Today Google released a new web browser called Google Chrome.  I went thru the short little videos talking about all the features and functionality.  Not a whole lot new in there except for the browser crash feature which allows you to see how much memory each one of your tabs is using.

I just downloaded the Google Chrome Web Browser and started playing with it.  So far so good.  it did a good job of importing my bookmarks and my site browsing history.  I'm sure just like anything else it will have some useful features and functions.  And also like anything else it will have some challenges.  Here is a report from Infromantionweek on Google Chrome.

It will be more interesting to see where Google will take the Google Chrome Web Browser in terms of advertising and marketing.  Google seems to be reaching deeper into the users history and button pushing, hence this could leave a trail of cash to their bank account.

 

During the past year and a half I regularly called several of the candidates to interview them on a small business web site MySuccessGateway.com and ask them how they would approach small business issues: i.e. minimum wage, taxes, SBA, Federal SBA contracts going to Fortune 500 etc.

I was finally able to land an interview with Wayne Allyn Root, VP candidate of the Libertarian Party.  As I listened to Obama deliver his speech last night at the Democratic Convention he talked about small businesses and start up's and about offering them tax incentives.  This is the FIRST time I heard the candidate talk about small businesses since the beginning of the primaries.  Same goes with McCain, he is now talking about helping small businesses too.  (You would think these "leaders" would concentrate on small business owners throughout the election process since everyone in the USA seems to know a small business owner, there are 25,000,000 of us here in the USA).

Funny how both these guys are finally coming around to recognize that small businesses are the economic engine that run the USA as well as the employment engine.  As we come closer to election day we are stuck with the same 2 parties who got us into this mess.  I guess we will elect one of the two, and I guess we will be expecting a different result?  Right?

If we expect change we will want to bring in the Libertarians and the Green Party to the debates.  If we don't expect more partisanship, fighting, gridlock, corruption, inaction and lousy results.  I don't like being a naysayer but none of these guys are talking about things that really matter i.e. compound interest (oh, sure the war matters but it is only a symptom of a failed energy policy since the Carter era) that will crush future generations.

The one thing that seemed to irk me about Obama's speech last night was the fact that he seemed sympathetic to Detroit and that it was the government's fault for their problems.  Here is where the problem lies.  Detroit has been making junk for the past several decades, so much so that the Japanese have built auto plants in Detroit's back yard.  The unions have sunk Detroit, the management of Detroit automakers aren't making fuel efficient autos that are not cost effective and they are not moving fast enough to develop green technologies.  We all need to stop looking for handouts and get off our asses.

 

Interview with Small Business Advocate and Libertarian Vice Presidential Candidate Wayne Allyn Root.

If you care about the future of the USA you want to hear this podcast. Wayne Allyn Root is a man of passion and the first “citizen politician” on a major ticket. This man is on fire! He comes out loud and clear and right now Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root can use the help of small businesses to help them get elected and rebuild America. Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root of the Libertarian Party must work to be included in the National debates.

We cover a lot of ground in government waste and the broken systems. Wayne says that many of the presidential candidates know anything about small businesses, hence this is why they have not done any interviews with My Success Gateway, LLC. Wayne is an entrepreneur, he knows what it is like to run a business on fumes, he understands failure, he even wrote the book on The Joy of Failure! He promises to NOT touch your wallet. He says that 4 years of Barack Obama won’t change anything except for higher taxes and it is like voting for 4 years of bigger government similar to Karl Marx. He says voting for John McCain is like four more years of war like George W. Bush and four more years of warrant less wiretaps.

BobBarr2008 just hired their fund raiser. They are about to embark on a national tour. These guys are just getting started. Bob Barr and Wayne Root are polling at 6 or 7 million votes according to the Zogby International Polls as of July 21, 2008. If they can get to the 15% threshold they will be included in the National Debates. Root says he has a large constituency of 27 million small businesses, 4 million home schooling parents and over 50 million poker players, 12 million played online. Root says he is known as the “King of Vegas.” Root is a “Barry Goldwater Libertarian.” Cutting government down to size and reducing taxes.

Lawyers destroy deals and gum up deals and most politicians are lawyers. They create laws to show how smart they are. “Lawyers are ruining our country.” Wayne goes into global cooling and global warming. We touched on so many subjects in a 40 minute podcast. He refers to the Republicans and Democrats are “big and bigger” and “dumb and dumber.” We spend billions on the War on Drugs and we have nothing to show for it other than ruining people’s lives. The country is off track according to Root and he is doing something about it by running for public office.

“Do you know the difference between the drunks in Vegas and the drunks in D.C.? The drunks in Vegas use their own money! Open your wallet, look inside, vote for me (Wayne Allyn Root) and he promises to stay the hell out of there.”

Here is a blog post for viral marketers.  Damn I wish I thought of that!

A while back when Andy Sernovitz was head of WOMMA he and I did an interview to talk about word of mouth marketing.  He just sent me an e-mail today about viral marketing and it has a few tips that might be helpful for those of us who want to leverage the power of word of mouth and Internet viral marketing.

