Maybe identity is the wrong word 

Somebody (I haven't asked if it's OK to say who) e-mailed me this link to the LID system after reading my mumbling from earlier today, saying it does the same thing I was trying to conjure up. LID includes a provision for single logon and lots of nice-sounding features (haven't digested it all).

I think it's more complicated than what is needed for <ownerId>, the proposed new sub-element of head for OPML documents. The URL contained in the tag would be a page allowing some method of contacting the owner of the OPML document -- an e-mail form or some other contact method. At minimum, all it's meant to do is replace the existing <ownerEmail> sub-element because nobody wants their e-mail address out there and scarfable anymore.

I'm not an expert about this stuff, but I think that something like LID would be a service that OPML page owners could link to from their simple ID pages.

There's been talk around the net about the concept being applied to a lot more purposes than associating an owner with an OPML document, but a simple "contact me" page is really all I was trying to accomplish in my noodling. Here's what I ended up with, for now. Now you can send me email to tell me if that I am full of patooie.

Thinking out loud about URL-based identity 

This makes so much sense that people will probably just start doing it, don't you think? It's neat when that happens on the internet.

I thought I might play around with making my page today, between doing little packets of real life stuff. What I like about the idea as I understand it, is that you can put anything you want on the page, right? So I guess I'll start with an e-mail form.

I'll jot notes here as they occur to me.

It would be smart to try to think ahead, so

I'll make a flat HTML page. Never know when I might change CMSs.

I'll use PHP for the form. I don't think I'm likely to become disenchanted with it anytime soon.

Probably best for the page to be fairly plain and straightforward:

No fixed table widths, shoot, probably no tables.

Might conceivably want to send the page as HTML e-mail sometime, so if I style fonts, it would be a good idea to do it down at the tag level.

I wonder if there should be a convention for naming the page. First and last name? amybellinger.html? There are a couple other Amy Bellingers who will show up in a search -- a character in a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and over the years, two or three different rotating Amy Bellingers who are high school athletes getting mentioned in local newspapers.

Then think about really common names. I have a co-worker named Julie Smith, who has actually gotten into legal trouble because of mistaken identity, and she regularly gets random calls on voice mail at work from people calling into the organization, and wanting to leave a message for a real person, any real person, so they just pick a Smith from the voice mail menu.

There should be another identifier. Middle name? Birth place, or is that too often a security question? Birth date? Shouldn't be anything like an address, city or state that might change. The domain could change too, but something makes me think it might be important for the file name to always be the same. Maybe there shouldn't be a convention for naming. You just name the file so that it has your name in it, and you add something that you think will make it unique on the planet.

Is there any discussion of this sort of free-form identity page idea going on anywhere? I'm not that interested in formal identity systems, though I think links to any registrations in those existing systems would belong on an individual's ID page. The reason I like the notion of making your own page is that if it caught on, nobody would own it. You could be associated with trusts and systems and standards and directories and networks and who knows what, but they would all be subordinate to your own ID page.