Since the early 1990s, I’ve been fascinated by the concept of online identity management: what it means to have an identity online, what stays consistent with the offline world, what becomes more fluid, and what becomes more fixed.
It’s a very vibrant space right now, with commercial vendors, open source projects, trends, and standards all vying for attention. I’m thinking here of a couple of overlapping categories:
(more…)
(via David Recordon)
Ryan Barrett, one of the developers on the Google App Engine team, has released an application which allows you to use your Google Account as an OpenID.
Once you’ve logged in to your Google account, you just use:
http://openid-provider.appspot.com/yourgoogleusername
On any site which relies on OpenID for validation.
So now Yahoo!, AOL, and Google have (direct or indirect) mechanisms for providing OpenID (and Microsoft has committed to doing so in the future).
Combined with all the free, purpose-built OpenID providers (like ClaimID, MyID, MyOpenID, MyVidoop, and Clickpass) and it looks like 2008 could be the tipping point (assuming one hasn’t already occured in 2007).
(See OpenID Status Check for a recent, and more exhaustive list).
Open Parenthesis is a blog about free and open source software, next generation internet strategy, and the assembled web, written by John Eckman (me).
I'm a Sr. Director at Optaros, a professional services firm offering strategy, design, development, and consulting services to enterprises interested in leveraging free and open source software.
