Stuck Ideas: Standards

In puttering around the concept of "good ideas getting stuck", I saw a piece on a Robert Scoble podcast with Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger that has an example of an idea getting stuck. From the podcast (circa 16:00):

Scoble: "I wish we could connect these identity systems. I want to go from Second-Life to Facebook."

Wladawsky-Berger: "I agree totally…. We are working with Linden [makers of Second Life] and others to try to help set standards to help make things like that happen. What we're talking about is eminently do-able, it's a matter of agreeing."

That's what I'm talking about: there is an idea that is stuck (or about to get stuck - or at least slower than it could be). Standards are important, sure, BUT...

You could get 1 person from Facebook and 1 person Second-Life to have lunch and they could hammer it out in a few hours. In a few more hours (and a few more people maybe) they could program it. Ok, maybe it's really hard and it takes a week.

How much longer will the standards agreement take? How long would it take to re-write the code after the standards are written to comply with the standards? How much better would the standards be if they had a first-run working proof underneath?

A stuck idea: something that would be good and (relatively) easy to do but will not happen quickly for some reason.

A few scobleshows later: http://urltea.com/1998?TomRolanderOfCrossloop @ 58:00: "We want crossloop to work in with Facebook so you can just invite someone from Facebook: 'Help me - here's my screen.' [Crossloop is a remote help thing that sounds like CoPilot]" - small team, they're just doing a side project: not creating the standards, not evaluating how it might work and whether it's possible... they're working on it and working through the details. It may fail, but it's not stuck.