Use Your Email As Your OpenID

I think one of the reasons why OpenID is not catching up as fast as it should be (it should have been a rage) from the users’ community is because with all the dozens of OpenID providers and OpenID urls, most of us are taken to a new and unfamiliar territory. I can today register at one of the open ID service providers but when the time comes to use my open ID url, bang..I have forgotten it. What was it? Some pip dot palin dot whatever? Or palin dot what ID dot com….

Sure some of the techy among us can install a Firefox addon (Sxipper, Seatbelt)  that will autofill OpenID forms for us, but for the majority, it’s always …oh! what was my ID?

Another concern that I have is that these are not my urls. These are borrowed urls that I have opted out of compulsion in a bid to establish my identity. I didn’t like it. My identity is not Wordpress, nor Verisign, nor myOpenID, nor AOL, or whatever.

At least to address the first issue, we have hacks and plugins with which you can make your website/blog address as your OpenID. I love this concept. At least I don’t forget what my url is, even though after login, I am redirected to my OpenID service provider.

The latest on this is that for those of us who don’t have blogs or websites, we can make our email addresses as our OpenIDs. Email to ID is new neat service that enables this. You can register your email addresses with the service and associate your OpenIDs with the emails. Next time, you need to login at a OpenID-enabled site or comment on a blog, simply enter your email address as a your OpenID. You are not likely to forget your email address, are you?