Comments on: GrandCentral is People-Centric

By: Vivek Deshmukh

Vivek Deshmukh — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 05:02:08 +0000

Fantastic idea Rahul. I hope phone companies see your comments. Having unique phone ID is a concept that is long due in this widely connected world.

By: Pascal Van Hecke

Pascal Van Hecke — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:25:41 +0000

XRI intruduces new protocols and that makes it hard to gain acceptance (the Cold Start Problem ).
A more pragmatic variant of that is the LID-approach, basically doing the same but everything based on http.

http://lid.netmesh.org/wiki/Main_Page

LID describes a superset of the OpenID functionality

By: Pascal Van Hecke

Pascal Van Hecke — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:14:57 +0000

What you are describing has been nailed out already, and it is called XRI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XRI

By: Maxim

Maxim — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 02:25:36 +0000

Totally agree with you. I think we should see some kind of specifications from w3c on specifying contact information exchange or something like that soon. After that it will be integrated with social networks and services like kazavr.com & videntity.org

By: Adam Darowski

Adam Darowski — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 16:43:05 +0000

I worry about simplified spam/telemarketing targeting, but I suppose that is one of the constraints we have to blow away. Good stuff.

By: Eduardo Sciammarella

Eduardo Sciammarella — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 05:52:53 +0000

I think you are spot on. Services that place people at central control point will have more currency on the social Web. One must also consider that a growing number of people on the social Web are becoming tele-present. We’re not just physical entities waiting to pick up the phone. Our identities our presence is coming to life across the Inertubes. I want a single point of contact (thanks Rahul) for your meta-presence.

By: Jason DeFontes

Jason DeFontes — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 16:13:38 +0000

You can achieve the “one true number” thing with something like Vonage as well. I set this up for myself, and thought it would be great, but the major failing is your outgoing caller id. When you call someone from your cell, they don’t know it’s you because they’ve got your “one true number” in their address book. Then when they figure out it’s you, they call you back on your cell number because that’s what you called them on, then the whole thing starts to fall apart… I gave up, and I just use one cell for everything now.

By: Ian Rae

Ian Rae — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 14:28:42 +0000

OpenID would be a good way to go with the caveat that you should be able to have access controls on inbound calling. Obviously there are some security issues to be sorted out here but there is no rational argument for the security by obscurity that I get with my current phone number…

By: heri

heri — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 02:48:27 +0000

but skype is doing that, right? their goal is that everyone uses skype instead of the phone. so you give out something like firstname_lastname to your acquaintances. and when wifi/wimax will be ubiquitious, i would bet most people would use skype, which is free, instead of using the standard wireless networ.

By: charliepark.org » Blog Archive » constraints

charliepark.org » Blog Archive » constraints — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 23:38:43 +0000

[...] Anyway, Joshua Porter consistently writes interesting, informative posts on his blog, Bokardo. He just posted one this morning, GrandCentral is People-Centric, where he gives a really nice nuance to a previously oblique opinion I had: that constraints are a good thing. [...]

By: Rahul

Rahul — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 20:22:00 +0000

I’ve also always felt that phone numbers should be innovated to be unique personal addresses in a similar sense to how URLs or email addresses are used. There’s no reason to have to keep changing phone numbers based on your location.

I would be extremely happy if, after this and next year’s mass adoption of OpenID, someone (Google?) implements an OpenID-based communications system. If we’re going to go down the path of single sign-on then we might as well use it for Single Point of Contact (or some similar term).

By: GIANNI

GIANNI — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 17:07:54 +0000

I think it is a very good idea!

By: University Update - Verizon - GrandCentral is People-Centric

University Update - Verizon - GrandCentral is People-Centric — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 15:48:05 +0000

[...] YouTube Link to Article verizon GrandCentral is People-Centric » Posted at Bokardo - Social Design by Joshua Porter on Tuesday, July 03, 2007 Google’s most recent acquisition, GrandCentral, approaches phone numbers in the same way that Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook approaches social networking: with the person at the center of the service. Instead of having a phone number tied to a cell plan such as Verizon or AT&T, or a specific technology View Entire Article » [...]

By: bryan christmas

bryan christmas — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 15:31:03 +0000

Isn’t Facebook, with IM and VoIP Facebook Apps, basically the unified communications system you describe? You can get to anyone’s profile just by name and then choose how you wish to contact them.

By: Mark Murphy

Mark Murphy — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 14:13:27 +0000

“What we need now is a URL for every person”

Off the cuff, OpenID would seem to be a starting point for that. Right now, there’s no standard for what is on or linked from the OpenID page outside of OpenID-isms, but embedding hCards (or linking to them) would help with the contact information. The problem is privacy: just because Person X should be able to say “I want to talk on the phone with Joshua Porter(bokardo.com)” doesn’t mean that Person Y should.