While sitting in the airport waiting to come home after last week's Digital ID World, I ran into Sun's Pat Patterson, best known, to me, for aggregating lots of ID stuff at Planet Identity, and Mark Dixon, who heads up Sun's Project Destination. Mark was willing to share valuable information, such as attributing his weight loss to the Wii Fit, but he also wanted to tell us about something he'd recently seen in another Sun lab.

Sun SPOT is supposedly an acronym for Small Programmable Object Technology but the cuteness factor must also be weighed. You can buy it as a development kit which contains two complete, free-range Sun SPOTs with processor, radio, sensor board and battery, and one base station Sun SPOT with processor and radio. Also included are all the software development tools and cables required to start developing applications for your Sun SPOT. The device itself is approximately iPod Nano sized. Still, the device Mark was talking about has enormous possibilities. I’ll let him tell the story in his own words.

“The Sun SPOT wireless sensor I saw is equipped with an accelerometer and wireless transceiver. In the demo, shaking the device triggered an event management workflow process in Sun's identity-enabled service orchestration architecture to send a personalized SMS message to a cell phone.” Simple? Yes, but oh the possibilities. Mark riffed on:

* Suppose the sensor was really a bracelet on your elderly grandmother's arm. If she fell, you and your chosen medical provider could be automatically notified.
* A pedometer/exercise meter could measure and transmit your personal workout detail to your fitness database and allow you to view results on your mobile phone or television screen.
* Detected intrusion in your home could alert you and allow you to monitor your house via Web cam to your phone.

The possibilities for personalization based on identity are enormous – and virtually unlimited.

Identity is important to security, to compliance, to all those relatively dull but necessary daily activities. But identity can also help to make our lives fuller, richer and more fun. Get yourself a Sun SPOT kit and personalize your world.

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.