There’s a growing discussion around the Web about the future of OpenID and whether it’s really making lives easier for users. The article “OpenID Is Here. Too Bad Users Can’t Figure Out How It Works” on Webmonkey shows some of the concerns users seem to have about this open authentication mechanism:

However, the usability problem has engineers and design experts scratching their heads. While the typical internet user probably already has an OpenID account tied to their Google account, AOL name or Yahoo ID, they still don’t know how to use it.

Poor usability seems to be one of the main obstacles to the wide adoption of OpenID on the consumer side, leaving users clueless about how it really works. Quoting the article “What is this OpenID Everyone Speaks Of?” on Pixel Bits:

Well. I don’t know about you, but to me? OpenID is nothing but a bunch of gibberish.

Well, is it? This article generated a good discussion on FriendFeed, because it directly questions OpenID usefulness and why users should abandon the username and password model that has been around for so long. Let’s try to answer some of the questions.

Is OpenID hard to use?

The argument against OpenID is that URLs are too hard to remember, and using one to identify yourself is worse than using plain old usernames and passwords.

I believe this can be easily solved by exposing a friendlier user interface. Instead of simply asking for an OpenID, applications should start using solutions similar to JanRain’s ID Selector where several OpenID providers can be chosen from a single interface.

What are the benefits of OpenID?

The major benefit of OpenID is the ability to sign in to multiple applications using the same identifier. Instead of remembering multiple usernames and passwords you just need to enter your OpenID and you’re in.

Another benefit is that it’s an open protocol upon which anyone can contribute. There are multiple Open Source libraries in many different programming languages, making it easy to implement your own consumer application solution.

Are there any good alternatives to OpenID?

Sure, there are alternatives, but they’re all proprietary and they’re not decentralizing the Single Sign-On solution. Also, they could be interoperable with OpenID, expanding their reach to a broader audience of consumer applications.

So, what next?

Much needs to be done about OpenID usability and how users react to it. OpenID should transmit the idea of a secure, easy to use and always available authentication solution.

Chris Messina is proposing some innovation on this area after he is elected as community representative to the OpenID Foundation board. If you care about OpenID and its future, I think you should cast your vote now.

I just came across the article “Fire Eagle and tarpipe: two ways to avoid battery-drain on your mobile” written by one of our users, Guillaume Riflet. I found this article particularly interesting because the author makes a deep analysis of one of the causes of device battery draining: using too many applications. Quoting the article, where Guillaume comments about the current diversity of mobile applications:

However, the major technological bottleneck for this new eco-system to strive, is the device battery-life. Today’s smartphones and pdas drain all the power in just a few hours. This is a big problem that is bound to stick around for a while, (unless some physics Nobel prizer comes up with a brilliant solution).

Until someone finds a way to dramatically increase battery lives, there’s a simpler solution that relies on two services that act as a middle-layer for two different types of information:

• fire eagle: a Yahoo! service that receives updates about your current geographic location. Then, other services can access that geographic information, eliminating the need to update the same information to different services;
• tarpipe: a social media publishing platform that lets you send information to different services by performing a single action.

By using fire eagle and tarpipe you’re in fact spreading your geo-location and publishing your information by performing a single action, instead of using many different applications. Quoting the original article:

With this in mind, you’ll hopefully drain less power from your device, and yet have the same functionality.

All this makes me think about launching a tarpipe fire eagle connector. What do you think?