What you get when my brain crashes…

Update on OpenID

Well, I’ve had my OpenID for a while now - and frankly, I haven’t used it once since I signed up.

Oh don’t get me wrong - I am totally for the idea of a single, universal log on. But, in my opinion, the system isn’t quite “polished” enough.

Adding all my information into OpenID was easy enough, as was setting up the account. But whenever I try to sign into an OpenID-enabled site, I end up redirected back to my OpenID provider’s website to enter my password and “approve” the access. It’s a bit reminiscent of Vista’s User Account Control dialog that so many people complain about - except now it’s on the web.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I gave it a fair try - I even tried enabling OpenID on this blog - but in the end it was just too hard, too complicated, too much extra work for not enough gain, and in many ways it wasn’t backwards compatible. (I tried to enable OpenID login for comments AND leave the normal comment form for people who don’t have an OpenID, but wasn’t able to get it working.)

Perhaps I’ll give OpenID another try in a few months… we’ll see. But for now… it’s got a “thumbs down” from me.

Sorry, OpenID.

OpenID

So, I finally made the jump and signed up for an OpenID - on the recommendation of Jeff Atwood, I chose myopenid.com as my provider.

Interestingly, you can set up your own domain through OpenID and basically give out OpenIDs based on your domain, instead of someone else’s. (In case you’re not aware of how an OpenID works, basically your “ID” with OpenID is a URL, say, http://keithius.myopenid.com.)

So of course, I signed up my domain, starkeith.net, so that I can give out OpenIDs based on my domain.

If you’d like to have an OpenID from starkeith.net (in the form of http://id.starkeith.net/[your user name]), just let me know. But be warned that I get to choose who gets them, and I will be choosy.

There’s no real difference with an OpenID from starkeith.net and any other open ID provider - I just think it’s cool to have my own domain be part of my open ID.

Of course, finding sites that use OpenID will be a challenge… and of course to not be a hypocrite I need to figure out how to allow OpenID on my blog… but hey, one step at a time, right?