Have you felt the need to leave comments on someones blog or felt that one login should work on many sites.At the same time have  you worried that if you lock yourself with one login and password at some centralized authority like Microsoft passport.
There is a very elegant solution to this and most likely if you are are Yahoo or AIM user you already have what you need to start using OpenId.
In simple terms OpenId allows you to login into any site that supports OpenId and at the same time it does not lock you with a particular certifying authority so that you are free to move to other certifying authority as you please.
If you are a yahoo user you can sign up for using openId by going to the website http://openid.yahoo.com and then just login with your regular Yahoo userid and password.
Once you have done that now when you see any site with the logo as then it will ask you about "OpenId Url:" , in the text box just type in yahoo.com and you will be taken to the Yahoos website to authenticate yourself and then brought back to your original page and you will not need to sign in.

For a video of how to use Open Id you can go to the following screencast @ http://simonwillison.net/2006/openid-screencast/

posted at: 23:46 | category: /cuttingedge | permanent link to this entry