There is a certain kind of technology gaining popularity on the web. Most of it has been around for a little while now (a year or so), and is just gaining popularity and traction now. The idea behind this technology is that you’ll define something in one place, and it will follow you around the web, ideally making your life simpler.
First, and probably most prevalent, are Gravatars. The idea is that you set an avatar on the gravatar website, and any website you post to that is gravatar-enabled will automatically display your avatar based on your email address. So this way, on any website you post, your avatar will be there with you, and you won’t need to upload it to each site you post on.
Next are social commenting systems. I’ve just started looking into these recently, and I’m not really sure about them yet. The idea is similar to Gravatars, but takes it a step further and lets you post on any social commenting [Disqus or IntenseDebate] enabled comment system with a single user id. So you don’t need to sign up on new sites, and your comment history is associated with you. There are some other little features, but that is the main idea, and what is important to this post.
Lastly there is OpenID, which looks to do what the social comment systems are doing, but with everything (sort of). The idea behind OpenID is that you can sign into any OpenID enabled site with a single user, and access whatever it is that site is offering (this extends beyond comments). Oddly enough, both of the main social commenting systems support OpenID.
The way OpenID works is fairly simple – when you go to log in to a website that supports OpenID, you enter a URL specific to you. You’re then bounced over to whoever is authenticating you (likely whoever owns that URL) and log in. Then, you bounce back to the original site you were on, all logged in (and optionally some other information filled in for you).
I like OpenID more than either of the above systems, but not just because it has the potential to encompass both of them. OpenID is actually open. The other two systems are on centralized servers that are out of your control. Anyone can make an OpenID authentication server. Tonight I set up my own OpenID server just to test it, and it works. There are tools out there that make setting up a server trivial (I’m serious, you can and should do this). All of my information is completely under my control, and I am able to log into thousands of websites across the internet.
I don’t really have a conclusion, but the idea behind these services is interesting and worth paying attention to, and OpenID is pretty awesome.