Manage your online identity.

Another issue that’s generating some questions among ClaimID users is how to control one’s nickname when posting an OpenID comment to blogger. The nickname is what shows up as your name in the comment. Here’s are two examples of OpenID comments; the nickname is “Fred” in one, and “This shows up” in the second comment.

To accomplish this, first I leave a comment with my OpenID URL:

Once I do this, I am sent over to the OpenID server for authentication.  As you’ll notice, it asks me for some information:

Blogger is asking for your nickname, which is what will show up as your name in the comments.  As a test, I’ve given “This shows up” as my nickname.

Success!  Now I can control what nickname shows up when I comment.   Note, if you choose “Log in and Trust” this will set your nickname permanently unless you revoke Blogger’s trust, which you can do by managing your profiles at http://openid.claimid.com.

We’ve recieved a number of questions about this, so I thought it might be useful to post it to the blog. If you’re attempting to post a comment using an OpenID to a Blogger blog, you must prepend the http:// before your OpenID. For example, the following won’t work

But with the prepended http://, it will work:

Hope this helps!

Some very cool adoption news from the folks at Google: OpenID-based commenting will be rolled in to Blogger and Blogspot blogs.  The news comes from the Blogger in Draft blog, which has details and links.

If you’ve got a Blogspot blog and would like to enable OpenID commenting, you’ll need to log in to your account at http://draft.blogger.com (hat tip David Recordon).  Once there, you can enable OpenID commenting by browsing to Settings -> Comments, and enable “Registered Users.”  One very clear drawback here is that by placing your blog in “Registered” mode, you may no longer accept Anonymous comments.  That should be fixed by the Blogger team; OpenID commenting exists within an ecosystem that values the spectrum of identity, from anonymity to full-verification.

Here at claimID, we’re constantly trying to find ways to add small bits of technology and standards to our existing code. We’ve had XFN built into our links from the beginning, but that functionality has been hidden behind our “advanced” tab whenever you’re creating or editing a link for your claimID page.

Now – we’ve invoked some of the latent power in this XFN and have auto-added rel=”me” to any link that is verified in our system (via MicroID). As new verified claims are added to your accounts, they will also be marked with rel=”me” and be compatible with the recent discussions around the Open Social Web and microformats.

XFN and rel=”me”

Identity consolidation is something we’re only beginning to tap into. As the web becomes more programmable and mashable, XFN, along with other microformats and small building blocks like MicroID, begin to show their potential.

Here is a short section from the XFN pages at GMPG:

Identity
Me is used to indicate that the link points to a site for which you are responsible. This is useful when pointing to various profiles on social-networking sites, for example, or when pointing between two different blogs run by the same person. Note that use of this value is exclusive of all other XFN values; thus, you cannot declare rel="me co-resident" even though it is to be hoped that you are in fact co-resident with yourself.

This addition is only a small thing, in the grand scheme, but another solid piece of our commitment to education and advocacy with regard to online identity.

An example of how this is powerful

Plaxo’s open source Open Social Graph (e.g. Online Identity Consolidator). It spiders out from a source URL based on the XFN it finds. Then it builds the graph and reports back. Click on a few of the links below to see it in action – with the source URLs being our newly automated rel=”me” pages at claimID:

• habib – text, json, xml
• terrell – text, json, xml
• jsmarr – text, json, xml

More Discussion

Further reading around the idea of an open portable social network:

• http://blog.claimid.com/2007/09/claimid-supports-the-open-social-web/
• http://www.plaxo.com/info/opensocialgraph
• http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/
• http://www.sixapart.com/about/news/2007/09/were_opening_th.html
• http://opensocialweb.org/

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve built a ClaimID application for Facebook. This simple application will display your verified ClaimID account (verified with OpenID) on your Facebook profile, allowing people who visit your profile to have a trusted link to your ClaimID page. Here’s what the app (when added) looks like:

If you’d like to check out or add the app, you can visit its page here, or you can visit the app’s canvas page here. Feel free to add feature requests to the app’s wall, or just send us a note to info @ claimid.com.

And yes – its been a little quiet here for the past month, but with a wedding and international travel, we’ve been busy! But we’re glad to be back with this new feature for Facebook users.

Information Week’s Nick Hoover has penned a thoughtful article on the challenges of online reputation, and you can read the Slashdot coverage here.  ClaimID is featured in the article, alongside a number of web and identity luminaries such as Jimmy Wales, David Recordon and Kim Cameron.  The article is a thoughtful treatment of the very challenging problem we’re collectively trying to solve.  Without a question, identity and reputation are two long-term, large-scale challenges.  We’re excited to have come as far as we have, and we look forward to continued work and innovation in the area.

The Harvard Business Review has posted an interactive case study entitled “We Googled You“, in which a potential employee’s search engine results affect potential job placement.  It’s a thought provoking piece, and there’s interesting discussion going on over at danah boyd’s blog.  She responded to the case with an interesting, measured essay; my comments are in the thread.

Just a quick reminder that the Internet Identity Workshop will be happening May 14-16 in Mountain View, CA.

May 14-16 in Mountainview at the Computer History Museum.
1401 North Shoreline Boulevard
Mountain View CA 94043

REGISTER HERE

It will be the same format as usual. We will do a 1/2 day of talks on May 14th starting around 1 and going to 5 with a social dinner to follow. We pick these talks about two weeks ahead of time to reflect the latest and new developments in the field. This format provides an ‘on ramp’ for newbies to orient to the Identity Community and a way others catch up on the latest developments.

Open Space will begin at 8:30 SHARP on May 15th. We will have a full day likely with Speed Geeking after lunch for interoperability and application demo’s. A social dinner will follow.

If you’re interested in online identity, working in online identity, or would just like to see the community in action, make sure to register and attend – we recommend it.

Today, I came across a few interesting posts about the value of your online identity. First is the Bokardo blog, which was riffing on a post entitled “The Blog is the New Resume.” Bokardo writes:

Your blog represents you.
Represent! Your blog is speaking for you…to folks who might not know anything about you. Is it saying the right thing? is it saying the same thing you would say if you met someone for the first time?

Your blog is serious business.
It has the power to completely sway someone’s opinion about you. It fulfills the needs of lurkers everywhere who Google you to see what kind of person you are. Show them your best. (if you’re looking for work this is extremely important

At ClaimID, we obviously think that your online presence is more than just your blog, but the essential point of the post is relevant – what is online about you is very important. Linking in the comments is a post from Chris Messina, which is novel because you can find Terrell in the comments talking about ClaimID (which was nothing more than some really bad Ruby code at the time.)

I’m sure many of you are familiar with this, but in case you aren’t, Google has posted a lengthy blog post about managing its search engine results.  If you’ve got something in Google that you’d like to fix (or, if you’d just like to set up a robots.txt file for your website), you might wish to check this article out.