I was exploring the features and benefits of the "Intense Debate" plugin for Wordpress, and was prompted to sign into Open ID by providing my Open ID URL.

I have a Google Account, but have never been directly asked for my Open ID account. This lead me to the Open ID website, at which point I thought the information would be clearly indicated on the "Get an Open ID" or "start using your Open ID" page. Instead, it was a bunch irrelevant information about how I already have an account, with links to useless links like Google and Yahoo's landing page.

The answer to the question, "where do I get an Open ID URL" for basic login is unfortunately difficult to find on the current website, if it's even there (I have yet to find it).

If Open ID is to succeed in achieving mass adoption, surely the basics like providing a website that provides basic information like how to obtain an account and sign in are of the utmost importance. I consider myself to be quite computer literate and I'm frustrated beyond belief, so I can just imagine what a non starter this would be for incorporating into a website and asking people like my parents to try and obtain this new account and throw them in a complete loop trying to figure out where they go to get it.

Thanks.

This would be an open and distributed reputation management system that keeps track of a user's reputation throughout the many websites that make up the world wide web.

OpenID provided us with an open and distributed authentication system, but this is where it stops.
I believe that OpenRep is the missing layer between this and the many other 'Social Web' platforms that exist out there (blogs, social networks, e-retailers such as Amazon and Ebay).

When a user posts a blog, comments on another user's blog, reviews a product or service, attempts to sell an item on Ebay, tries to purchase an item on Ebay, Requests to add a friend on Facebook, or performs many of the other 'social' interactions available on the WWW, their reputation has the potential to play a role in how others perceive that interaction and how much of a 'weight' it may carry.

We therefore need a means of tracking this reputation between websites.

Data (ratings, comments and the 'semantic categories' to which they relate) would be collected against each user profile, as they currently are to some extent on existing websites like Amazon and Ebay.

This data would be synchronized with that user's OpenRep account (which would be linked to their OpenID account and referenced also by URI). This data would then become available to the other websites that they login to with their OpenID login.

OpenRep servers would be Open-source and anyone would be able to establish an OpenRep provider. The 'industry' of providers would be self-regulated in that the servers would provide a means for that Provider to link to and rate all the other's reputations, with the combination of these ratings also being stored on each server.

This would keep out 'pirate' OpenRep servers as the 'savvy' user would verify the 'OpenRep' of someone's blog via an alternate OpenRep provider, and this would happen automatically with websites that provide OpenRep to their users.

For anyone who's interested I wrote about something similar to this in my blog after reading an article in Scientific American on "Science 2.0":

http://darrensmith.com.au/blog/index.php?itemid=17

Open Id is a great concept and I like to use it in day to day life but security is a critical issue here. I think password is not enough to protection We need two way authentication system which is free to everyone and easy to deploy in servers.

For that We can create a software that we need to install it to the USB flash drive and whenever we need to login we have to use that USB drive which having a software which will authenticate the process Its like a debit card that we using in ATM where we need the debit card and password to access the ATM so without the combination its impossible to use ATM same idea we can implement for websites.

The bright side is that it can be a free technology that all user can use. Mostly everybody use portebal USB drives to carry their data, same USB drive can be used for the process.

For software, developers can create a portable and secured application which contains info cards, digital certificates , email certificates, Spl digital certificate that can be used for particular software download and USB so if any user copy the software to other USB drive then the old certificate will don't work fot that USB drive so by this we can create a solid security layer