There started an interesting discussion on user experience with OpenId. 
Chris Saad suggested on his blog: “using email as OpenID” (published 22 Aug 2008).
That’s a really good idea.
All non-tech people must be confused to enter a URL as identifier on login screens and everybody knows his email-address quite well and use it very frequently.
Another idea: why not use a mobile number (MSISDN) as OpenID identifier for logins?
everybody has one or more mobile numbers and it can also be used with a handshake-SMS to handle user verification.
Easy to use, best user experience, well known and MSISDNs are unique.
I know, that there were some experiments on mobile OpenId earlier this year, yet:
The OpenID mobile experience (published on factoryjoe in January 2008).
OpenId has with email identifier a huge potential for identification.
Image is attributed to wordle.net
Funny, we’ve already implemented this.
It’s called EAUT (Email Address to URL Transform — eaut.org) and we have a service provider up at emailtoid.net! This is indeed a usability issue — and so we’ve gone ahead and made it possible to use email addresses as OpenIDs.
The draft spec for this is available as well:
EAUT – sounds amazing. I’m looking forward that other will use it soon.
Maybe a similar MAUT (mobile number to URL transform) will evolve…
Totally! I don’t really care what people use as their external identifiers, as long as there’s some sensible way to confirm ownership of that external identifier (like a mobile phone number, etc).
Our greatest challenge now is to popularize and promote EAUT implementations by email providers.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
3 Comments