of the  difference between Single Sign-On, authenticaton, reliable parties, claims, trust, security, privacy, data portability and persona - is just not gonna happen.

Ben Werdmuller (CEO of Elgg) left this comment on my post:

For me, it depends what you mean by ‘embrace’. It’d be awesome if OpenID could support the use of those things, and anything new that came along, perhaps even with a best practice list of standards for different markets - but on the other side of the coin, I’d worry about anything that tried to tie down the complementary technologies.

Well hell yes - we have to worry about anything trying to tie anything down.

But once a standard gets set - like OpenID, RSS, oAuth or OpenSocial - the idea is that each has it’s own life and will evolve on it’s own, while an amalgamated OpenID alliance/Open Stack - would ‘aggregate’ these standards together and focus on end-user solutions and education.

That’s what OpenID can become.

And BTW lets not forget DiSO - an effort headed up by Chris Messina and currently being paid for by Vidoop (thanks to Scott Kveton for that!)  Lots of folks have been tracking DiSo - for almost a year now.

DiSO is exactly the kind of bridge/gateway effort that can help glue together many of these standards - and put a user interface on the front of it.  What Chris (FactoryJoe) has been talking about for a while - are user interface guidelines so that importing. inviting, friending, sharing, commenting, etc. are all done - the  same way.

This is a crucial piece of the ‘present a comprehensive solution to end-users‘ puzzle.  Without that - and we’ll be stuck catering to geeks and nerds like us - forever.

Or as Rodney King said so eloquently “why can’t we all work together?”

I participated in a little debate at the recent IIW (Internet Identity Workshop) on this very subject.

I made my feelings very clear:

- that OpenID is NOT a full solution - it is an important piece of the identity puzzle (I don’t think anyone would argue this point)

- that users are confused about that, as they typically don’t see the whole picture or understand that ID is really hard.  So when they hear the term ‘OpenID’ - they assume it’s a panacea solution

- but OpenID can - actually solve all these issues - by embracing other complementary technologies (like oAuth, OpenSocial, Portable Contacts, microformats, FOAF and RSS/Atom) to create a wrapper solution oriented approach - focused on simplifying the the whole ID conundrum for end-users.  Barriers of entry, usability issues and confusing messages can all be solved by OpenID positioning itself as a single point-of-contact solution.

- to do all this the community had to decide “Yes - this is what we want OpenID to become” - and therefore the Executive Director you hire better be up to the task of pulling this off.

- and the OpenID Foundation are the folks who are supposed to make all this happen and at least solve this image impression issue.

Just what will OpenID be?

- a technology - which is part of the overall solution

- a solution - which embraces a suite of identity standards, protocols, etc. - delivering a one-stop “user centric” solution to a wide range of use cases, platforms, market sectors and userbases.

Guess which is my vote?

Nice enough guy, puts on a conference called SuperNova - but on two occasions I remember trying to ask some AT&T exec about why they weren’t turning on their dark fiber - and Kevin lets the guy get off the stage without answering the question.

Twice.

Two years in a row.

So I stopped attending SuperNovas.

So why do we think Kevin will act any different to these Telcos this time around?

Then we have all sorts of old guard, status quo people being appointed - I don’t see nobody representing our interests - yet.  I guess we can still be hopeful.

Here are the ideals we’ll be watching:

- continued control of our future by the Telcos - who pass their capital expenditures onto their subscribers, live under monopolistic rules and then bifurcate the bandwidth - creating their own ’second hi-way’.

- and then there’s the cable industry.  Can you say “throttle bandwidth” really fast 100 times?

- Copyrights and Patents laws - all the things that make the world - wrong.

- Stem cell research - it’ll take years for Barack to root out all the damage the nut-case religious right has done - but it  has to be done.

- Illegal gaming of the system - the Justice dept. doesn’t get to hire and fire based upon beliefs - yet Bush has infested the system with his goons.  Now the question is “how do we get rid of them all?” without breaking the law - the very law they’re sworn to uphold.

- Here in California we’ve voted for liberal medical marijuana laws, yet Bush’s Feds have strong armed us, arrested us and refused to recognize our state laws.

