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July 3, 2008

Aaron Toponce
atoponce
Aaron Toponce
» Identi.ca

Goodbye Twitter and your buggy service. Goodbye Jaiku and your spammy bot. Goodbye Pownce and your 20 users. Hello Identi.ca and Free Software. Reasons for switching to Identi.ca for my microblogging service:

Wait a minute. Rehash that list. Free Software, OpenID, Jabber and an Open Network Service. Sense what I’m sensing? Identi.ca is all about openness and freedom\. Uh, yeah. Signed up, and ditched the other proprietary solutions. I would be surprised if RMS had issues with this service (actually, I probably wouldn’t be surprised, but you get my point).

However, Identi.ca is a bit wet behind the ears currently. Jabber interactivity with the bot is extremely limited. SMS is planned, but not currently implemented. Subscribing to other users is a bit of a pain currently. No search feature. Other shortcomings are listed as bugs and feature requests are welcomed.

You can subscribe to my posts at my page. Happy microblogging.

by Aaron at 4:00 AM under blogging , freedom , openid
June 30, 2008

Aaron Toponce
atoponce
Aaron Toponce
» OpenID Re-Enabled…. Again

It’s important to me that my blog support OpenID for commenting under the posts. For the past few months, I have had some database problems which have kept this fine tool from working. It seems to be working currently, but I have only done limited testing. For those with OpenID accounts, please test a comment under this post, seeing if OpenID is working.

Thanks.

by Aaron at 5:16 PM under openid
February 20, 2008

Aaron Toponce
atoponce
Aaron Toponce
» The OpenID Dillemma

There seems to be a trend, as of recently, for large companies to become OpenID providers, but now allow logging into their service with your OpenID account. The trend I’m noticing, is everyone wants to be a provider, but no one wants to support OpenID logins. Well not “no one”, but not the major players. Consider the following major corporations or web sites that are OpenID providers:

  • America Online
  • Orange
  • LiveJournal and Vox
  • Wordpress.com
  • Yahoo!
  • Blogger
  • Verisign
  • … and more

Supposedly, news has hit the front that Microsoft will be supporting OpenID as a provider, and rumors have it that your GMail account can be used as an OpenID identity. But what about logging into these providers with an existing identity? Here’s the question posed: Can I login to AOL, or create and AOL account, with an already existing OpenID identity? What about LiveJournal? Wordpress? Yahoo!? Blogger? etc.

NOPE.

Like mentioned earlier, the big players are willing to throw their support behind being a provider, but not allowing the creation of new accounts, or signing into existing accounts, with previously setup identities. So, what’s the point then? If everyone has an identity to use, but no one can use it, what’s the point of creating the identity to begin with? I thought OpenID was all about 1 account and 1 password. Yet, I still have to login to Yahoo! with my Yahoo! account. I still have to login to GMail with my GMail account. And I still have to login to AOL with my already existing AOL account. So, it’s a far cry from the single login that OpenID is working so hard to achieve.

My cry to the providers, is if you really want to support OpenID, then allow users access to their account through an already existing OpenID identity. Don’t only become a provider, but show 100% support by giving them the ability to login with their OpenID account. I don’t want 500 OpenID accounts that I can’t use, because my providers won’t allow me login access with them.

by Aaron at 3:56 PM under openid
December 6, 2007

Phil Windley
pjw
Phil Windley's Technometria
» What's New in OpenID 2.0?

OpenID 2.0 was finally release yesterday. I've put a piece up at Between the Lines on what's new in OpenID 2.0. There's some important capabilities that will move this forward in a big way.

Tags: openid identity iiw iiw2007 iiw2007b

10:38 PM under identity , iiw , iiw2007 , iiw2007b , openid
December 5, 2007

Phil Windley
pjw
Phil Windley's Technometria
» Understanding OpenID

Here's a screencast that Dan Lullich sent me showing how OpenID works using a whiteboard cartoon. Very clever!

Dan was also my guest on the Technometria podcast this week. We talked about reputation--go figure.

Tags: openid identity iiw2007b iiw iiw2007 screencasts

5:48 PM under identity , iiw , iiw2007 , iiw2007b , openid , screencasts
December 1, 2007

Aaron Toponce
atoponce
Aaron Toponce
» OpenID Re-Enabled

Sorry for the delay on getting around to this, but OpenID support is back up on my blog. I downloaded this plugin from the official WordPress plugin repository, which is an update of Will Norris’ plugin, which was forked from Alan Castonguay’s abandoned plugin.

At any event, users are encouraged to use OpenID when commenting on my site, as I take great pains to make sure that the next time you comment, you will bypass my spam filters. If there are any questions, please don’t hesitate to place them in the comments below.

UPDATE: In the latest version of this plugin, you can check a box that will enable bypassing spam filters out the gate.

by Aaron at 6:05 PM under openid
October 1, 2007

Jesse Stay
obfuscated, Uncle_Jesse
Stay N' Alive » OSS
» Facebook to Release a Passport-like Common Logon?

With yesterday’s announcement of the statusUpdate API call in Facebook, my thoughts have been going wild on what this means. This was clearly done for Twitter and other status update sites out there. I can also see some cool uses for it in other applications too.

One thing this does hint at, whether Facebook is thinking about it or not, is the possibility of a common logon system similar to Microsoft’s Passport or OpenID. The next step Facebook should take is open their authentication system up in the API. Currently, you can get a user logged into Facebook via the API. Facebook now needs to package this and market it as a complete solution to sites like Twitter to get them to base their user profiles off of Facebook profiles. I would prefer this method personally, as I only need to update my profile in one place (Facebook), and then I can use Twitter for all my other status needs.

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by uncle_jesse at 4:44 PM under business , common logon , common profile , facebook , facebook consulting , facebook profile , microsoft passport , openid , oss , reviews (Comments)
September 28, 2007

Aaron Toponce
atoponce
Aaron Toponce
» OpenID Temporarily Disabled

There is an update with Will Norris’ Wordpress OpenID plugin that is expecting fields that don’t exist in one of the OpenID tables. As such, until I can get the matter resolved, commenting via OpenID on my blog is currently disabled until further notice. Sorry for any inconvenience.

by Aaron at 3:45 AM under openid
September 8, 2007

Phil Windley
pjw
Phil Windley's Technometria
» User Centric Identity Tutorial

Here's the slides from the user centric identity tutorial that I gave this afternoon. The PDF won't show the embedded screencasts. I've included them separately. Here's one on using CardSpace and one on using OpenID. If you're interested in getting my Perl wrappers for using the JanRain OpenID libraries and the guestbook application, contact me.

Tags: identity utosc uosc07 openid

1:34 AM under identity , openid , uosc07 , utosc