Verifiable Credentials are a brilliant standard to help... well... Verify Credentials. How do you know that someone has an MBA from Harvard? It's pretty easy to fake a degree certificate, or to change your name to George W. Bush, or simply lie. The same is true with any attestation - it's often hard to contact the issuer of a claim and check that it is genuine. Verifiable Credentials aims to solve that. The standard describes a document which includes the claim (this person is an airline…
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Someone took a nice photo of me recently. I'd like to use it as my avatar photo everywhere to present a consistent image. This is not easy to do. I've had to manually change it on a dozen different Slacks, a bunch of social networks, a few forums, all my email accounts, and I'm still not done. I just want to change my photo once. Because I'm vain and lazy. For a nerd like me, the solution is obvious: My latest avatar image has a permanent web address - https://edent.tel/avatar. When I…
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The ultra secure messaging app, Signal, requires a mobile phone number in order to sign up to it. This, as my friend Tom Morris, points out, is madness. People don't own mobile phone numbers. They are rented from mobile operators. Yes, you may be able to move "your" number between a limited set of providers - but it ultimately doesn't belong to you. An operator can unilaterally take your number away from you. If you move to a different country, you will almost certainly have to change your…
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Ever heard of Mydex? Here's how they describe themselves: Mydex provides the individual with a hyper-secure storage area to enable them to manage their personal data, including text, numbers, images, video, certificates and sound. No-one but the individual can access or see the data. Not just secure, but hyper-secure! They've been signed up by the UK Government to provide Identity Assurance. Pretty impressive, eh? Let's ignore the fact that their website doesn't use SSL and concentrate on …
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((Work In Progress - still need to add pics, videos and links))Yesterday, myself and a few hundred other bloggers, geeks, marketing droids and other social media maverns descended on Wallacepace St Pancras for the inaugural Social Media Camp London 2008.This is just a quick post to say what I did, what I liked and what I thought could go better,First off, enormous thanks to Vero for single handedly organising the whole shebang. Her Whuffie must be through the roof by now. The venue was…
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