Archive for May 2012


Ten Years and Counting: A Blogging Anniversary

I blog because I think by writing. After ten years, I still find it's the best way for me to understand my world.
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A Smart Bike

Personal clouds can make every thing, even a bike smart. A smart bike has apps and data, just like a smart phone. What would you like a smart bike to do for you?
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Moving Toward a Relationship Network

Would you have your electronic bills delivered by Facebook or Twitter? Not likely. Your bank won't trust them and neither will you. You need a channel that is designed for banking with the right security, privacy, and legal foundations. A standards-based, decentralized, multi-channel relationship network, however, could easily be used for this purpose because the banks and companies delivering bills could define the nature of the channel. They don't have to wait for Facebook to get around to it and then hope they do it right.
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Facebook Domination Isn't Inevitable—It's Not Even Likely

More people—especially geeks—need to understand that protocols are worth the effort they require. And let's not dodge that; decentralized systems are more work. They are harder to design, harder to build, and harder to bootstrap. But the forcing function, freedom, is powerful and eventually wins out.
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Standard Information Sharing Labels

The Standard Label Kickstarter project is raising money to design a label that will standardize how Web sites let you know why they want your data and what they'll do with it. I'm a backer and I hope you will be too!
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Rich Sharing and Personal Channels

Personal channels support rich sharing. Consequently they are extremely flexible and can be used for many purposes. Personal channels provide a messaging system for personal clouds that provides access-controlled, filtered, trustworthy notifications, data exchange, and sharing.
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Unlocking Data Exchange: The Long Tail of Data

Much has been made of data lately. And with good reason. Data and the ability to exchange and process it are at the heart of modern society's productivity and prosperity. Data and algorithms are the engines that drive the economy in the 21st century. But data is often onerous to obtain, difficult to trust, and hard to understand. Fixing these problems--making trustworthy, understandable data flow more freely, consistently, and reliably--will provide a wellspring of new ideas and companies to prosecute them.
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PDS Interoperability

For personal data services to really take off, they have to interoperate. Here are some use cases that illustrate what PDS interoperability means.
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