Welcome to OpenID Australia
Most useful sites on the web have a concept of identity. You log in with your username, do something for a while and then logout. Whether it is checking your email, writing a blog entry, or purchasing a book, you tell the site who you are at some point. Identity is a very important part of the web, and is what makes the internet useful.
Maintaining identities across multiple websites is difficult. You register at each site, choosing a different username and password. It is tedious and many sites ask for information that you have already provided elsewhere. What if someone has already taken the username you want? Most people end up choosing a username they don’t like, or simply leaving the site without registering.
What is OpenID?
OpenID is a new way to identify yourself all over the web. With your own personal OpenID you can login to any OpenID-enabled site (there are over 1,000 of them and that number is growing everyday) and identify yourself as you.
It’s one username and one password for all of the sites that you go to. It means no more registration screens on the sites you go to. Most importantly, OpenID is open; its a protocol that has been developed by a diverse community interested in solving the identity problem once-and-for-all. You can use it at any website that is OpenID enabled as if I already had an account. It blurs the lines of where you you have an account, and the question you ask changes from “Do I have an account?” to “Is the site OpenID enabled?”