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. Besides the three that Drummond mentioned, we have plans - limited only by our resources - for many more, including:

I (along with most if not all of the digital identity crowd) have been following the development (as well as, it appears, the general acceptance) of Kim Cameron's seven Laws of Identity with great interest.

I haven't blogged for over a month, so here's a random rant to try to kick start this for me again...

Since the Xerox machine, people have been able to make easy copies of "the news," but forgery was tough as (say) the New York Times had a distinctive type face and "feel" to it.

Now with the Internet, it's trivial to make forgeries. (Phishing attacks work by creating convincing forgeries of trusted web sites.) It's deep within my philosophy that anything that can be reduced to bits (what I generically call "software") should be free.

Joi Ito wrote today about Global Voices (blog, wiki) which is "a name, an identity, a watchword to ward away the chills of restricted expression. A place for coordinating ideas; a source for inspiration; an optimistic, collaborative manifesto".