Andy talks about his new book Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking.

Andy gets the endorsement of Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki have written forwards and afterwards in his new book. Rules for revolutionaries contributed.

Andy’s word of mouth definition: “Giving people a reason to talk about your stuff, making it easier for the conversation to take place.”

With no shortage of traffic on Social Networking sites everyone and their brother are trying to figure out a way to monetize it social media.  In this article by the MIT Technology Review they go in depth with facts and figures of sites and pundants with projections.  I tend to look at social media more like a giant fishing net with big holes.  A lot of the fish swim into the net but get away.

So if they are going to swim into the big fishing net you want to have a second fishing net to catch the fish.  This net is your web site.  If your web site is SEO optimized you stand a chance of converting some of the social media traffic.  What I mean by this is a well optimized SEO site has landing pages that CONVERT.  They convert users to take action and leave their contact info or make a transaction.  So if we can get this part to work chances are we stand to get better results from social media.

On the other hand, the fact that MySpace missed their bumbers by a mere $800 Million is just a mere detail.

Exerpts from the article:

Lookery, an advertising network that buys ad space on Facebook in bulk, has been reselling that space at 13 cents per thousand times an ad is served, or in ad industry jargon, at a $0.13 cost per mille (CPM). Facebook sets a minimum CPM of $0.15 for its "social ads," which allow advertisers to target ads to Facebook users and groups according to characteristics like location and age. And over the last year, MySpace has lowered its banner-ad rate from a CPM of $3.25 to one of less than $2. By way of comparison, a banner on ­Mashable, a blog covering the world of social networking, has a CPM of $7 to $33, depending on its size. Websites with clearly defined audiences of executives and technologists who purchase corporate products and services, such as TechnologyReview.com, do best of all. Technology Review's site boasts a CPM of $70. "

"Perhaps most optimistic of all is venture capitalist Ron ­Conway, the subject of the book The Godfather of Silicon Valley, who has invested in Google, PayPal, and dozens of Web 2.0 companies. "MySpace projected it would do a billion dollars' worth of reve­nue this year. They came up short and did $800 million," he says. "Rupert Murdoch only paid $570 million for the whole thing. It's been called the best acquisition of all time. I think Facebook is a couple of years behind MySpace but on the same trajectory. It's a hugely monetizable business. I think it's a slam dunk."

Have you ever wondered if keeping track of all of the User ID's and passwords was something that would get any easier?  But who would take on this type of a digital identity project?  They would have to already be a large player in the online space for one.  In the offline world, did you ever think when your purchase a beer in a store that you really need to give the store owner your actual birthdate and mailing address?  All they really need to know is "am I of age to purchase acoholic beverages."  Wouldn't it be nice to just give them an ID of =jim instead of a lot of personal information?

Digital Identity has been brewing for a while now and we are starting to see some significant development in the space.  I was fortunate enough to have both of Microsoft's Mike Jones and Kim Cameron on the same Interview and for me it rolled well with both of their participation.  Both were open, friendly and very helpful in educating the audience on the nuances of digital identity and where the space is going.

I think that this space will get a ton of visibility in the near and long term future.  Weather you know it or not your digital identity is an important part of your daily experience in doing business, especially online.

As networks grow so does the complexity of information and how it is stored and used. This is a Pandora’s Box of sorts and it can be time consuming especially if one’s identity is compromised. In this podcast we cover digital identity from two of the seminal leaders in the digital identity space. Kim Cameron and Mike Jones will fill you in on the landscape and where the digital identity industry is heading.

One thing for sure is that their work at Microsoft will probably touch each and every one of us in some way shape or form. We cover Kim’s 7 Laws of Identity which were endorsed by Bill Gates and Senior Management at Microsoft and widely accepted by digital identity leaders.

1. User Control and Consent
2. Minimal Disclosure for a Constrained Use
3. Justifiable Parties
4. Directed Identity
5. Pluralism of Operators and Technologies
6. Human Integration
7. Consistent Experience Across Contexts

I did ask them about Bill Gates retirement and maybe Bill is starting a lucrative home based business?  Not to worry,  Bill isn't going to far.

Hey teamsters how is life going now?  You've negoitated the US Auto Industry almost right out of business.  Or is it the fault of the executives in Detroit?   This is not about blame, but let's start working together or we will only have foreign owned plants here in the USA.  How much more of this are we going to take?  The funny thing is this is not only happening in the US Auto Industry but several other industries.  As Guy Finley says, "the only 'problem' we ever have is the refusal to learn." 

So how does this fit with the these of this blog?  Not sure, but it really opened my eyes and I felt the need to write about it.  So what can Detroit do today about this?   Invite entrepreneurs to their research labs and share information and come up with 100 MPG cars next year.  If you think this is wishful thinking, it is, but you won't know unless you take action it's ok to fail.

