OpenID - One Login to Rule Them All

The ever increasing number of login/password for web sites and social networking services we subscribe to becomes difficult and annoying to remember. Indeed, we can rarely use the same nickname everywhere as login, because it is often already taken when you try to use it. And keeping the same lazy password for each site is not very safe. These days, I'm discovering the OpenID initiative which kind of solves the login/password remembering problem.

The idea is to create a single OpenID identity that you will use on all OpenID enabled sites. It's a decentralized system, so that everyone can become an OpenID provider. Do you remember the MS .NET Passport initiative ? Well, this time it's not a company that tries to manage the system but some kind of independent organization, the OpenID foundation. This makes me think about Google with the Gmail account that opens the doors to plenty of very good services. By the way, have you ever imagined how much data you share with Google between mail, calendar, picasa, reader, docs, ... ? I doubt that Google will adopt OpenID, but if we can reduce the number of major login/password to 2 (Google + OpenID), it's good news !

Practically, I created my OpenID identity at one of the many providers (I chose myopenid.com). Then I tried to create an account on one of the many OpenID enabled sites (LiveJournal in this case). On the above picture, you can see how it has become efficient to subscribe to a new service once you have an OpenID identity: you connect to LiveJournal, you click on the OpenID login, you sign in your OpenID provider, you trust LiveJournal, and that's it, you're done !

Here is a 5 min wrap-up video that explains the OpenID concept: