Google OpenID

(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).

Don’t Make Me Decide Yet: Lowering the Barrier to Entry

A few days ago Josh Porter was tweeting about the notion of “fatigue points”:

I think it’s a very useful concept, pointing out that people’s decisions aren’t binary: it isn’t a single yes/no decision but an active, ongoing negotiation, which determines which services you use and don’t use.

You can also think about the barrier to entry of a new user in a similar fashion. Any time you try out a new application or service there are a few barriers, and whatever the application developer can do to lower those barriers the more users will get over that threshold.
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Chris Messina Talks to Himself . . .

. . . about DiSo.

Good video interview (about 20 minutes), if you can get past the conceit (in the rhetorical sense of the word, not the egoism sense) of the self-interview.

The Existential DiSo Interview from Chris Messina on Vimeo

Only part I really struggled with was about 16 minutes in when he starts to talk about the “Gestapo like tactics” of Facebook. I’m a huge supporter of what DiSo is trying to do, but I don’t think closing people’s accounts for terms of service violations passes into the realm of the Gestapo (Remember Godwin’s law?).

Mentions at one point the goal of having a working demo by SXSW - I look forward to seeing it!

Is that a weave, or your natural hair?

Mozilla just (on 12/23, while I was off celebrating Lille julaften) launched another project on Mozilla Labs. This one’s called Weave, and it represents Mozilla’s entry into the data portability discussion.

(I’m sure they meant weave as in the “weaving the web” reference - but I can’t but help think about hair weaves, and the artificial extension of the browser beyond its natural domain - a little irony in the name itself? Not that there’s anything wrong with wearing a weave, mind you.)

News Coverage:

• Mozilla Weave: More Servers for your browser (ajaxian)
• Hands on with Mozilla Weave: Personalize your own cloud (ars technica, with screenshots)
• Mozilla launches Desktop Integration Tool for Firefox (Mashable)
• Mozilla Weaves Web Platform for User Data (ReadWriteWeb)
• Mozilla Weave Helps Us Move to the Cloud (Web Worker Daily)
• Mozilla floats Weave as Web platform (Between the Lines at ZDNet)
• Mozilla Weaves Services (GigaOM)

And the original announcement itself: Introducing Weave (Mozilla Labs).

In that announcement, Mozilla Labs argues that:

Web browsers like Firefox can and should do more to broker rich experiences while increasing user control over their data and personal information.

The initial release, which requires a Firefox 3b2pre or later build, lets the user synchronize browser history and bookmarks with data storage in the cloud.
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