- Modifying scientific research - this is also something Barack’s people have to do - go back and clean up all the lies and mis-information peppered throughout the whole greenhouse, gobal warming debacle.

- And this doesn’t even go close to dealing with WAR and why Barack didn’t triangulate:

- gas prices

- why we invaded Iraq in the first place

- the deals Cheney cut for the energy industry

- and our $10B we’re paying for teh war (or the $500B we already did)

Barack has his job cut out for him - but if he hires all the same people to do the job the Clinton’s did - we’ll end up with the  same. I don’t seem to recall the Clinton administration being that progressive!

UPDATE: Some folks apparently think that Kevin Werback is “a net-neutrality advocate”. Well I’d like to see some evidence of that.  My own experience has been that Kevin is all into providing showcases for Telco execs to TALK about the  future - but when it comes to hard issues, all of a sudden he goes soft.  I wonder why?  Thanks to Dave Winer for pointing out this puff piece.

I agree with Mark Cuban - Barack needs to be listening to entrepreneurs - people who have started their own businesses.

Hah! I knew I recognized that guy!

Thank you Lora - whoever you are!

Congrats to Allen Hurff on being named chairman of the board of the OpenSocial Foundation. And to Joepsh Smarr for being elected to the board.

Congrats to Kara and Megan.  We were in the  same lamaze class together!

Microsoft does AIMpages right. Riding on thw coattails of MSN Messenger, Microsoft has done exactly what AOL tried to do - and failed.  But with the Windows Live platform,  Live mesh, their identity landscape, their installed base and bank account - Microsoft is doing open right.   And supporting OpenID.  And bringing it to the mainstream.  And there are APIs into all this stuff.  Two-way APIs!

Chris Messina has put out an independent study on OpenID.  Yahoo did one - with 8 female Yahoosters. chris’ study utilzied mechanicla Turk and had 301 responses.

AMD attacks NVidia - but they ain’t gonna win.

More yummy Yui-ness

FWIW everyting single thing I told these people to do - they ignored.  Now I hate to say I told you so - but $25M+ later - I guess I was right.

NetVibes supports Facebook Connect

Congrats to John Musser on 1,000 APIs tracked!

Coolio! Sling Media launches an on-line consumer facing whats-a-mah-callit.

I just love the India of NTT Docomo buying a piece of Tata. But they better realize that Indian curry is a LOT spicier than that bland stuff they call curry in Japan. 

I’m bummed Brett and Steve didn’t hear me start singing Funkadelics, but I was going off on the opportunities facing FriendFeed with XMPP leadership. Maybe next time.

Looks like XMPP is losing a lot of battles - for a number of different reasons.

Tagging - in any way, shape or form is essential for our future. But humans have to see the benefits of tagging!

RED, I’m still looking for a decent on-line image editor - here’s a list of 20 more to check out.

Now we’re in for a RIDE!

Anna & Marc–just for the historical record, David Axelrod did not work for the Voices at any point. He was a reporter for the HP Herald while attending U of C, appearing on the scene first in 1975, just after the Voices folded–but he was familiar with our paper as a student before he got the Herald job. Your dad and i “mentored” and helped educate him politically in that capacity, which is perhaps why you may recall seeing him hanging around the house. I later wrote a reference letter for him that helped him win an internship at the Tribune, which was the next step in his journalism career.–don

So I was interviewed by a journalist who claimed he was writing about Harold Washington - the first black Mayor of Chicago - whom my father worked with, helped and was friends with.  It turns out the was a red hater, muck racking McCain swift boater, doing research on my family kind of guy.

Apparently they were trying to connect my father to David Axelrod - who worked for my father back in the 60’s on a local newspaper he published (along with Don Rose) called the Hyde Park-Kenwood Voices.  I delivered that newspaper - by hand.

A young David Axelrod got his start as a reporter for the Voices and look where it got him.

