OpenID Foundation Gets Five Technology Leaders As Board Members.

OpenID Foundation announced this morning that it has five new coporations on the board. They are bigwigs and I am very happy with this development as this will further the vision of OpenID.

Following is the press release;

CORVALLIS, OR--(Marketwire - February 7, 2008) - The OpenID Foundation today announced that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) have joined as its first corporate board members.

With these companies' deep expertise in Internet and security technology, the OpenID Foundation strengthens the industry-wide effort to empower users with portable Web identities, or OpenIDs. This effort helps ensure the evolution of an open and interoperable Internet that helps people take control of how their personal information is shared on-line and aids on-line businesses to attract and retain more users by simplifying and securing the management of digital identities.

The OpenID Foundation was formed in June 2007 to support and promote the technology developed by the OpenID community. Members includes individuals, students, non-profits, startups and industry giants that have come together to develop and promote open identity management on the Web.

OpenID is free technology that simplifies the on-line user experience by eliminating the need for multiple user names across Internet sites, enabling individuals to take more control and ownership of their digital identities. This user-centric digital identity technology helps users reduce the pain of managing dozens, even hundreds of user-names and passwords, and provides more control over what personal information they share with Web sites when they sign-in using an OpenID.

Today, more than 10,000 Web sites support OpenID log-ins, and an estimated 350 million OpenID enabled URLs currently exist.

"With this support from the new company board members, the OpenID Foundation will be able to continue to promote and protect the technology and its community moving forward," said Bill Washburn, Executive Director, OpenID Foundation. "The community has clearly expanded since the inception of the Foundation and these companies will help bring OpenID into the mainstream markets."

The industry collaboration supporting OpenID extends not only to the technology itself, but also to the establishment of the OpenID Foundation as an open forum to promote, protect and enable the OpenID technologies and community. The OpenID community has matured rapidly from its inception as a loose coalition of volunteers to the establishment of the OpenID Foundation with a strong mission and intellectual property structure that enables all to participate in developing and implementing OpenID technology. This progress has been made with donations of legal resources by Microsoft and various contributions from Google, IBM, VeriSign and Yahoo!.

"Google shares the OpenID Foundation's vision of a Web that's easy to use and built on open standards available to everyone," said Brad Fitzpatrick, a software engineer at Google who created OpenID while at Six Apart in 2005. "OpenID was always intended to be a decentralized sign-on system, so it's fantastic to join a foundation committed to keeping it free and unencumbered by proprietary extensions."

"Privacy concerns have been escalating rapidly because of repeated incidents involving unexpected personal information loss and user identity theft," said Anthony Nadalin, IBM Distinguished Engineer and chief security architect, IBM Tivoli software. "As a leader in identity, access and federated identity management and open standards-based software, this is an important step in IBM's collaboration with other industry leaders to continuously enhance open source projects for user-centric identity. This effort is intended to provide users with more control and to help them better manage and protect their digital identities."

"The OpenID community is a key constituency in solving the digital identity problems Internet users face, and will benefit from being represented by the OpenID Foundation," said Kim Cameron, Microsoft's Chief Identity Architect. "Since Bill Gates and Craig Mundie announced our collaboration with the OpenID community last February at RSA, Microsoft has played a leading role in establishing the Foundation's open policy framework that allows everyone to participate in the development and use of OpenID specifications. Now, we look forward to working with the community to refine and drive adoption of the specifications."

"OpenID enables consumers to take control of their online identity, which in turn will drive trust, privacy and security on the Internet," said Nico Popp, vice president of Innovation at VeriSign, Inc. "Networked identity and authentication services are core elements of VeriSign's current and future service offerings. Because of this, we applaud the creation of the OpenID foundation and we look forward to contributing to its mission."

"Yahoo! believes that a truly open Web is the key to the next-generation of Internet experiences; OpenID furthers this cause by delivering a free, standards-based solution that the entire industry can embrace," said Ash Patel, executive vice president of platforms and infrastructure at Yahoo!. "Over the last year we have worked closely with the OpenID Foundation to develop the organization's intellectual property framework, finalize the OpenID 2.0 specification and to adopt OpenID for all 248 million active registered Yahoo! users worldwide. We look forward to collaborating with the OpenID Foundation, its board and community to further simplify the consumer experience of the Web and empower users to take control of their online identity with OpenID."

