stressfree - identity

OpenID gains support from Microsoft and AOL

David — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 11:40:23 +0000

On the 6th February Bill Gates announced that Microsoft was going to support OpenID within its CardSpace set of technologies. Given this massive vote of confidence from the world's leading desktop supplier it would seem there is very little in the way of OpenID becoming a highly influential, Web-based identity system. After this announcement it also comes as no surprise that other large, Web-centric companies like AOL.com have announced their intention to support OpenID as well.

OpenID became a successful identity solution because it is not centralised around a single, all powerful source and at its heart is relatively straightforward when compared to many of its contempories. Like other influential technologies such as RSS and podcasting it was created by a small team (Brad Fitzpartrick) and was released to the world as an open standard. These factors have made it relatively easy for large companies like Microsoft and AOL to adopt whilst other more complex, 'big business' alternatives have failed to gain momentum.

OpenID's limited scope means it is not going to solve all the world's identity problems but in the near future we should find maintaining our identity on the Web becomes just a little easier. What still remains to be seen is whether Google and Yahoo will support OpenID in their product lines. Given their operating models I do not believe either will support OpenID directly in their services but they both will provide their users with OpenID-enabled accounts. Nick Manley provides a good case for this in his post 'Why Google will support OpenID'. The bottom line is anything that makes people use their Google/Yahoo accounts more frequently is good for business, especially now that will be supported within Windows.

UPDATE: (21/2/2007) Kevin Rose has recently announced that digg.com will be supporting OpenID sometime next year.

An identity presentation that is not boring

David — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 21:44:37 +0000

Identity presentations can be boring because by and large it is a boring topic full of acronyms, complexities and unresolved issues. This presentation by Dick Hardt at OSCON 2005 breaks the mold so to speak by talking about complicated issues in a very interesting and visual manner. It is worth watching if you are interested in identity or looking for an interesting visual presentation technique for your next Powerpoint/Keynote.

Dick Hardt at OSCON 2005 - Identity 2.0

Easy OpenID and Drupal

David — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 21:16:32 +0000

OpenID is an easy to setup identification system for both users and developers that is beginning to gain industry momentum. OpenID uses URL's as unique identifiers which is a flexible and memorable way of tackling what your identity is. As it is relatively simple in principle OpenID is not a solution for all identity tasks but in a loosely joined, Web-centric context it is well suited.

All you need to do to use it is sign up for a free OpenID account, or if you are really adventurous implement your own system. When you login to an OpenID-enabled website/service it takes your submitted url and password and passes it on to the OpenID service for authentication. The first time you successfully authenticate you must tell the OpenID service exactly what (if any) information the target website/service should be able to see.

Firewalling what information a third party can see about you is vitally important as it allows you (the owner of your information) to tailor what others can learn from your OpenID account. The upshot of this process is that sites you trust implicitly can learn about your physical address and personal details, whilst a site you hardly know can be left completely in the dark about who you are. This is a far more useful approach than the all or nothing (or simply nothing) strategy employed by older identity systems like LDAP. Because your identity is centered around your OpenID account maintaining your personal information becomes a lot simplier, there is only one password to remember and one set of contact details to manage. Just to help out Drupal has a handy module which allows your website/blog URL to be your OpenID handle which redirects to your chosen OpenID provider (for example myopenid.com).

Overall OpenID is a very promising technology that if it gains critical mass may significantly improve the identity space on the Web. It certainly is not going to dominate the entire space but it gives small-scale developers a great starting point for implementing an easy to use universal identity system.