This journalist -Trevor Loudon  and his buddy (the Real Barack Obama) produced some great stuff - which hopefully they won’t take down.  These two articles chronicle the history of my father and grandfather (and many of their colleagues) and with just a slight correction to statements like he was “an identified member of the Communist Party USA, a registered agent of the Soviet Union and a paid disseminator of Soviet black propaganda“ - most of the stuff is basically true.  The fact that hysterical people still equate the IVI (Independent Voters of Illinois),  ”Veterans for Peace” and “Get rid of the Red Squad” as communist fronts - is humorous, at best.

And I have all sorts of wild memories of being the son of one of the organizers of the meatpackers union. Don’t get me started!  Lets just say that if you’re wondering where I learned how to eat ribs - it was in every rib joint on the South Side of Chicago.

But my most vivid childhood memories are of election days and nights.  They’d start off at 5 AM, going to polling places, making sure that Mayor Daley’s cronies weren’t stealing the vote or shutting down polling places.  Then during the day we’d shuttle food and drinks to precinct workers, culminating with a wild night of results - which 98% of the time - we lost the election.  That was ages 0-10.

During the late 60’s my father got involved in the federal suit against Mayor Daley on jerrymandering the wards in chicagop, to deprive black voters of fair representation.  Once we won that suit (?? when - mid=70’s ??), we gradually saw a shift in black voters power - which culminated with the election of Harold Washington in 1983, when Jane Byrne and Mike Belandic split the white vote.

You gotta love these muck racker types, trying to lie and triangulate my grandfather’s effort to save Sacco-Vanzetti and my father’s efforts to end the war in Vietnam - to David Axelrod and then Obama.  We give these guys the right to say anything they want in our country (which is more I can say about their attitude towards gays, minorities or anybody who has beliefs which aren’t the same as theirs.)

So please check out this excellent (only slightly untrue) article on details of 50 years of my family’s community activism, trade unionism, poltiical activism. And since these guys travel in packs - here’s the accompanying article. They mention the publisher, but they don’t spell out the contents of the book that my father and his partner Leory Wollins published in 196o. It was on the Gary Powers U2 spy plane - which was shot down over Russian.  Which at the time - the U.S. denied existed.   So my father published a book with all the transcripts, photos, etc. from the spy trial in Russia.

This country thanked him for that - by inditing him in front of HUAC and calling him a commie.  My father than quoted protection under the Fifth Amerndment in front of Congress.  :-)

God Bless our Constitution.  When you need it most it’s there for you!

My mother was heavily involved in the defence committee who helepd fund the trial case which shut down HUAC.  It was the case of Dr. Jeremiah Stamler. I remember going to the International Amphitheatre in Chicago to hear Harry Belefonte sing and we got to sit in the box next to Dr. Martin Luther King and family.   You don’t forget memories like that from your childhood.

My sister found these posts today and clued me in - so I wanna shout out to her and her kids (down in Baco Raton, FL) and say “Thank you!”  Our family’s history and their connection to David Axelrod - who is one of Barack’s closest advisors - might even get us invited to the White House!

Indeed David Axelrod did work for my father (on the “Voices”) and I’m quoted (in the articles) as saying “I’m pretty sure my father knew Barack”. So I guess there really is a connection to Barack - and that’s why it’s so significant that my family was outted - today.  Its this year’s version of a swiftboating.  Just stir in enough lies with the truth and see what the oinment ooozes.

If you follow the research and blog posts these guys have been doing, they’re claiming that Leon Depres, Charles Hayes, Tom Hayden, Carol Moseley Braun - were all commmies.  They’re right - they were progressives, but not commies.  How weird that folks are still mud slinging lies like that - and be so out of touch with what is bringing Obama to power - as we speak.

Its about truth.  About being the good guy.  Not constantly attacking and spewing negative energy - which is what McCain has turned into.  The very people these guys are attacking are totally the good guys and happen to be my family and the people I was raised around.

Don Rose is still alive, writing and has been watching this campaign with excitement. Unfortunately Studs Terkel didn’t make it.  He died at age 96 over the weekend.

You see I was raised in politics, and I was taught how to catch a lie, how to read between the lines and how to really see what is going on.  That helped us play Apple off of Microsoft and IBM in the 80’s and it’ll help us build the open mesh today.

