In all seriousness, though, what's the part that's such a stumbling block here (at least for anyone who is already computer literate enough to go through a normal user account creation)? I really fail to see why "now create an account you can use at any OpenID site" is so much of a problem compared to "create an account for this site". In my experience, the account creation is nearly the same, and the login procedure is nearly the same, so I have a hard time seeing where a problem would occur.
I don't know because I never created an open id account. The reason I never created one is because when I want to sign up, I just want to select a user name and password, not try to locate an open id.
Are you aware that most people using computers don't know how to copy and paste? OpenID requires copy and paste, and that kills it on arrival.
1. For classic OpenID with subdomains, you end up typing simonw.myopenid.com instead of just simonw
2. For OpenID 2, you click the "Sign in with Yahoo!" button (assuming the site you are signing in to is targeting the mainstream and has decided to show a big shiny button instead of / in addition to the scary OpenID input field)
Option 2 is the one you should get excited about if you're interested in "most people using computers". You don't even have to call it OpenID.
The sign-in with yahoo button is a lot more accessible, but on a personal level, I am strongly against it. The internet tends to coalesce around the most widely used method, leading to one site becoming disproportionately larger than all the others.
So if we have this "Sign-in with yahoo" button, soon everywhere will have 3-4 sign in methods, likely to be Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and maybe Facebook. So we basically hand over everyone on the internet to these 4 gigantic cooporations? What do you think they will use all those user accounts for? Safeguard them?
If a mum uses the internet to visit her sewing website, this person should not be forced to hand over their personal information to huge companies, who live off advertising!
OpenID is a boon for big companies, and a nightmare for the openness and freedom of the web. Your login information for all sites should be personal - it should be on your physical keychain, and not owned by Yahoo or Microsoft or anyone else.
But that's the beauty of OpenID - it allows you to keep your identity with the thing that you trust.
One of the future developments I'm most excited about with respect to OpenID is the ability to run your OpenID server on your mobile phone. Phones can already run web servers, and with IPv6 they'll be able to have public facing direct internet addresses. Voila, your online identity lives in your pocket.
I wish you guys would see sense. OpenID is a geeks dream; conceptually, it's very difficult for normal people to grasp.
WHY did open Id have to use a URL? What is wrong with me typing maximusklein@gmail.com into my 'openid' field, and then it authenticates at gmail.com using the unique identifier maximusklein?
What's the big difference? One is complicated as hell conceptually, and the other is very easy to understand.
Because I know clearly what one is, but I am unsure what the other one is. To me, the URL is a webpage. And it's not clear to me how a webpage is going to log me into another webpage if I am a user.
Users don't see URLs as URLs, they see them as pages, like on a newspaper. So OpenID is based on a concept that alien to users.
Don't underestimate the average computer user. Go around random internet cafes, public libraries, etc. Talk to the "average computer user" and you'll be surprised.
You don't overestimate the average computer user. A computer user does not think in the same way you do. A user may know what copy and paste does in Microsoft WORD, but they do not see this as anything but a feature of Word. They don't think it is something that is generally applicable to all text fields. That concept is naturally unintuitive, it's something that has to be learned or discovered.
I'm technically very saavy, but open id is something I really don't want to use. It sounds complicated, it's difficult to use, it seems risky, and most importantly, it does not offer me any advantages.
It's a silly idea pushed by technologists who are out of touch with what the average person is doing with his computer.
