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OpenID - It's coming!

January 22, 2008 OpenID is one of those really big things on the internet that you have probably never heard about. Don't feel bad if this is the first time you are reading about OpenID as it really hasn't gotten off the ground...yet. Over the past week, however, both Yahoo! and Google have announced plans to support OpenID. With the top two websites jumping into this, we are probably going to be hearing quite a bit more about OpenID in the near future. So here is your quick introduction to the technology.

OpenID, at a very basic level, is an agreed upon standard for declaring that you are you. It allows you to establish and maintain a digital identity that can be your online signature. The OpenID foundation presents the technology as a being open in the sense of open source. Nobody is supposed to own the OpenID standard; this isn't about money, but rather about helping to establish identies as an online service that is long overdue.

So what is your OpenID identity? It is actually a URL from an OpenID provider. The website address becomes your "username" for authentication at other sites. My OpenID is hosted at MyOpenID.com and is http://infomancy.myopenid.com. Nothing much to see there, but that is my identity that I can use to sign in at some of my favorite sites like BackpackIt. The OpenID foundation also has a list of ways to get an OpenID identity.

Do you need to rush right out and sign up? Probably not...but again, let me add that ominous yet. As more and more sites move towards using this new identity standard it will start to be much more powerful.

Posted by Chris Harris on January 22, 2008 | Comments (0)