OpenID Technology

With the increased use of the Internet to conduct business and the rise of new types of on-line interactions, such as social networking and user-generated content, innovative kinds of digital identifier technologies are necessary to sustain the "open Web." OpenID enables individuals to convert one of their already existing digital identifiers -- such as their personal blog's URL -- into an OpenID account, which then can be used as a log-in at any Web sites supporting OpenID.

Wide adoption of OpenID reduces the frustration of repeatedly having to register username/password accounts and then later recalling log-in information for an ever increasing array of Web sites. For on-line businesses, these efforts can lower password and account management costs, help reduce the overall risks of security breaches by limiting the amount of customer personal information businesses need to store and protect, and increase both new and return user traffic by lowering the barriers to Web site entry and reentry.

To learn more about the OpenID Foundation, please visit http://openid.net/foundation.

To learn more about the OpenID, please visit http://openid.net.

tag: OpenID, OpenID Foundation, Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, Yahoo!, OpenID community,

Yahoo! Support OpenID And Accounts Numbers Triple To 368 Million

I am a very happy user of OpenID and have been very happy to see any website that I frequent uses it. Because it makes much easier to handle multitudes of accounts one has to carry these days. People tend to use one password for all their accounts for ease and we all know it is a security risk yet continue to practice it. Using OpenID is similar but it is very much safer than anything else that is available to us common users of internet services. So when I read the Yahoo Press Release, I was very happy. Here it is.

(OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity, which eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience. OpenID is still in the adoption phase and is becoming more and more popular, as large organizations like AOL, Microsoft, Sun, Novell, etc. begin to accept and provide OpenIDs. Today it is estimated that there are over 120-million OpenID enabled URLs with nine thousand sites supporting OpenID logins.)

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan 17, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced its support for the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework for all 248 million active registered Yahoo! users worldwide. OpenID, an open framework based on proven Internet technologies, enables users to consolidate their Internet identity, eliminating the need to create separate IDs and logins at all of the various websites, blogs, and profile pages they may visit in the course of their online session. In addition to the many leading Yahoo! services users already enjoy, anyone with a Yahoo! ID will be able to use the same ID for easy access to any sites that support OpenID 2.0.

Yahoo!'s initial OpenID service, which will be available in public beta on January 30, enables a seamless and transparent web experience by allowing users to use their custom OpenID identifier on me.yahoo.com or to simply type in "www.yahoo.com" or "www.flickr.com" on any site that supports OpenID 2.0. Alternatively, web sites that accept OpenID 2.0 will be able to add a simple "Sign-in with Your Yahoo! ID" button to their login pages that will make it even easier for their users. Yahoo! is working with several partners, including Plaxo and JanRain, to make it possible for users to access these sites with their Yahoo! ID from the first day of the public beta.

"A Yahoo! ID is one of the most recognizable and useful accounts to have on the Internet and with our support of OpenID, it will become even more powerful," said Ash Patel, executive vice president of platforms and infrastructure at Yahoo!. "Supporting OpenID gives our users the freedom to leverage their Yahoo! ID both on and off the Yahoo! network, reducing the number of usernames and passwords they need to remember and offering a single, trusted partner for managing their online identity."

"Yahoo!'s commitment to an open web is a significant validation of the OpenID movement and Yahoo!'s adoption of the standard today immediately triples the total number of people able to use OpenID," said Scott Kveton, chairman of the Board of Directors for the OpenID Foundation. "With Yahoo! actively engaged with the OpenID Foundation and its community to promote OpenID, Yahoo!'s users will be able to more easily access the many sites across the web that support the standard, and the potential for access to Yahoo!'s vast international user base will create an even more powerful incentive for additional websites to begin accepting OpenID users."

Yahoo!'s implementation is based on the OpenID 2.0 specification, which Yahoo! worked closely with the OpenID foundation and community to finalize in December 2007, and includes new features that improve security and usability of OpenID, making it the most user-friendly single sign-on and online user-authentication standard. Yahoo! users who log in with their Yahoo! ID on OpenID sites will have the added protection of Yahoo!'s sign-in seal wherever they go on the web. In addition, no email or IM addresses are revealed or disclosed as part of the login process, which further helps protect users from phishing or other attacks.

"Plaxo believes that users should be able to carry their identity and personal information with them wherever they go across the social web," said Joseph Smarr, chief platform architect of Plaxo. "Yahoo! is making that vision a reality by becoming an OpenID provider. Yahoo! users will be able to easily access Plaxo and other services without having to create and remember yet another password. This also paves the way for a secure approach to data portability between the various services people use across the web."

