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It's since April that I don't write about the book (at the time we released the entire Chapter 2 on MSDN ). Last week I received notice that 2 new reviews were published: one is from the Denver Visual Studio User Group , the other is on Paul Van Brenk's blog . Both reviews are extremely nice, for which we are very grateful; I especially like the fact that in both cases the reviewers perceived our intention to deal with the problem from an holistic point of view, regardless of our affiliation with a technology or another. Thank you guys! (update: I've just stumbled in another review I didn't know about, on (in)secure magazine issue 17 . Niiiiice). In fact, in the last months various illustrious figures mentioned our book as well: David Chappell , Drummond Reed and Francis Shanahan wrote extremely nice reviews I never mentioned here until now, while I did mention the first entries from Kim and Mike . Add that to the podcast on Perspectives , the interview on channel9 with Carlo & Caleb, the podcast on SearchWinDevelopment , the bonus chapter on codeproject , the extremely nice reviews on the Amazon US page ... and again, mentions from Neil Hutson , Alexander Strauss , Feliciano Intini , Mario Fontana , ... I am sure I am forgetting something (for which I apologize). And now that I begun to hang out at Identity conferences, I can't tell you how pleasant it is to have complete strangers zeroing on you and telling you all sorts of nice things :-) I guess I am easily recognizable Read More...
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Jon Udell recently launched a new interesting format on the website perspectives.on10.net. Perspectives is a series of in-depth conversations with passionate innovators. Most work for Microsoft; some work elsewhere; all are advancing the state of the art in areas as diverse as robotics, digital identity, e-science, and social software. Information technology is the common thread, and Perspectives appeals to the technically-minded, but the show also aims to tell stories in ways that make sense to a wider audience. Each installment of Perspectives is delivered as an audio podcast, and supplemented by a partial text transcript. The first episode was an interview with two guys from the Robotics Studio team, Tandy Trower and Henrik Frystyk Nielsen. The quality of the interview is clearly top notch, the scope of the topics strategic & forward looking but still solidly rooted in technology: Jon's editing makes things flow beautifully, and the transcript is incredibly handy for speed readers & search engines. In short, I LOVE IT :-) Hence, it is with ill-concealed pride that I announce the subject of the second episode : it is a chat I had with Jon back in December , just days before the book came out. The casus belli was the book itself, that Jon was so kind to read in prerelease version, but we ended up talking about identity on a much wider sense. We touched on certificates versus managed cards, omnidirectional vs unidirectional identities, WS-*, openID... Jon is a *great interviewer*, Read More...
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As mentioned in a post last November , Kim himself made us the huge honor of writing the foreword of our book "Understanding Windows CardSpace" . Today I had the same thrill as, while opening his blog , I've seen he dedicated an entire post to it ! You know, it's a strange feeling to go through the post and, like with the foreword, once again realize that Kim Cameron took the time to read what we wrote about a subject that owes so much to him :-) The part I personally prefer is the following: Above all, it is a readable book that balances technology with the broader issues of identity. I imagine almost anyone who reads this blog will have something to gain from it. I especially recommend it for people who want a holistic introduction to digital identity, CardSpace and web services. I think the book is excellent for students. I even expect it will be enjoyed by more than one policy maker who wants to understand the underlying technical problems of identity. That's exactly what we hoped to achieve: offering an entry point for whoever wants to participate to the discussion about identity, regardless of their previous knowledge of the subject, while trying to deliver value also to people already fairly familiar with this space. It was a challenging task and those words from Kim are the best validation of our effort we could have ever hoped for. Thanks!!!!! :-) Read More...
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Progress , my friends, is a wonderful thing :-) Read More...
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Few days ago I've been notified that the 2nd chapter of our book "Understanding Windows CardSpace" is now available for free online , on the pages of Code Project (takes some time to load from my connection, don't give up). That's a very big chapter, for architects and business decision makers, focused on showing how the identity laws and the identity metasystem are addressing many of the challenges presented in chapter 1. It also shows the role played by WS-Trust & friends . There's not much of Windows CardSpace in this chapter, apart from its positioning as the identity selector that comes with Windows: in fact I like to think that the same text could have been used in a book about Higgins or any of the of the projects in this space. (BTW, Paul says extremely kind things about the book here . Thank you Paul !). Many of the topics in the chapter do not have a natural order of presentation, but they all sort of depend from one another in a way which was pretty difficult to disentangle. Furthermore it is important to introduce all the new concepts in the right context, in a coherent discussion, without forgetting anything important just because you approached the matter form one angle rather than another. To give you an idea of the planning effort it required, I fished from my archives one of my mindmaps for this chapter: Pretty wide, eh? I just *love* MindManager ! See, that's the essence of a discussion I had almost one year ago with my good friend Gianpaolo . We were discussing Read More...
