Google is announcing Friend Connect tonight, a service advertised to "help website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors." Friend Connect employs OpenID and oAuth which is a good start, but how it puts them together is lacking vision and, disturbingly, may raise significant privacy concerns.

Google is a member of t

Day one at the Internet Identity Workshop, or IIW2007, began with Eugene Kim - Chairman-elect of Identity Commons ("2.0", now with rounded corners), asking those attending their first IIW to stand up - over two-thirds of the 150 or so people in the room stood up. This is a great trend - the word is getting out!

Many of us celebrated when it was announced that AOL has embraced OpenID. Does that bring us any closer to the goal of secure, privacy protected user-centric digital identity that empowers users, leveling the playing field between them and service providers to the great benefit of both? (OK, that's my goal, but maybe some of you may share it.) I say: no.

The problem with both Root and Attention Trust is that they collect, store and use your data in ways that are not always under your control, and you have no recourse other than to delete your data so they can't use it anymore - assuming they actually delete it.

Drummond Reed offers some practical answers to dizzy who asked some reasonable questions about i-names. I'd like to add a couple small points.

First, I'd like to stress that I agree with dizzy that i-names need services to become useful.