OpenID has been a hot topic lately. A few days ago, AOL announced it’s support for the OpenID system. Then recently, Digg’s Kevin Rose also announced during the Future Of Web Apps conference that they will implement the system later this year.
It has been front page stories of sites like Del.icio.us and Digg. People are talking about it a lot and yet many don’t know what it is or what it is about.
What is OpenID?
OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.
The concept of OpenID is that anyone can use it to identify themselves anywhere in the Internet. It works almost like having your own web address or URI (also known as URL). URIs are considered to be at the very core of the Web architecture and this provides a good, solid foundation for a user-centric identity or identification system.
How does it work?
Authentication is the first part of the OpenID framework, it is how you prove ownership of the URI. Right now, we use usernames and passwords as a form of authentication to login to websites. With OpenID, your username becomes your URI. Your URI along with your password and other details are stored safely on your OpenID Provider. You can have your own OpenID Provider or it can also be a third-party identity provider.
To login to an OpenID-enabled website (even one you’ve never been to before), just type your OpenID URI. The website will then redirect you to your OpenID Provider to login using whatever credentials it requires. Once authenticated, your OpenID provider will send you back to the website with the necessary credentials to log you in. By using Strong Authentication where needed, the OpenID Framework can be used for all types of transactions, both extending the use of pure single-sign-on as well as the sensitivity of data shared.
Who owns OpenID?
Nobody should own this. Nobody’s planning on making any money from this. The goal is to release every part of this under the most liberal licenses possible, so there’s no money or licensing or registering required to play. It benefits the community as a whole if something like this exists, and we’re all a part of the community.
Wouldn’t it be nice if most if not all programs and systems were like this? Free for everyone, no licenses and fees to worry about. This shows that it’s not impossible to have these things for free as long as people help and contribute.
Learn more about OpenID.
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February 28th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
@benj – Who’s the nosy geek? Me? Haha :P
@bluepanjeet – Yeah, it’s gonna be , useful for everyone not only geeks. Makes things easier. :)
February 28th, 2007 at 11:46 am
it’s cool. a big help for a clumsy typist/encoder like me who use to get error messages whenever I log in. international ID system on the net! pwede.
February 28th, 2007 at 5:53 am
I guess that spells out NOSY GEEK. hehe
February 27th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
@Ver – I’m not sure coz I haven’t heard of Microsoft Card Space before you mentioned it here. After reading about it, I think both have the same goal – to have a universal digital identity system but I think they use different methods. Thanks for the info and for dropping by! :)
@benj – So it hasn’t changed ever since. The benefit of OpenID is users don’t have to have different usernames and passwords for different sites. It offers convenience.
February 27th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Jaypee: Yup, I checked it again, ganun parin. The premise is you could use the same id to leave comments everywhere. Yehey? It’s next to useless. hehe. But then again, I’m not really a techie guy to know the extent of the benefits of such a service.
February 26th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
@valerie – You’re welcome and thanks for the compliment! Hehe :D
@benj – Really? I haven’t registered or tried it yet. Yeah, LiveJournal is one of the early ones to support and implement this into their system. I’m probably gonna wait until Wordpress implements it. :)
February 26th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Hmm… I think this thing works like Microsoft’s Card Space. But I could be wrong. Parang same concept sila eh. :)
February 26th, 2007 at 4:50 am
I signed up for this summer last year and I still don’t get what the fuss is about. I think I signed up to leave comments on somebody’s LiveJournal. If the features still haven’t changed, OpenID doesn’t really allow you to associate that username to your website. Useless, it’s just your ID for the sake of having one to leave comments.
If it has improved, don’t mind me. hehe
February 26th, 2007 at 2:19 am
hello..
thanks sa info about open ID sounds really really cool..
i love this blog i always get the “latestsss” in you blog.. keep it up!