This inherent conflict between ‘zero sum game’ scenarios (as Chris Messina refers to it) and open standards efforts (which benefit us all) will be an underlying theme for the next few years until we see the behemoths support our standards and we see these ‘lock-in’ strategies fall by the wayside.

Right now - the VCs are funding any sort of “killer app” feature which calls itself open, rides on our coattails and can evolve itself into some sort of ‘innovative‘ lock-in scenario. The fact that users cannot move their data out or that these systems ONLY connect to other systems on THEIR terms - seems to be escaping most of the early adopters who are flocking to sign up.

Yes - the innovative killer app feature is coolio, but when I see single source solutions, lack of dataportability or interoperability and all sorts of claims of innovation and openness - then the bells start ringing and I start demanding multiple vendor adoption or else.

This pattern is being duplicated over and over again - with each new ‘cutting edge, breakthrough solution’.  Yah sure - they have plenty of VC money and sure - they’re giving away the service for free - for now - but that’s just their VC money talking. Unless these products and services allow their users to move their content, profile data and social graph - somewhere else - they’re ultimately closed.

The end-game for these so-called open services is to either sell off their company and technology or somehow monetize their killer app innovative feature by leveraging the installed base and going for a ‘freemium’ pricing model.

But (thank GOD) we have plenty of examples of the RIGHT approach to developing open standards which forgo this path to liquidity approach (again driven by VC investments) and which build open standards which benefit us all and help to move our world forward.

I posted something yesterday called “Taking advantage of open for proprietary purposes” and Chris Messina left a comment which backs me up on this:

I’m with you on this.

But the nature of our work, as hard as it is to sustain without those who benefit giving back, is to do a lot of the interop and commoditization work of the Open Web to keep the web moving forward.

Many of us want this kind of work and want the results of our work to resonate widely, and benefit many.

Indeed, much of the way we work flies in the face of the winner-take-all, zero-sum model. It’s not like we’re necessarily socialists (I wish more people actually knew what the term meant, rather than simply having an allergic reaction to it), but that our work benefits over a longer time horizon than most VCs or companies can or do operate is our wont.

Ah yes - the S word. In this election year we’re seeing the manipulation of terms and concepts wrapped around patriotism and sustaining an unjust war.  But I won’t go into “I’d rather be Socialist and right, than a war mongering imperialist” rant.

What I will point to is the wisdom of Chris’ words.  The long term benefits of OpenID, RSS, Atom, oAuth, microformats and the other standards that are being developed far out reach any profits generated for the  VCs coffers.  We’ve recently seen where the greed of capitalism, the public markets, banks and insurance companies takes them - so I wouldn’t count on any capitalists worrying about anything beyond the end of their greedy (now broke) noses.

What standards developers like Chris (and Tantek Celik and Joseph Smarr and Eran Hammer-Lahav and Kevin Marks and Dave Winer and a whole host of others) do is take the posture that helping out the masses and doing the right thing - is more important than profit and short term gain.  Its kind of like a modern day monk or crusader POV.

I myself also find that taking this posture is really the only way to go, even if it means hurting the ultimate payoff and possibilities of profit for my company.  Why is it so hard for VCs (and their funded companies) to realize that life is (in fact) NOT about making money?

Chris continues….

Personally, this is the only kind of work I really know how to do. I can only solve problems when thinking about them systematically. People and companies will invariably benefit from this work in the short term, and it’s unfortunate that we don’t have a better sustainability model for work like this. I guess this is why the Medicis were so wise in their patronage of the Arts; I think we need the same kind of patronage model for supporting and ensuring the health and well-being of the Open Web so that all can continue to benefit from and compete on it.

Me too.  This is the only way I know how to work. So a big thanks goes out to Scott Kveton and Vidoop for sponsoring Chris and the DiSO team and to the Harvard Berkman Institute for sponsoring Doc Searls and the  VRM project.

There are plenty of examples of great work going on - so it’s not like we don’t have opportunities to “do the right thing“.  ideally allot of the good will and cash that has flowed into Obama’s campaign and which helped fund Dean and MoveOn.org could also go into supporting DiSO, VRM, OpenID, oAuth, etc. - as we move forward.

