Apparently some people think that I don’t like URL’s. I truly think they are great. I have since the first I heard about them. I am very excited that this model for doing SSO now exists. I think the model is very empowering truly (except for the domain name part) decentralized. I think it will be great for millions of web literate folks. Weather they have their own domain or if they just have a blog and use that URL. The way wiki travel is doing it to support interop between the different wiki travel sites is cool too.
I want to see this model flourish.
It is true that I am also not a technical person and I don’t think that they will work for ALL people (they will work for many millions of people). This is a Yes AND situation. The AND is I don’t think it will work for ‘everyone’ and particularly the user communities that I got inspired to try and build social networks for the Spiritual Activists. There are lots of web-literate folks on this list who can weave their way through domain naming and setting up stuff on their servers. I feel that part of my role is to speak up for those who are less technically savy and what could work for them in a ubiquitous identity layer. I would like to see the diversity of identifiers and ways of doing SSO flourish under OpenID. I really want a ubiquitous user-centric identity layer that can serve a diversity of people.
I had a conversation with a friend of mine yesterday. She is in her 50’s and we talked about the different things going on in our professional lives. I shared a little bit about what was happening in OpenID. I told her about this new way of doing SSO with URLs and that in the universe of possibilities there was also i-names. She said to me that she thought the URL thing would never work for her mother. That is who I care about…her mother. So went I say I like i-names and I think they will work as a way to for spiritual women over 45 to use these systems I really am just talking about those folks in a different part of the web. Who normally don’t have non-tehcnical allies on their side as these things are formed thinking about what might work for them in a ubiquitous identity layer.
Please don’t take what I say as against anything else that lives under the OpenID2 umbrella. I really love the fact everyone has found a way to cooperate despite their different angles. It gives me great optimism for the future of the web.
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