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Very impressive! I am sure that this great ranking is also thanks to the readers of this blog... so THANKS :-) Amazon stats are very volatile (I'll make a more detailed post about it), but it's still great. I think this is the best rank we got since publication. I am so glad that the topic elicits all this attention. I can't imagine what will happen once we'll move to the next phase ;-) Read More...
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[synopsis for the English readers: a financial newspaper in Italy published an article about CardSpace ; I make some considerations about it] Cari lettori italiani, e' parecchio che non scrivo un post nella lingua natia... come e' parecchio che non trovo il tempo di pescare qualche collega italico e immortalarlo per Italia9 ; provero' a fare qualcosa a fine febbraio, ma non prometto nulla :-) Comunque. Oggi sono passato dall'ufficio di Kim Cameron , per portargli una copia del Libro (autografata :-))e ringraziarlo ancora per la sua lusinghiera prefazione. Mentre stiamo amabilmente discutendo come sta andando il libro (bene, grazie!!! ;)) improvvisamente si interrompe ed esclama "ah, I've got something to show YOU". Woah, chissa' cos'e'.. non gli sara' piaciuto qualcosa che ho detto nel video uscito ieri su channel9 e mi vuole bastonare? Si mette ad armeggiare con la stampante e mi porge il printout di un articolo su cardspace ... in italiano! Quando e' passato dall'Italia lo scorso Novembre (Feliciano ne ha parlato qui ) e' stato intervistato da ilSole24Ore, che oggi ha pubblicato un articolo al riguardo . L'articolo e' ben bilanciato, e IMHO riesce bene nel comunicare l'essenza del problema anche ai non addetti ai lavori. Sono davvero felice che una testata prestigiosa come ilSole24Ore contribuisca a portare il problema all'attenzione di tutti e soprattutto dei business decision makers. L'unica cosa che mi sento di sollevare e' lo spelling sbagliato del progetto Higgins ("HiggHins"), Read More...
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Last week Caleb and I have been surprised in my office by Charles "Carlo" Torre and his camera. The result is an impromptu interview about CardSpace , which is currently on the front page of Channel9 (direct link here ). If you have time, take a look… we laugh a lot, but we manage to make some serious point here and there :-) and of course we mention the book , which is even on the "front frame". I have to remark that I am *always* amazed by Carlo 's skills as interviewer. He provides a fresh perspective, making the right questions, and yet he discreetly blends giving space to who is interviewed to make his point with his own personal style. And he's not afraid to put you in the spot and ask tough questions... he really takes the part of the audience. Carlo, it's always a pleasure to chat with you :-) Read More...
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On the Paris-Seattle flight, coming back after 2 weeks spent stuffing myself with all sorts of food with the excuse "after all, you can't find this in USA" :) Before hurling myself back in the vortex of daily work, and celebrate the end of the year with something crazy, I want to take some time writing down some hallucinatory (=vision without execution) thoughts about omnidirectional identities . Be warned, this may be just pointless rambling at this point. Few weeks ago I chatted about this in front of a microphone with John Udell , digressing along a crazy tangent instead of answering his questions about the book (I eventually came back to Earth and answered properly :)). I don't know if he'll deem those fragments publication worthy, but just in case I'll make a brain dump here. It's not that there's much more to do in this small seat anyway (just finished the latest Eco . He didn't mention underbite at all, I'm happy). Looking back at the activities related to identity in the past year, I am glad to report that amazing progress has been done. Something that makes 2007 very different from 2006 is the kind of work that was made: in 2007 the accent was on execution. The vision behind the metasystem is still being explored, sure, like Kim's series on linkage or the discussions about display token and first law demonstrate; and I feel that conjugating the metasystem and claims in enterprise environment is an area that still need focus (especially in fighting old forma mentis that Read More...
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Ah finally. I waited for this moment a looong time :-) the first draft of "Understanding Windows CardSpace" is available in prerelease online, on Safari Rough Cuts . More details below. It's already few weeks that our book, " Understanding Windows CardSpace ", showed up on Amazon and in the in-store kiosks at Borders . It's really an emotion to make an ego search and find a book that you wrote , as opposed to books in which you are acknowledged (which BTW is always VERY nice! Thanks to the authors of " Writing Secure Code for Windows Vista™ "," Web Services Architecture and Its Specifications: Essentials for Understanding WS-* "," Web Service Security "," Windows Communication Foundation Unleashed " and " Microsoft® Windows® Communication Foundation Hands-on! Beta Edition " for mentioning me). The manuscript is finally in a shape that allows to give a good idea of what the final book will look like: and while it's true that many figures are still the sketches I made on my tablet, if you are a regular reader of this blog you are definitely used to the style... Hence, we published the manuscript in its current form on Rough Cuts . Rough Cuts is a great service provided by Safari , that can be accessed even if you are not a safari subscriber. In their own words: Sometimes you just can't wait for the book. When you need to gain early access to information on cutting-edge technologies, turn to the Rough Cuts service from Safari Books Online. With the Rough Cuts service, you'll access Read More...
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