Who is it?

mrG — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 20:23:38 -0400

Long time ago my homepage (on Dragonfire) began with the sound of a modem connect followed by a slow fading splash screen that said only, "who is it?" -- it was a bad retelling of an old Zen joke and I only recall the tale today on a prod from Dale, a question he tagged to an email saying only, "what do you think of OpenID?"

For those who don't know the OpenID story, the short definition 37signals gives goes like this:

One login, many sites -- An OpenID is a single username and password that lets you login to any OpenID-enabled site. OpenID makes remembering different usernames and passwords for different sites a thing of the past.
[ OpenID: Why, how, 37signals ]

Ok, I'll confess up front, maybe I don't know much about 37signals per se, but about open federated ID systems in general? Well, if I'm not mistaken, Microsoft tried to promote the same thing, as did SixApart in their own little way. There is a need and a desire for avoiding incessant logins, no doubt about it logins are awkward and alien, a techno-bound pain and an itch begging to be scratched, but really I don't think this particular backscratcher is a solution. In fact, as I shall now explain, the unified federated login is doomed before it even got out of the gate ...

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Who is it?