This may be perhaps the most surprising article in this series as few investors realize how huge Toyota Motors (NYSE: TM) is, especially when compared to Ford Motors (NYSE: F). Toyota sports a stock market valuation of $168 billion, 12 times the size of Ford's market cap of $13 billion. In fact, an even more surprising statistic: Toyota is 8 times larger than Ford and General Motors (NYSE: GM) combined!

 

Remember the days of an HR administrative person who sent the spread sheet of the company payroll out to "All" at XYZ Company?  And remember the fuss about it all?  Well that day has evolved into a social network of sorts.  Check out GlassDoor.com Company Ratings, Reviews, and Salaries….yup salaries.

Most definately not.  This is a very brief snap shot of analysis at the current Burton Group Catalyst Conference North America 2008.

With over a decade of sustained development on identity management (IdM) technologies, the market is both flourishing and flailing. As IdM vendors swarm around the most lucrative IT projects, the demand for compliance software in particular has left a permanent mark on IdM landscape. Technologies such as user provisioning, user federation, and directory services do—when judiciously applied—help organizations achieve near term audit and regulatory goals. But the presumption of centralized, command/control built into these technologies is already showing its limitations. Businesses are increasingly relying on partnerships to achieve their objectives, meaning that users and IT systems are rarely all “under one roof.” Instilling control over distributed environments is a tall order for IdM systems, but the reaction can’t be to demand businesses to return to monolithic domains. Instead, the technology must become more sophisticated to enable businesses to collaborate efficiently over distributed systems and with a diversified user population.

When was the last time we saw a technology swarm every user online and off line?  Was it Paypal?  Oh yes PayPal is online only.  This is an interesting book that talks about Identity and the look at what happens when Identity is breached.  Zero Day Threat  author Byron Acohido video.

I wanted to see what the landscape was looking like for digital identity also known as unique identifiers and open id’s and single sign on and managing ones’ identity in a network filled world with several different protocols across several different devices and several different companies.

 

This post only scratches the surface and does not provide any analysis on the different solutions for identity and unique identifiers.

 

Keeping the integrity of information is key, keeping privacy is key, security is key, using a single standard is also key so I don’t have to manage so many unique id’s, phone numbers, passwords, URL’s, membership and account numbers etc.  This is no simple task in our complex lives.

 

With a single digital identity or unique identifier we will have the ability to control the network from the sender, (Linked In, Facebook, Outlook, My Family, Business, Visa, Blue Cross etc) the state of the user (working, traveling, sleeping etc.)  and I will also be able to manage the type and format of content being sent to me. (SMS, e-mail, vmail, IM etc).

 

So I started with this article in the New York Times and started to poke around a little and here are a few people and companies who are attacking the problem.

 

Companies First

 

Microsoft Digital ID for Office 2007

 

Windows LiveID The Microsoft Single Sign On Passport System

 

Windows CardSapce

 

Windows CardSpace enables users to provide their digital identities in a familiar, secure and easy way. In the physical world we use business cards, credit cards and membership cards. Online with CardSpace we use a variety of virtual cards to identify ourselves, each retrieving data from an identity provider.  

 

Information Card Foundation New as of June 2008 Google, Microsoft, PayPal and others collaborate together.

 

“Advance the use of the Information Card metaphor as a key component of an open, interoperable, royalty-free, user-centric identity layer spanning both the enterprise and the Internet.”

 

Open ID Directory

 

VeriSign Identity and Authentication Services

 

OpenID  consolidated a number of internet identity efforts, built an organization charged with promoting and protecting the efforts of this fantastic community, developed an Intellectual Property Process that will ensure OpenID stays open, brought a number of the major vendors as participants in the community and are seeing the first signs of deployment.

 

Parity i-cards contain information about you. Some cards you create - they might contain personal information or your preferences and interests. Other cards you collect - perhaps your driver's license or a credit score. Other cards represent a live link to your favorite web sites for "no-touch" profile updating. I-cards look like real cards, but they are stored in a secure, online wallet that only you can see.

ClaimID
claimID is the free, easy way to manage your online identity with OpenID.

 

 

myVidoop is a browser plug in and an identity provider with robust security provided by ConfIdent and a set of customizable features that are second to none.

 

Identity Bloggers

 

Mike Jones of Microsoft wrote a paper on the digital identity subject in 2005 and here are a few of the links on how he breaks down the information:

 

Digital Identity: The Challenge
What is the Identity Metasystem?
Identities Function in Contexts
The Laws of Identity
Roles within the Identity Metasystem
Components of the Identity Metasystem
Benefits of the Identity Metasystem
An Architecture for the Identity Metasystem: WS-* Web Services
Microsoft's Implementation Plans
What We Learned from Passport
Conclusion

 

Identity Woman

 

Kim Cameron’s Blog  

 

Don Schmidt Blog

 

Burton Group Identity Blog

 

Paul Trevithick Blog

Identity Groups

 

Internet Identity Workshop

 

Open Source Identity Systems

 

Microsoft Identity Lab  

 

Open ID and Card Space Demo  

 

Identity Management

 

Burton Group Identity and Strategies Research