That’s why I’m on a rampage to out these so-called open platforms and why I’m demanding that they contribute SOMETHING back to the community!  Its not like their VCs don’t have the cash!  They should consider these outlays and open standards efforts as part of their ‘marketing budgets’.

After helping to create one of the greatest lock-in proprietary formats of all time, I consider it my DUTY to help rectify this earlier transgression.  Back in the 80’s we had no idea that these sort of lock-in scenarios would transpire.  So imagine my surprise and dismay at what my former company has done.  If there ever was an argument why you should NEVER take VC investment - it’s Macromedia.

At MacroMind we were focused on battling the lock-in of Microsoft and Apple.  And here we are 20 years later still battling lock-in.  Only this time it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing, pretending to be open, pretending to be on our side.

But Twitter is as much of a lock-in strategy as anything Microsoft has even propounded.

And (surprise, surprise) Microsoft is starting to bring open to the masses, moving open down the marketing pyramid to billions of users who will benefit from connecting to feeds of content and people, profile accounts and participating in a unified ‘open mesh’ world.

Google and Yahoo are also opening up - mainly because we’re demanding it - and it’s the right thing to do - and it provides their users with the kind of compelling experience which will define our future.

So I’d like to know what Twitter, Bug Labs, Twine, Glue, FriendFeed, Gnip and OpenX are gonna do to participate in this open world?  And I’d like to know what they’re giving back to the community - cause I sure as hell haven’t seen any evidence - yet?

Evan at Identi.ca has helped to start the ‘open microblogging’ initiative.

Now THAT’s what I’m talking about!  Right on to Evan!

And to MySpace and Facebook which exemplify closed meshes and who also dabble in being “open” I say “Keep going, don’t stop, cause there’s no such thing as being half pregnant.  You’re either open or you’re not.”

Right on to the folks who are truly open and who ARE contributing back!

- SixApart

- Plaxo

- Vidoop

- Identi.ca

- Sxip

- Jan Rain

- VRM project

- Drupal community

- Technorati

- Automattic

- and all those behemoths who are doing the right thing - finally!

It was created when I was editing the video of a speech UI gave in Rotterdam in Sept.  The cameraman was pointed at me the entire time and missed the slides, so I then edited the presentation video and laid the .ppt slides on top of it - and came up with this video - which is yet another version of my treatise “How to build the Open Mesh”.  Anyway - in this speech I mention that if you type “Open is the new Black” into Google - I come up.  Here’s what I say about it - in the speech:

“That’s our SEO - come up with a good idea, and Google will remember it.  That’s the ultimate SEO = quality of the idea.”

There’s plenty of evidence out there that freeing users from lock-in and opening up the data of a system - is a good thing.  Providing APIs to that data is enabling what Fred Wilson calls ‘Content APIs‘ and that’s also a good thing.  I have a chapter in my book about “persistent ubqiutous content” on just this very subject.

So we’re seeing open permeate throughout our world and raising it’s head in lots of interesting ways.

My friends David Recordon and the Plaxo dudes (Joseph and John) along with Chris Messina have a IPTV show called “theSocialWeb.tv” and it’s probably the best thing out there to highlight the status, trends and memes of this world and which dives deeply into the geeky issues surrounding “open social networking”.

But in fact - it goes beyond just social networking.  Social features will soon be built into all software. That’s something else Fred Wilson is figuring out.  So we’re seeing him (and his VC cohorts) start to invest in all sorts of open platforms and products, but they’re missing a crucial element to the game - contributing back to teh community.  So that’s why I created the post “Taking advantage of open for proprietary reasons“.

Yahoo has finally launched their underlying ID layer - almost four years after I first asked Jerry Yang and Dan Rosensweig for that.  Over the subsequent 3.5 years I was told “it was coming”, “yah yah - we’re gonna do that“, “yah sure - we’ll have APIs for MyYahoo” - but yet as of this writing we still don’t have two-way APIs into MyYahoo.

The BBC seems to be getting their open act together - and building their own underlying ID layer under the leadership of Eric Huggers.  They’d better - they promised us Open BBC almost four years ago.

