15 November, 2005 - 11:55am

A recent audiocast by the Gillmor Gang digerati at the end of the Web 2.0 conference last month explored amongst other topics, the problem of online identity silos and the need for Identity 2.0 -- a user-centric portable digital identity. Panelist Jon Udell of InfoWorld stated that there is hope for this to occur and gave examples of Sxip and Microsoft Infocard as heading in the right direction.

He believes that what's required to make this happen is a standard that everyone can trust and a means to explain to the end user so that it's comprehensible. He noted that Dick Hardt's Identity 2.0 presentation is brilliant at describing the benefits to individuals of a portable identity on the Internet. He recommended that this be taken one step further with a screencast that explains how this will happen. He has blogged about this topic in the past in his post "Envisioning Identity".