Understanding Windows Cardspace: An Introduction to the Concepts and Challenges of Digital Identities

The Foreword is by Identity luminary Kim Cameron and if I'm keeping it real, rather than describe the book's contents, I wish he'd shared more thoughts around the problem space, the approach to the solution and the roadmap BEYOND cardspace. The book itself is an easy read. Not a tome by an means. Easy to pickup as a reference or to sit with and read chapter by chapter. It succeeds at describing Identity Federation from a conceptual level as well as from a technical level (as it pertains to Cardspace). It even addresses some of the less obvious issues such as the notion of auditing and non-auditing IdPs. Be warned, this book focuses on Cardspace fairly exclusively. There isn't a lot on interoperability here between things like OpenID and Cardspace for example. That's a topic for another book and could not easily be incorporated without devoting a lot of pages to OpenID. The technical section is navigated through use cases that tackle things from an end-user experience as well as from the developer angle. This is effective as often it's hard to understand one without the other. At every point the reasoning behind the solution is presented also. This worked well. For me personally, I wish they'd spent a little more time on things like GetToken() although using this directly will likely not be of interest to 90% of folks out there. Unique to books of this type is a section devoted to Practical Considerations. Why one would want to setup an IdP or simply play the role of Identity Consumer for example. In today's environment the business value of establishing yourself as an IdP is questionable and I was glad to see this point addressed head on. Vittorio, Garrett and Caleb have done an terrific job of describing and grounding one of the most compelling and abstract problems faced by the internet today. This an excellent book and for many will serve as a one-stop-shop for all your Cardspace questions.

I am sick and tired of collecting passwords for each website I register: a password manager is making my life easier but deep inside myself I was wondering how long we have to live with the current system. Then I got to know about this effort about building an identity meta-system started by Kim Cameron; the topic is not easy so that is why I followed Kim's suggestion and I bought this book. It is great! I now understand more and I'm just hoping that more Companies would start implementing this new technology on their systems (especially websites). The book if full of technical details but also very easy to understand: do yourself a favor by not skipping the first "historical" part which explains why are we "here" and what are now the options. Highly recommended.

The 'identity problem' is one of the more challenging areas for developers - particularly web developers. The book echoes what I have found when presenting information about CardSpace to developer communities. That is, a larger-than-normal amount of context is needed, prior to delving into the technical implemenation details. The book includes an appropriate amount of technical detail as well. Even if you are familiar with the scope of the problem, I encourage you to be patient with the first section of the book - it will add to your arsenal of context - which you will find useful when 'explaining' the business reasons for moving toward the CardSpace identity selector and the greater Identity 2.0 space (including Identity Providers and Relying Parties). The identity problem is important, if you haven't taken a look at CardSpace, this book is very useful start for you. The book also gives useful context arount the greater Identity 2.0 space.