Microsoft has launched their Open Live Mesh Cloud thingie - Azure.  And Facebook and MySpace (though clerarly closed meshes) are opening up - in their own way.

iGoogle appears to be positioning itself as a key aspect of Google’s “digital lifestyle aggregaton” strategy.  With clean integration with OpenSocial, Reader, Gmail and (one would assume) ALL the suite of Google apps - iGoogle will soon be the state-of-the-art dashboard which I talk about in Chapter 6 - “UI Objects” - in my book.

But that doesn’t mean that NetVibes is going away - they’re starting to white label.

And lord knows what’s gonna happen once Clearspring and Gigya start running ads in their widgets.  That is one of the key milestones of our monetizable distributed business model.  And heaven help us once Twitter declares their business model next year.   Or FriendFeed starts to ‘experiment’ with ads.  Watch for stampedes of new proportions.

Some call it the open stack.  Others are bent on user identity oriented focus or an enterprise approach.  It really doesn’t matter.  Open will come in a myriad of sizes, shapes and packages.

Yes indeed - Open is the new Black.  Everyone is doing it, in their own way - which is EXACTLY how it’s supposed to happen - to build an open mesh - where others can come in and participate.

Key milestones coming up:

- a panel we’re doing at Digital Hollywood on Oct. 28th in LaLa - which rocked

- Internet identity Workshop - Nov. 10-12 in Mountain View, CA

- a panel we’re doing at LeWeb8 in Paris on Dec. 9th.

Until then - stay tuned and just keep chanting this:

“Open is the new Black” - on the BART

“Open is the new Black” - on University Ave. Palo Alto

“Open is the new Black” - on St. Marks in the Lower East side.

“Open is the new Black” - at Canter’s deli on Fairfax.

“Open is the new Black” - aht the public gahdens in Bahstun, on the Swan boat.

“Open is the new Black” - at the So. Kensington tube stop.

“Open is the new Black” - at the Janpath market in Delhi.

“Open is the new Black” - in Akasaka at the Hostess bars.

“Open is the new Black” - in Christiania in Copenhagen.

“Open is the new Black” - at Grey Area in Amsterdam”

“Open is the new Black” - at the Cafe San Marco in Trieste (where James Joyce went every night for 20 years.)

Report from the OpenID summit

I agree with Dare’s disagreement of John McCrea’s post comparing OpenID and Facebook Connect.  Apples and Grapefruit John.  Its a GOOD thing that Facebook is at the OpenID table - but OpenID is far from being a comprehensive solution like Facebook Connect.  Its powerful, it’s open, it’s ours - but it’s just a piece of the puzzle and that’s what usability suffers.

Speaking of Dare (and congrats again on his new baby!) I also agree with him that platforms need to be a two-way street.  That’s something I call “two-way APIs” - a symetrical approach to building our open mesh.  Microsoft seems to grok that and Facebook is doing everything it can to thwart it.

I had to re-read Jon Udell’s post on Azure a couple of times - and it keeps getting better.

Social network subscription at Dopplr - about time someone figured this out!

Did I forget to mention that Microsoft is going to be a reliable provider for OpenID and that Google is now turing Gmail accounts into OpenID?  And that Plaxo and Zoho are already supporting it? And that the community bitched and moaned about not supporting XRDS and Google listened. Even John Battelle is impressed.  Too bad he never attended any of the sessions we did at his own Web 2.0 - 4 years in a row.

Here’s what you really wanan watch - theSocialweb.tv boys talking about the best week OpenID has ever had.

Only Steve Gillmor could equate Salesforce, Ray Ozzie and Neil Young in the same “day in his life”. Yes - I read the new today - oh boy.  And it looks liek we’re about to elect our first “mixed race” president.

Context and the notion of a Universal profile - I wonder if this guy ever heard of OpenID?  :-)

Matt MacAllister has several examples why open is good for businesses

Google gadgets IN Gmail - now things are getting pretty interesting

Open is Everything

the Godfather of Banglore

Better social plumbing for the Social web

SocialGo + WidgetLaboratory

Kim Cameron games the system

Storytlyr, Glue - (and it’s semantic binding), Sobees, Cooliris, Facebook’s Scribe, Eventbox,