yadis Digest, Vol 18, Issue 2

[Daniel Haran]

On 2/5/07, yadis-request at lists.danga.com <yadis-request at lists.danga.com> wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: yadis-bounces at lists.danga.com [mailto:yadis-bounces at lists.danga.com]
> > On Behalf Of Dmitry Shechtman
> > Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2007 8:39 PM
> > To: yadis at lists.danga.com; general at openid.net
> > Subject: Proposal: SMTP service extension for Yadis discovery
> >
> > An SMTP service extension for Yadis discovery is proposed, inspired by
> > Byrne Reese's suggestion to allow use of email addresses as OpenID
> > identifiers.

+1 to the idea of using emails.

Bart Schuller comments on Byrne Reese's blog that asking for a "site"
might be better understood for users. What 100% certain is that asking
for an OpenId URL is NOT going to work. It worked with bloggers and
early tech adopters.

About three-quarters of users in two small usability tests didn't
"get" openID, so it had to be abandoned. Not only did they not
understand the concept of a URI, they also saw their openID as one
more login to have. From a user's perspective, unless they already
have (and know they have) an openID, it requires going to two sites
instead of one.

The proposed solutions of SMTP hacking or XML discovery all seem
rather heavyweight. An old-fashioned 301 redirect from
http://example.com/openid/email_handle to whatever appropriate URI
could do the trick, no?

d.