Benjamin Golub’s blog

Jeremy Smith just announced that Case will be providing an OpenID to, I assume, anyone with a CaseID. I’ve been using OpenID through MyOpenID. I signed up quickly because, if this thing catches on, I want to have benjamin.golub just like my email and website. In case you aren’t aware of OpenID here’s a scenario:

You want to comment on a friends LiveJournal but don’t have an account for yourself. You could write an anonymous comment (if it’s allowed) but then you lose some credibility; how does your friend know that it is really you commenting? You could sign up for an account, but you you just want to make a comment and have no need for the blog that comes with creating an account. OpenID solves this problem by creating a decentralized authentication system. It could potentially be used for more secure, sensitive applications like banking but at the moment it’s only been implemented in blogs, wikis, and other social websites.

How does it work?

You login to a site like any other method; by providing a username and a password. Your username is your OpenID identity page url. Mine is http://benjamin.golub.myopenid.com but I have http://benjamingolub.com delegating to the longer url so I only have to remember the short one. I do this by placing the following into my header:

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://benjamin.golub.myopenid.com/" />
<meta http-equiv="X-XRDS-Location" content="http://benjamin.golub.myopenid.com/xrds" />

When you provide a website with your “username” you are redirected to your OpenID server which asks for your password. You only have one password that you can use on every site that uses OpenID. The OpenID then tells the original website who you are and you’re good to go! You’ll also never have to tell those sites trivial information like your time zone or preferred nickname because those can be set in your OpenID account.

Why is this totally sweet?

OpenID support hasn’t reached critical mass yet but it’s getting there. AOL gave every single member (63 million) their own OpenID. Digg plans on adding OpenID support. WordPress hosted blog users have their own OpenID. The list goes on and on. I’m sure it won’t become as pervasive as something like an email address is but it is certainly growing in popularity rapidly.

Everyone hates creating an account on a website just to access one little feature one time only and then worrying about collecting spam for the rest of your life all because you wanted to make a claim on Jyte. How do you know that it’s really me posting a comment on your blog? OpenID can solve these problems and removes the need to remember multiple usernames and passwords.

How great is it that Case is getting involved?

I commend Case, especially ITS, for providing this service. This is cutting edge stuff and Case is right on top of it. We’ve even got our own Jabber server. I, like many other computer dorks, love new and exciting technologies. Thanks Case!