Underground Web Designs Blog

As promised in my post “The End of Twitter“, I’m going to talk a bit about what OpenID is, and how you can use it.

Open ID was designed because someone, somewhere, got tired of the bother and security hassles of signing up for yet another website or web service. I’m sure you know the feeling. You read an article or maybe even click an interesting add, and there in your face is the dreaded sign in box. Often times, if you’re not really interested you just click away. Making another account on another site just isn’t worth the bother. OpenID can make the whole process much simpler.

OpenID works by storing your information (username, password, full name, e-mail address etc) in one place, on one site (called an OpenID provider). If you want to log in to a different site that supports open ID, all you have to provide is your OpenID. The rest is handled automatically. The site you want to log in will check with your OpenID provider to see if you are authorized (and your open ID provider will ask you to log in with your password if you’re not). Then, if needed the site you’re logging in to can ask your OpenID provider for extra information, such as your name, e-mail address, etc and can pre-populate sign up fields with it! As you can imagine, this makes signing up for new sites a snap… just input your OpenID, confirm your information, and you’re done! The best part is that the site you just signed up for NEVER sees your password. All the authentication work is handled by your secure OpenID provider.

To use an OpenID, you first have to create it at an OpenID provider. I use myopenid.com because it is simple, direct, and powerful. I’ve tried several and MyOpenID has worked the best. To get started, just click on the big “Sign Up For An Open Id” button the myopenid.com home page.

As usual, you will be asked for a username (shorter and simpler the better), password, e-mail address. Once that information is filled out click “sign up” and your OpenID will be created. When picking your password, choose something that you can remember, but that is also secure (try to include capitals, numbers, and symbols if possible). This password will allow you access to many sites, so it pays to make sure it is a good one.

Once you’ve created your account and logged in for the first time to MyOpenID, you can start making your life easier by adding some extra information to your account. First, in the right hand menu bar, click “My Account” and then “Authentication Settings”. Here you can set up several advanced security measures to ensure that you and only you can access your OpenID. You can even have the site telephone you for authorization to sign in!

Next, click on the “Registration Personas” link. This page allows you to provide basic information about yourself (name, e-mail, avatar, etc) to sites that ask for it. As mentioned above, this can make signing up for new websites or web services a snap! It’s even possible to create different personas, if you want to provide different information to different types of sites.

The last page that’s worth taking a look at is the “Visited Sites” page. This page tracks which sites you’ve used your OpenID to access, which Persona they are using, and whether or not your should be asked to approve each and every time you want to access the site (usually this can be left on always approve).

Now it’s time to test things out! A great place to try out your new OpenID is right here on this blog. Just head down to the bottom of this post and leave a comment. Instead of filling in your name and e-mail, just put YourOpenIdUserName.myopenid.com in the Website box. You will be re-directed to OpenID briefly while it asks whether you want to authorize UndergroundWebDesign to access your information, and if you authorize it, you will automatically be directed back to this blog, where you’ll see your comment added.

Unfortunately, many sites do not yet support OpenID fully, but the number that do is growing quite quickly. You can help encourage more sites to support OpenID by getting an OpenID and using it everywhere you can. If you have your own Wordpress blog, you can get the OpenID plugin to allow yourself and others to log in to your site or leave comments using OpenID.

The internet is still developing at a very rapid pace, and one of the things that needs re-thinking is how we log-in and sign-up to the hundreds of new websites and web-services out there. OpenID is an answer to this problem that works and works well. If you’re fed up with all the hassle of siginig up on yet another site, why don’t you give it a try?

P.S. Merry Christmas!

If you work in an internet related field (programming, designing, administrating, etc) you’ve probably heard of the “micro-blogging” service Twitter. For those who don’t know what it is, Twitter is a social networking site where users share “Tweets” (140 character messages) with each other and the world at large. As is the case with many new internet technologies however, Twitter has it’s shortfalls, and it might not be long before newer micro-blogging services take over.

One such new micro-blogging service is identi.ca. Even though identi.ca doesn’t have as many users or features as Twitter (yet!), it does some things Twitter does not.

1) REALLY easy setup.

Identi.ca supports OpenID*. Since I already have an OpenID set up, I used it to register my new Identi.ca account. All I had to do was enter my OpenID, approve identi.ca, and choose a nickname. That’s IT! No adding mundane details like my name or e-mail address… all that was pulled from my OpenID automatically.

Of course, if you don’t have OpenID you can still register at Identi.ca normally, and the process looks simple and easy.

2) IM and Text Message support.

When I first started using twitter, I could “tweet” using an instant messaging program. Unfortunately, this functionality soon disappeared, with little explanation as to where it had gone or when it was coming back. Likewise, one of the strongest features of Twitter is the ability to receive tweets from people you’re following on your cell phone as text messages. In the USA this works fine, but here in Canada Twitter has had to disable the service due to excessive costs from the cell phone companies.

Identi.ca seems to have neatly avoided both problems. As of right now at least they have an IM service that works and they’re using e-mail to SMS for their text messaging. e-Mail to SMS doesn’t cost them anything - the fees are passed on to the user. I looked into it and for me it would be a $5 a month upgrade, or 15 cents per message received. This is a bit of a pain, but at least the option is there.

3) Interfaces with Twitter.

Identi.ca interfaces well with twitter, so if you’re switching over you don’t need to worry about people missing your Tweets. Just add your twitter username and password to Identi.ca, and anything you post to identi.ca is copied to Twitter. Win / Win!

4) Identi.ca is Open Source.

Rather than being a closed platform like Twitter, Identi.ca is built on open source software and works with an open source license. This, combined with support for FOAF files*, Microformats*, and OAuth* means that other webmasters can set up their own micro-blogging systems, and fully integrate back to Identi.ca. 

In short, Identi.ca takes sharing what you’re doing right now to a whole new level, and its smart business plan and open licensing agreements mean that it will continue to expand long after Twitter has died. If you’re just thinking about getting into the micro-blogging world, take Identi.ca for a spin. As with Facebook / Myspace, sometimes in the internet world “the second mouse gets the cheese”.

*Look for future posts coming soon explaining more about what OpenID, Foaf files, etc are, and how you can use them.