Monday, December 05, 2005

Killer Identity App

Judging by the conversations I heard after the Captain turned off the seat belt sign on a trip last week to Austin, there is a killer app just waiting to be built. It needs a slick marketing name but the jist of it is 'Hey, yeah we just landed, see you in 20 minutes, bye'.

Seems that many passengers have family, friends, colleagues who wait anxiously by their phones for just such brief but meaningful status updates.

Liberty's Identity Web Service Framework (ID-WSF) has all the necessary components to support such a system:

- People Service - defines a service by which one user can track those others with which they engage in online interactions
- Geolocation Service - defines a protocol by which the geographic coordinates of a user can be queried
- Subscription & notification - mechanism by which identity info requestors can subscribe to be notified if and when certain criteria are met

So, Frequent Flier uses a People Service to track their relationship with Friend, and then defines access rules at their cell phone provider such that Friend (referenced through the People Service) can see their geolocation. When Frequent Flier surreptiously turns their cell on immediately after touch down, the previously defined notification criteria (i.e. that Frequent Flier's location be within some distance of a major airport) triggers a message to that effect being sent to Friend.

You could even track miles flown for status. Maybe then I wouldn't need to save boarding pass stubs on the chance of my miles not being credited.

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