"At JanRain, we believe the evolution of the Internet and the next generation of web applications hinges on universal adoption of a secure, portable digital identity," said Larry Drebes, founder and vice president of engineering for JanRain. "JanRain is a leader in OpenID libraries, tools and applications, and has worked closely with Yahoo! to integrate its new OpenID offering into our services. The addition of 248 million Yahoo! users to the OpenID ecosystem will be a tremendous milestone in expanding the user base for OpenID."

Yahoo! will continue to devote resources to helping to improve the OpenID user experience and to educating its users. In addition, Yahoo! intends to expand its support of OpenID by adopting other elements of the program as the service evolves. More information and updates can be found at http://openid.yahoo.com.

tag: OpenID, Yahoo, OpenID 2.0, Plaxo, JanRain,

OpenIDDevCamp Don't Miss It, Come Join Us This Weekend!

After having a very good time in Vegas and CES, I had to get back to Bay Area. But all is not that bad! Why you may ask! Yes you may. It is because the first OpenIDDevCamp which is said to be inspired by BarCamp, SuperHappyDevHouse, iPhoneDevCamp and MacHack among other things, will be hosted at at the San Francisco offices of Six Apart, and all are welcomed.
I will be certainly be attending as I am working with three projects that have OpenID integrated of has in the plans to do so. I really want to pick the brains of those fine folks that know OpenIP better than their own faces.
OpenID.net has this message for you;
"If you’re already in San Francisco or will be coming into town for MacWorld, want to learn more about OpenID, you should definitely drop by. Please RSVP for OpenIDDevCamp on Upcoming. Maybe you’ll even find out from Yahoo! what is going on with OpenID tags on Flickr?"
So spread the word, get together to promote this fine ID platform.
tag: OpenID, OpenIDDevCamp, weseepeople, OpenID.net

BoyCott Blogger, No Need To, Sign On To Blogger Comments With Your URL Via OpenID

I was wondering about this boycott Blogger hype and found that the concerns were right but at the same time, there are solutions to the problem. I picked up this from a ifacethoughts post that was made a year ago!. It tells you how to set up your blogger so that you can sign on with you blogger URL alleviating the need for boycotting!
Your Website Your Identity. If you own a URL already, like a Blogger URL, which is the focus of this discussion, you can use it to delegate the identity to your OpenID provider. For example, If you use yourusername.myopenid.com as your OpenID URL that identifies you, You can with a couple of lines of code, you can change your Blogger URL, any other URL to be your OpenID. So when you comment on a blogger blog next time, sign on with your own website url.

To do this;
First Get an OpenID: it will be something like username.myopenid.com (there are other sources for OpenID, check out OpenID site)

Step 2: Open the template of your blogger or your website and add the following lines of code in the <> section :
< href="”http://www.myopenid.com/server”" rel="”openid.server”">
< href="”http://username.myopenid.com”" rel="”openid.delegate”">
Replace username with the user name that you created in Step 1. Save and you are done. Your blogger URL is now your OpenID. So you can leave blogger comments that include your blog URL.
My problem is that I have too many web sites.
Tags: OpenID, Identity, Pibb, BoyCott Blogger, WeSeePeople

I have an ID, OpenID

After putting off for a long while, I got my OpenID today. I am using it on sites that promote OpenID and might use myself on an upcoming project.
But that is a different task from just end user OpenID. Getting your OpenID is a simple task, lasting less than a minute.
If you're an end-user and want to learn more and acquire an OpenID, check out the iwantmyopenid.org website on ways you can helps spread the good word about this fantastic new technology.
But as a developer, you might want to go here, OpenID website. WeSeePeople will be integrating OpenID for the project WeSeePeople and I am heading to above site to immerse myself in an identity crisis! Because, I have tried many ID systems and have failed to create a meaningful solution. There is also a bounty for any new startups that use OpenID and the identity solution.
Once you have gained your OpenID, you can test out the PIBB site, OpenID's communication platform. You can login with your OpenID account and view some of the channels that have been created. I went directly to the Pibb Discussion channel. Pibb has a newly updated interface but I do not know the old one so, this is the only one I know. But the usage was easy and did not run in to any problems.
Get identified, globaly

Tags: OpenID, Identity, Pibb, iwantmyopenid, WeSeePeople