Identity is one of those things that technologists like to solve, and solve, and solve. The reason they keep solving it is that they don’t really go deep and analyse what identity is and what they are trying to solve. Oh, when saying they I should really say we as I’ve tried to reinvent the wheel as well.

So we keep inventing fancy ass solutions like Certificate Authorities, PKI, The Laws of Identity etc.

While out in the real world we have emails, DNS, passwords and cookies that we often look at as temporary solutions until the one Identity system that will rule the world kicks in.

The real reason that none of these identity systems will ever win is that they try to solve problems that aren’t important.

Identity is the information I need for an exchange to take place and be enforced if something goes wrong.

This might sound weird and strange but please bear with me in the following examples…

For those of you who haven’t yet heard of FON, they are a very cool Spanish WIFI startup, who aim to make their Wifi network ubiquitous throughout the world. So how have they taken up the challenge of the worlds telecoms companies?

Well they’ve created what they call a social router. This is basically a Wifi Access point with two completely separate SSID’s – one public and one private. The one above is mine. If you hurry up you can get one as well for 5 euro or US$5. This offer ends on the November 8th after which you will be able to get them for $29. Martin says the cost of each router is $28. They say that they have 20,000 routers connected.

I’m not sure how many they have actually sold, but assuming they have sold 20,000 routers that means the direct costs for the routers have been at least $460,000, not including development and marketing costs. I think this is a fantastic sales strategy and one that could only be done with VC funds.

This is similar to the $10 gift certificates that helped grow PayPal like crazy during their first year. This was also a very good use of venture money.

They also show that there are definitely uses for Venture Capital. I still believe though that until you reach the point where you have great plan like this, it would be best to stick to bootstrapping or angel funding.

A slightly belated report from the November Copenhagen.rb meeting. It was a lot smaller turnout than last time but pretty damn interesting none the less.

First Casper Fabricius asked the question “How do you teach the sellers to sell Rails to our Enterprise clients?”.

Together we worked out a series of bullet points he could use with his own sellers. I hope he posts it as it would definitely be useful all around.

We also got into a pretty lively discussion concerning this. I think most of us agree that hourly pricing is not really the correct business model for Agile Ruby on Rails applications as I wrote last year in Agile Consulting.

Then Thomas Watson gave a demonstration of UJS – Unobtrusive JavaScript, which is a new rails plugin aiming to improve the accessibility and cleanliness of your rails app’s html by separating the JavaScript behaviours out of the page.

I have for a long time without even questioning it, figured it’s best to keep shut about political issues when doing business. As everyone who knows me can attest to I am a very opinionated guy when it comes to politics and economics. While I don’t directly hide that fact on this blog, I don’t necessarily advertise it either.

Martin Varsavsky the founder of Fon (Very cool company) asks Are we too progressive but concludes that he should be political.

FON is people who have been promised the wireless internet and got tired of waiting. And that to me, is progressive. Why should it not express our views? And as a CEO, why can´t I express my views? I believe CEO´s CAN and SHOULD be political, because CEOs are citizens and all citizens should be political. So here´s a random list of things I believe in.

I tend to agree. In the Ruby on Rails world we also have one or two proudly political geeks Rabble being the prime contender.

While I don’t think I will mix too much straight politics on this blog I think I will probably start advertising my political blog Econotrix a bit heavier in the future. I am proudly libertarian and while I rant I also try to work out solutions as well (like any good geek would).

While I disagree on many things with both Martin and Rabble, I think we probably also would agree on many other things.

Then again as a libertarian I believe that the stuff we actually do with our businesses and our technologies are way more important in a world changing way than any vote we make or any political diatribe we go out on.

I know my last post Don’t listen to your family might be interpreted in a negative manner, it really wasn’t meant that way.

Families can be and are mostly great. There are definitely examples out there where they aren’t, but generally speaking they are great. In particular if you learn to learn from them. As I said before most families have a hard time differentiating their own feelings towards you from real advise. They don’t mean harm, but they can do harm.

Where families are really good are for giving you examples. Both positive and negative. Every family have several inspirational characters and probably one or two that aren’t.

These people are great for learning. Your Dad or Grandpa might have made some difficult choices that he doesn’t want you to have to go through even though it might be best for you to do so. Therefor learn by example and not necessarily by advise.

Both my grand fathers have been eminent examples for me. One came from a middle class New Jersey family, the other from a poor Danish family. Both refused in their own way to take crap from anyone and built a good life for themselves and their families. Both had their fair share of conflict that they had to come up against and they continued following their own dreams and morals. I’ve learnt from them to not just accept the status quo nor what other people say.