What We Are

An Overview of Lumeria's "Sunshine" Platform

Lumeria has developed new web infrastructure and foundation technologies  -- collectively codenamed "Sunshine" -- that can dramatically improve the security, efficiencies, and effectiveness of any online transaction, whether for commerce or content, for business or for individuals. Lumeria's object-oriented software infrastructure components can by used together or separately for a wide range of business uses, including personalization, privacy protection, proxy services, data security, and identity management (including digital signatures and secure profiling).

SuperProxy

Lumeria's proprietary SuperProxy system is a new software platform for running proxy applications. Just as a Java server allows "servlets" to be run together, the SuperProxy has a software framework that allows various "proxlets" to be run together on a SuperProxy server. The SuperProxy can monitor, filter, and augment the incoming and outgoing HTTP stream, thus providing the potential for total control over the user's surfing experience. Only secure data and messages authenticated by Lumeria's ODX system (see below) can communicate with the SuperProxy or any of the proxlets, thus ensuring privacy, customer-control, and the safety of any of the data or transactions in the system.

Proxlets allow many web applications to be delivered directly to the browser, without the need for a download. This major breakthrough allows Lumeria and other third-party developers to use the SuperProxy platform to deploy proxlets that have a strong competitive edge over applications requiring the downloading, installation, and maintenance that inhibits use and increases deployment, support, and upgrade costs. By not requiring the download and installation on a specific machine, proxlets allow users to tap into the functionality of the system and gain access to their profile from whatever computer they may be using – thus any computer can become their “personal” computer. Also, this allows access to markets such as wireless, handheld, and set-top where downloads may not be practical or possible. Lumeria is developing several proxlets:

·         privacy and cookie agent -- protects users identity by hiding their IP address and managing cookies; cookies still work for session management, but cannot be aggregated across sessions or across sites without the user's explicit permission.

·         form-filler/e-wallet -- allows forms to be filled-out and secure purchases to be made based on data in the user's SuperProfile.

·         content filtering agent -- allows content to be removed, added to, or overlaid on web pages within a user's browser, without actually modifying the site. This allows user-specific pop-up windows or other content add-ins to appear on web pages. It also provides a method for replacing web banner ads according to each user’s SuperProfile data.

The SuperProxy is designed to work together with Lumeria's ODX server in order to provide powerful synergistic infrastructure components for web developers that are not available with any existing web software system. The SuperProxy is an ODX client combined with proxy server technology enabling it to access the information in the ODX XML store and use it to monitor, filter and/or augment a web-browsers incoming and outgoing network stream, such as an HTTP stream. (I.e., developers now have a tool for creating applications that can intercept, examine and modify the web-content stream as it flows into and out of a user’s browser. Since this software resides on a server, it can work with browser applications running on any type of a web-device: PC, Web-phone, PDA, etc.) It provides developers with the following main features:

·         HTTP stream access – Dynamic monitoring, filtering and augmentation of web content. Can be used to build applications that include the ability to capture and audit the entire list of web sites a user visits (similar to click-stream capture), perform content analysis, web-interface enhancements, content augmentation monitor and audit employee or child surfing, and replace all web advertising with company information, corporate-approved, user-approved, or parent-approved ads.

·         browser personalization – This allows for development of small, interrelated proxy-based applications (“proxlets) that can communicate with each other and the ODX system. This creates a network proxy development platform with broad capabilities to personalize the capabilities/contents of an individual user’s browser.

Open Document eXchange (ODX)

The ODX module provides for the Internet-distributed, secure, encrypted storage, communication, and transaction of any XML information using an object-oriented client/server model implemented in Java. ODX was evolved from OFX (Open Financial eXchange) used by Intuit, Microsoft, and financial institutions, and provides banking-grade security for Lumeria's system. ODX provides a secure communications protocol and transaction processor that enables content distributed across a network of servers to be dynamically served to a wide variety of target platforms including the PC, TV-set top, Palm based devices, and web-enabled mobile phones. 

