The price for free online service, down to the last decimal

I’ve been thinking lately that websites should display a pie chart showing what you’re really paying for “free” online services, just to show that it really does always add up to 100%. Something like this:

Now Drummond points us to the world’s first truly honest privacy policy. A taste:

Remember, when you visit our Web site, our Web site is also visiting you. And we’ve brought a dozen or more friends with us, depending on how many ad networks

People and online services: leaving value on the table

The recent Google-Facebook flap demonstrates that the hottest battleground for users’ control of the data they pump into these online services is the sites’ Terms of Service. Why? Because when you’re not a paying customer, you’re not in a hugely strong bargaining position. As I put it to ReadWriteWeb in their piece on data portability implications of the debate: Facebook’s end-users are not its customers; they’re the product. (Or as my Data Without Borders pal Steve Greenberg sometimes puts it,  […]
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UMA validator bounty program announced

Are you a software developer or tester? You might be interested in the new $4000 bounty program just announced by the Kantara Initiative for:

Develop[ing] material that assists in validating the compliance of implemented authorization manager, host, requester, and authorizing user/user agent endpoints to the UMA draft specifications (and their referenced external specifications).

The first deadline, to express submission interest, is November 1 — which happens to be the day we’re hosting a F2F meeting just ahead of IIW.

You  […]
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UMA meeting co-located with IIW and other news

Thanks to Phil and Kaliya and the gang, I’m happy to say we’re holding an UMA face-to-face meeting at the Computer History Museum on the Monday just prior to IIW XI (pronounced “yewksie”?).

This follows close on the heels of a face-to-face in Paris at the Kantara conference, so I hope we’ll be able to crank through a lot of work in the next few weeks. What work, you ask? We’re shooting for draft completion of some key items  […]
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Aiming for data usage control

Earlier this week, W3C held a workshop on privacy and data usage control. Among the submitted position papers are quite a few interesting thoughts, and though I couldn’t attend the workshop, it will be good to see the eventual report from it.

I did manage to submit a paper that explores the contributions of User-Managed Access (UMA) to letting people control the usage of their personal data. It was a chance to capture an important part of the philosophy we  […]
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PayPal X Innovate is around the corner

It’s nearly time for the second annual PayPal X Innovate conference — October 26 and 27 at Moscone Center in SF. The PayPal X developer network has not only the coolest domain known to humankind, but it also hosts the Innovate conference, which is all about making the future of money happen.

Praveen Alavilli has slipped me a great discount code for y’all to use: “LETSINNOVATE” will get you $100 off the registration fee.

Ashish Jain and I will be  […]
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Personal RFP Model and Information Sharing Report

The Kantara Information Sharing group, led by the intrepid Joe Andrieu and Iain Henderson, has been doing a ton of work to make the business justifications for Vendor Relationship Management scenarios concrete and and the use cases actionable.

The group has two documents out for review, and seeks your input. (I’m really tardy blogging this; comments are due tomorrow, but I’m sure they’d be welcome even coming in a little late…) See Joe’s writeup for document links and  […]
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Identity tweetup at OASIS conference next week

Ian Glazer and I were planning a get-together next week at the OASIS Identity Management conference in D.C., and he suggested we make it a tweetup (bona fides established here). So if you’re in town because of the conference, or just…around, join us at Buffalo Billiards next Monday at 6ish.

The agenda looks solid, and since it’s arranged in a single track, should get some intensity going. I’m looking forward to participating in the privacy/identity/cloud computing session led by  […]
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Making identity portable in the cloud

Yesterday I had the opportunity to contribute to BrightTALK’s day-long Cloud Security Summit with a webcast called Making Identity Portable in the Cloud.

Some 30 live attendees were very patient with my Internet connection problems, meaning that the slides (large PDF) didn’t advance when they were supposed to and I couldn’t answer questions live. However the good folks at BrightTALK fixed up the recording to match the slides to the audio, and I thought I’d offer thoughts here  […]
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A privacy fear factor Venn

The excellent Wall Street Journal online privacy series got me thinking of a new Venn of human-to-application interaction, sort of an evil twin of this one.

Intersection A ∩ C ∩ U might be a video that starts playing the moment you visit a site with sound you can’t turn off … showing you a marketing message that seems eerily connected to your ongoing search for a new car … when you realize the video is of yourself at  […]
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