Benlog

I wrote briefly about Google Wave, and Ben Laurie points out that my statement on the Google Wave trust model is misleading. He’s right. I said that the Google Wave trust model is the same as email (and thus I think Google Wave will succeed). What my words unfortunately and misleadingly implied is that it’s [...]

First impressions / predictions on Google Wave, Google’s new communication idea/product/protocol/service:

because it’s open-source, federated, and follows the same trust patterns as email, it will be successful
whatever authentication protocol Google Wave uses will be a significant (if not a crushing) player in the web authentication space, and that’s not a bad thing because it [...]

I’m on the Program Committee for a new conference being held at MIT in the Fall, the Engaging Data Forum. A number of fascinating topics around the issues of managing personal electronic information. Of course I’m focused on the security, privacy, and interoperability aspects, but there’s more, including geolocation, collection from portable devices, etc… Send [...]

Creative Commons is holding its third technology summit on June 26th. The previous two have been lots of fun, very productive, with a unique mix of policy-oriented tech folks. Plus, it’s in Italy! How can you go wrong?

Just got back from a trip to Israel, mostly vacation but a couple of very fun days at the Electronic Voting Workshop organized by IDC Herzliya and Tel Aviv University. A great group of folks, some very lively discussion, and a very productive workshop in Israel before they deploy electronic voting machines (imagine that, debating [...]

Ian Davis, of eRDF fame and a great guy all around, writes about Google’s recent RDFa announcement:

At first this announcement seemed like a big deal – Google supporting the web of data in a big way, a real push into the world of open structured data. However, a closer look reveals that Google have basically [...]

At some point in the history of patents, something went a little nutty: it became possible to patent genes themselves. Not “a method for extracting” a gene. Not “a method for synthesizing” a gene. But the gene itself. As a result, a number of biotech companies own human genes. If you want to find out [...]

RDFa is a simple way to add structure to your web pages, for example the text ‘ben adida’ is not just any text, it’s my name, the link to the Creative Commons page is not just any link, it’s the copyright license for my page. I’ve been working on this specification for a few years [...]

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be in Israel at a voting workshop organized by Ran Canetti, Alon Rosen, Ronitt Rubinfeld, and Assaf Jacob. I’ll be giving a talk on voting security and a second talk on Helios. The workshop will be free and open to the public, and it should be an interesting mix [...]