Posted 9:39 AM

Peaking under the LID

Jamie Lewis, this morning, points to a description of LID, Lightweight IDentity technology. It's major draw is that it enables personal identity management and it's based on existing identity tools (vCard) and technologies (URLs). Actually, as Lewis points out, it uses the XML version of vCard, which isn't, as yet, approved as a standard.

There is one huge drawback to LID, though. It requires a user to have full - and exclusive - control over CGI scripts for a domain! Most people do not - it's not something a typical ISP will allow to every Tom, Dick and Harriet, even those with their own domains.

Building on vCard isn't a bad start, and using a well-known URL is certainly feasible, but the actual implementation is going to need a lot more work.

Johnannes Ernst, CEO of NetMesh and originator of LID appears to be open to changes, though, as this reference to SMBmeta attests.

UPDATE (5:15 PST) - Johannes emailed me to note that 1) you don't need an exclusive domain or administrative control of CGI, just a CGI bin folder that's exclusively yours. You need a unique URL, but a single domain can host an ulmost unlimited number. He also notes that what's available now must be considered pre-beta and most folks will need to wait for their ISP to install the LID-enabling package.