ODX is the protocol used by the SuperProfile system and Lumeria's Identity Management system, and allows for data access to be authenticated using global user SuperIDs, that can have one or more personas (e.g. mom@home, mom@work, mom@school, mom shopping, mom in stealth mode). ODX is designed to be general purpose so that it can be used for wide variety of secure, web-based transaction processing applications such as:

·         financial transactions -- supports digital signatures and allows money to safely flow through the system

·         content syndication -- with payment mechanisms, watermarking, and auditing features built-in

·         secure data sharing -- supports a wide range of applications for identity-based or role-based sharing of data; for example: corporate intranets, B2B Exchanges

Super ID/SuperProfile

This module provides for global identity management services, including digital signatures, authentication, and a secure profiling solution that lets a master SuperProfile control any number of sub-identities and any amount of profile information.

Currently, every individual web-based application has its own authentication scheme requiring the consumer to create and manage several user name and password pairs.  The SuperProfile enables a the creation of a master identity that can aggregate multiple sub-identities from different domains even if they use different authentication technologies such as:

·         Passwords

·         Public private keys such as PGP keys

·         Bio-metrics (retina scanning)

·         Digital certificates

·         Smart cards

Each of these identities and its various personas or sub-identities has an associated SuperProfile that can contain data that is either used by the entire system or restricted by use in a specific domain. The contents of this profile can be securely shared in very granular fashion. The profile presents its data in an XML format that is easily integrated with many of today’s personalization and customization technologies, such as those offered by ATG, Broadvision, and Vignette.  

DTD.com

DTD.com is part of Lumeria's strategy to contribute to and become a significant player in the world of XML and emerging XML standards. Lumeria does this by helping XML developers deal with a key problem. DTDs (document type definitions) are a key part of all XML documents and applications, and define the basic structure of the data contained in those documents. XML allows developers to declare these for each document, which can provide a lot of flexibility for developers, but can also cause fragmentation of DTDs and how data is described -- a sort of "tower of babel" effect. DTD.com aims to solve this problem by providing several interactive web components:

·         DTDwarehouse -- Lumeria's web repository for XML DTDs

·         DTDfactory -- a web-based software tool for editing and creating DTDs

The DTDfactory lets XML developers mine the data in the DTDwarehouse, create their own DTDs, validate them against industry standards, and share their knowledge of DTDs with other developers. The DTDwarehouse is already on of the world's largest DTD repositories and is stocked with over 180 DTDs covering a wide range of subjects, from mathematics to science, government, education, and personal profiling. In addition, DTD.com supports Lumeria's proposed new standard for personal profiling, called the Profile Markup Language (PML) -- an extremely rich profile description and exchange platform, which is based on XML. DTD.com has received positive industry response, including a recent review in InformationWeek magazine.

Architectural Components

PML (Profile Markup Language)

·         XML-based Data Model

ODX (Open Document Exchange)

·         XML-based Protocol and Interface to ODX Server

·         HTTP-based

·         DOM (Document Object Model) package (ODXMessage)

ODXServer

·         Enrollment, Authentication, Session Tracking

·         Set, Get & Delete of Private XML Documents & Document Fragments

·         Documents Stored as Compiled Java Classes

·         Automatic Strong Encryption

·         Selective Secure Sharing of Documents & Document Fragments

·         External Document Publish/Subscribe

SuperProxy (aka SPX)

·         User-controlled Proxy Behavior

·         Innovative Persistent Client Session Management

·         Uses ODXServer for Secure Storage

·         Email Notification

Developer Tools

·         XML Document Processing Tools

·         Various DOM Packages

·         XML Query Interface

·         XSLT Stylesheet Interface

·         File Header-based Image Size Detector

·         JCA & JCE Crytography Interfaces

Sample Applications

·         Clients of ODXServer

·         SuperProxy

·         Opt-Out

·         ID Commerce

·         ID Insurance

·         Clients of SuperProxy

·         Ad Network

·         Cookie Jar

·         Form Filler Customized Or Context-Sensitive Content Add-In

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