Microsoft, Google, and others have just launched the Information Card Foundation, to promote awareness and interoperability around InfoCards.  This is great news - I think InfoCards have the potential to solve some real problems with managing identities and securing them against theft.  Despite the client-side technology being available in Vista for a year plus, we’re still slow to see installations emerge in the marketplace.  The only use I make of InfoCard (and then still pretty rarely) is in the WSO2 Mashup Server, which has both InfoCard and OpenId support (though you can use an old fashioned username/password).

Managing identity and security without complicating the user experience is still a challenge.  I’m hoping the Information Card Foundation can encourage broadly useable solutions as it gets rolling.  And I’m hoping some large properties (PayPal is a member) may actually start putting stronger identity management technologies in place on a broad scale.

It should be no surprise with our products supporting InfoCards and OpenId that WSO2 is now a member of both the Information Card Foundation and the OpenID Foundation.