authentication

Looks like further advances are being made to make the OpenID signin procedure smoother for users, following in the footsteps of previous experiments by Plaxo on this front. The mini-popup actually works surprisingly well, compared to complete browser redirect to the ID provider site, and the two-in-one (signin + approve data sharing) approach certainly is smooth (after testing my Yahoo ID on http://www.mysears.com).

http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2009/09/yahoo_openid_hybrid.htm...

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Building on their successful experience with Yahoo! OpenID, Plaxo is experimenting with the Hybrid Protocol: A portion of new users who sign up for Plaxo with their Yahoo! account, are now enabled to sign in to Plaxo with their Yahoo! account and to authorize two-way data sharing of their Yahoo! Contacts and Updates via the Hybrid Protocol.
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In previous sections of this primer we introduced several aspects of the identification problem and outlined scenarios where a universal authentication system forms an integral part of the solution (see Figure 1 below). Now it is time to investigate how this may work in practice, which technologies (in addition to OpenID) might play a role, and how a researcher might leverage these tools to aggregate information about himself in a meaningful way.

This part of our web series discusses the merits of a user-centric system for individual identification on the Internet and the role OpenID and related network protocols have to play in this regard.