AOL's recent move to embrace OpenID (right behind Microsoft and the rest of world+dog) has taken the next step, with all AOL and AIM screen names becoming an OpenID URL.

With this, in one fell swoop, over 63 million new OpenID accounts have just been created.  read more »

Ma.gnolia.com, a popular social bookmarking site, added OpenID as an alternative method for new user registration in December, 2006. OpenID is a decentralized user-centric identity architecture that allows a user to use a URL based ID (think of it like a username) to log into a variety of websites.

Earlier this month, Larry Halff, founder of Gnolia Systems shared usage statistics of 5467 users that registered for new service between December 15 and January 31. No specific user data was provided.

Sample Sizing:  read more »

OpenID, the most visible of the new identity management schemas - and CardSpace, Microsoft's browser based initiative to help users control and protect their identity online have decided to play nicely together in the User-Centric Identity space. The press release is here .

A team consisting of Microsoft, VeriSign, Sxip and JanRain has been assembled to implement the new interoperability model.  read more »

RSA Conference

Moscone Center, San Francisco

http://www.rsaconference.com

 

Did you know that Time magazine has made "YOU" their Person of the Year 2006?
We’ve now entered the era where the web is providing previously unseen capabilities to the masses. The result is a myriad of new communication and information service providers and hundreds of new logins and passwords.

The growth of these silos of ‘Unmovable Identity Data’ (e.g.: usernames and passwords accounts locked into vendor silos) is being replaced with a new breed of identity-centric technologies now being called Identity 2.0.  read more »

Multiple sources are reporting that the Maine legislature has passed a resolution to opt-out of the federally mandated REAL ID program.  read more »

David Recordon, one of the originating developers of OpenID, noted in his blog that social bookmarking service ma.gnolia has posted some initial statistics on new user adoption of OpenID.

Per the ma.gnolia newsletter, since the ability to log in via OpenID was enabled, 15% of all new users use OpenID as their primary method of logging in.  read more »

CNet Networks
San Francisco

This morning, Brian Muller announced the release of a modfile that adds OpenID to Apache as an available method for authenticating a server session.

The module allows for OpenID Provider white and blacklisting (critical for enterprises looking to allow only allow trusted OpenID Providers to provide identity claims).

More information can be found on the project website.

File this under the category: just because you can do something doesn't mean you necessarily should do something. There's been a good amount of recent chatter online regarding the upcoming IE and Firefox plugins for the Polar Rose photo indexing service. Similar to the initial intent of almost-acquired-by-Google Riya, Polar Rose's goal is to create a search engine for faces in photos. As quoted from the company website:

 read more »

Recently, Paul Madsen posted a small comment regarding the OpenID plugin for MediaWiki.

The plugin, as it has been created, gives the ability for Relying Parties (in this case, the MediaWiki sites) to build OpenID whitelists and blacklists. For example, the Relying Party could choose to only accept OpenID identity URLs from idp.myvauthid.com, or choose to reject all OpenID identity URLs from Livejournal.  read more »