Life Management Platforms

Kuppinger Cole, an analyst firm headquartered in Germany, has been hip to VRM for a long time. They gave ProjectVRM an award (that’s it there on the right) at the EIC (European Identity Conference) in 2008, and have been following VRM developments closely ever since. A number of VRM developers were there again at this year’s [Read More →]

Your actual wallet vs./+ Google’s and Apple’s

Now comes news that Apple has been granted a patent for the iWallet. Here’s one image among many at that last link: Note the use of the term “rules.” Keep that word in mind. It is a Good Word. Now look at this diagram from Phil Windley‘s Event Channels post: Another term for personal event [Read More →]

Google’s Wallet and VRM

Yesterday Google opened the curtain on Google Wallet. I think it’s the most important thing Google has launched since the search engine. Here’s why: Reason #1: We’ve always needed an electronic wallet, especially one in our mobile phone. And, although others have tried to give us one, it hasn’t worked out for them, because… Reason #2: We’ve [Read More →]

IIW dev job: ListenLog

Craig Burton has a nice tutorial on developing VRM applications, using ListenLog as both an example and a challenge for next week at IIW. ListenLog is the brainchild of Keith Hopper and the collaborative result of efforts by folks from NPR, PRX and other public radio institutions, as well as the Berkman Center and volunteers [Read More →]

To your owned self be true

After getting this provocative tweet, I checked the source (@NZN), and found Ready to make change? A sample: …my son BELIEVES he OWNS the Internet. His Internet. His Facebook. And in case you think that is not how reality works, I suggest that you also consider that my son also BELIEVES that he OWNS his [Read More →]

State of the VRooM

A lot has been happening in VRooMville lately. (Testimony: over there on the right at the moment we have three different #VRM tweets, in three different languages.) Rather than summarize things, I’ll let writers and developers in the VRM community give us a rundown. In no special order, here goes… Reverse the Paradigm, by Uwe [Read More →]

VRM as Agency

Most of us understand agency to mean a kind of company: one that represents other companies, or individuals. Insurance, real estate and advertising agencies come to mind. In fact agency has a deeper and more important meaning. Namely, the capacity of individuals to act independently, to make choices, and to impose their will in the [Read More →]

Awake at the wheels

A year ago, at VRooM Boston 2009, Ben Rubin, founder and CTO of Zeo — the hot new sleep fitness company — visited questions  about who owns and controlled personal data. Was the sleep data you produce as a customer entirely Zeo’s? Was it yours? Both? Neither? What right should anybody have to use it, [Read More →]

Do we have to “trade off” privacy?

Look up privacy trade-offs on Google and you’ll get more than 150,000,000 results. The assumption in many of those is that privacy is something one can (and often should) trade away. Also that privacy trading is mostly done with marketers and advertisers, the most energetic of which take advantage of social media such as Twitter, FourSquare [Read More →]

The First VRM+CRM Workshop

The first VRM+CRM workshop will take place on 26-27 August, at Harvard Law School. It’s free. You can register here. The purpose is to get VRM and CRM developers and other interested parties (such as CRM customers) together to start building out the common ground between them. That common ground is potentially very huge. CRM is [Read More →]