OpenID/SDSN ID’s for the real world

Hash wrote a good summary of efforts underway locally to eliminate the pain and hassle of maintaining your identity online in fifty different locations [sometimes it feels like you’re living fifty different lives]
However, sitting somewhere the other day filling in application forms made me wonder how easily this solution could be applied “offline”.

How about this:

• a chip in your ID book [which is apparently on the way already] linked to…


• an online database that you maintain yourself with all your personal details [with varying levels of authorisation, allowing you to set how much of your information a vendor can see, from just name and telephone number for the local video store, to comprehensive family and medical aid information for a hospital/chemist]
  You can give any vendor all the information that they require by just a swipe and pin number.

No more ridiculously long forms. No more wondering what your work postal address is. Not having to arrive half an hour before your first appointment to make sure you can somehow scribble down all that information, particularly when you feel terrible and just want to get home to bed.

I think this would be great. So guys, once SDSN is done, please make sure this on your to-do list. It would save us all a lot of hassle. Thanks!

Is less really more?

You've surely had those moments when it seems everything is just too much... and you would give a king's ransom to just take out complexity and make things simple again. I know I've felt that way often, when the noise from the world around just becomes too much. TV, radio, work, computers, cellphones, internet, wi-fi, global village, entertainment, and the list goes on. And with everything going on around and all the tasks and responsibilities, sometimes I wish it would all just be a bit easier.

Put simply, sometimes less is actually more.

Its so important I'll say it again -

Sometimes less is actually more!

We have officially moved from the information age to the attention management age. This is equally true in life and in business. Grant Brewer wrote an interesting article entitled "Why are products so complex?". His concluding paragraph hits a very sensitive cord as far as business goes - "One of the keys to overcoming the challenge is to stop trying to please everyone — accept that some potential customers won’t buy your product or service, and this takes courage." Interesting in an age where chasing market share and new customers results in many businesses trying to be everything to everyone.

In business I believe that we are increasingly moving towards a phase where delivering less results in more value.

Think of the choices when trying to buy a product online [a beautiful thing in itself, where the "long tail" truly has impacted our reality]. But imagine this... an online store where the entry page offers two different paths [I see two big buttons to make it easy]:

1. One path for people who don't mind the complexity and want all their choices, the standard e-commerce stores you see now such as e-bay, Amazon, etc.
2. A simpler option - where you follow a path of answering 5 or 6 simple questions which lead to the most logical product to suit your needs.

Let's face it - not everyone wants to customise their toilet seat or be able to choose the colour of the lights inside their desktop computer. Choices, choices, choices.

There's a fortune waiting for those who can bring simplicity back into an already overcrowded life.