Dopp Juice Archive

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there are a heckuvalot of tools out there. Here’s what’s working for me right now:

• Thunderbird – Managing my email (loving: filters, folders)
• Firefox – Browsing the web (loving: tabs, the web developer extension)
• WordPress – This blog (loving: admin panel, active community of developers)
• Google Reader – Blog-reading (loving: tags/folders, shortcut keys, starring)
• Ma.gnolia – Collecting miscellaneous links (loving: bookmarklet, preview thumbnails)
• LiveJournal – Keeping track of friends (loving: filters, threaded comments)
• Flickr – Sharing photos (loving: tag searches)
• Twitter – Microblogging and keeping track of tech pals (loving: SMS integration, Twitterrific, the fact that I can display my most recent tweet at the top of this blog)
• Last.fm – Listening to music (loving: discovering new music that I actually appreciate)
• SocialText – Keeping track of work notes (loving: separated workspaces, useful text editor)
• LinkedIn – Professional networking (loving: the reviews people have left for me there ::blushes::)
• GreenCine – Keeping my apartment stocked with good movies (loving: the independent film selection, not giving money to NetFlix)
• EggTimer – Timed reminders (loving: the “repeat alarm” feature, for jumping-jack breaks every ten minutes during bust-ass sessions. seriously.)
• Electric Sheep – Screensaver (loving: being continually surprised and impressed)
• Skype – Group chats (loving: conversation history, decent emoticons)

You’ll notice that I didn’t name Facebook, Gmail, or Google Docs — the current darlings of the web tool landscape. I have accounts with all of them, but to be totally honest I don’t have much use for any of them right now. And I’m okay with that.

If you’re curious about my hardware, here’s what I keep nearby:

• A dented and refurbished (yet sticker-free!) 15″ Mac PowerBook G4 Laptop (in a backpack that does not look like a laptop bag).
• 30 GB ipod (with cheap-ass black earbuds that do not look like they’re coming out of an ipod)
• Treo 650 (which is not meeting my needs as well as I’d like, but I just had it replaced, and I’m not ready to upgrade)
• Whiteboards – Capturing ideas, organizing quick lists, brainstorming, doodling
• A Moleskin 1-page-per-day calendar notebook – Recording major tasks, goals, and hours worked each day
• A regular lined Moleskin notebook – All other notes, journaling, lists, and spontaneous poetry
• My Roomba – Vacuuming (loving: automated scheduling, how incredibly freaking adorable it is)

The missing piece for me right now is a camera (mine recently bit the dust), but I’ve already put in a good word with Santa on that one.

This post was inspired by Web Worker Daily’s list today.

I got a ride home from the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) from a VP at a Fortune 500 company, and we talked about the complicated natures of our love lives. It felt a little bit like driving home after summer camp, especially since I was on Day 2 with my jeans and underwear. Fortunately, though, I was sporting a nice clean IIW schwag t-shirt, which was neatly ironed for me by the astrophysicist who let me crash on his fold-out hotel suite couch the night before. This, of course, happened after I sang and danced to Abba’s “Dancing Queen” with the conference organizer during karaoke.

The last session I attended at IIW was called “Newbies4Newbies.” Five of us conference first-timers sat around a table with one of the community’s longtime members and talked about our experience. We were all pretty much on the same page with observations:

• The sparse conference website and jargon-heavy materials provided beforehand gave us the impression that this was a self-contained community. We felt like we were crashing someone else’s party.
• We ended up in some conversations that were way over our heads, and felt a moment of panic that were very, very much in the wrong place.
• We took some initiative to figure out what was going on, and started to notice how passionate and productive this community was.
• We began to feel like we were being heartily welcomed by everyone we talked to, and saw people going out of their way to make sure we were able to engaged in the conversations.
• We connected with great thinkers and leaders who made themselves available for our questions and ideas, and who took the time to explain complex ideas to us in language we could understand.
• People recognized that we, as newcomers, had a valuable perspective to offer on what they were doing, and they asked us to share it.
• We felt like we had become an integral part of the community, and we were sad to see the conference end.

“Workshop” is a fitting term for the event. It really was about getting stuff done. Before I realized what was happening, I found myself helping to spearhead two new working groups which now have clear missions for ongoing roles in the community. The first is called Inclusive Initiatives, and its plan is to coordinate events and identify research studies that will help bring to light a wide range of perspectives on what the public needs from identity solutions. Somehow, I became the Stewards Council Representative for this group (go figure).

The second group sprung out of the “Newbies4Newbies” conversation. We’re rallying together to help bridge the gap between this brilliant community and the people who could join it but don’t know how. Our hope is that by making the website more accessible, developing clear introduction materials, and identifying people who can serve as mentors within the community, Identity Commons will broaden its reach, its influence, and its pool of resources for being effective.

This community is pulling the Internet into an arena where our information is safe and manageable by us, the users. Its projects include things that will take our passwords out of the hands of people we don’t trust, and take our consumer experiences out of the hands of marketers. It’s “the good fight” for our rights on the web.

Listen to me. I’m on a soapbox already. These people got under my skin.

tag: iiw2007b, iiw

I’m here at the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) in Mountain View, getting a crash course in internet-style identity politics, complete with plenty of new tech jargon.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s the premise:

There are a lot of situations in which you need to provide information about your identity on the Internet (logging into an account, purchasing something with a credit card, leaving a comment on this blog post, etc.). Â It’s an elaborate system of exchanging information, and it has its faults (we’re familiar with things like identity fraud, lost passwords, getting locked out of things we should have access to, and not knowing whom to trust).

IIW is a place where people get together and talk about the problems, solutions, questions, and new technology being developed around the issues of identity on the web.  I am completely surrounded by brilliant thinkers here — people who sit around and make decisions about what’s going to happen next with the web. It’s humbling.