Will Norris talking about things OAuth, OpenID, and Diso at WordCamp. Demonstrates/fakes an OAuth authentication and authorization process with WordPress for iPhone app.

Does this matter? OAuth support is slated for WP 2.7, and people are finally getting smart about linking all this stuff without throwing passwords around “like confetti.”

I just realized OAuth support is slated for inclusion in WordPress 2.7. It’s not in trunk yet, but that’s no reason not to get up to speed. Scott Gilbertson says OAuth and OpenID are foundations to the open social web, giving apps like WordPress a “secure, centralized means of identifying yourself and a way to control who knows what about you.”

Chris Messina, who says we currently treat user credentials “like confetti,” is more than a little excited and is building a series of WordPress Plugins to take advantage of these formats. Stephane Daury is excited too.

Following news that Yahoo! is joining the OpenID fray, it appears Google is dipping a toe in too. While those two giants work out their implementations, others are raising the temperature of the debate on IDM solutions. Stefan Brands is among the OpenID naysayers (David Recordon’s response), while Scott Gillbertson sees a bright future. Let’s watch the OpenID Directory to see how fast it grows now (count on January 19 2008: 446).

Ars notes that Yahoo! supports OpenID. Yeah, that OpenID.

The conversation on Code4Lib about OpenID reminded me to finish a draft I’d started at Identity Future on the topic.

The short of it is that Marc Canter says that single sign-on is good, but “we need the attribute exchange to make this thing really take off.”

Then all the skeptics will realize that the authentication layer HAD to come first – but was just a first step. Along the way we’ll figure out standards for user intrerface and usage flow.

But for now – the critics are right – OpenID as it stands right now is just authentication and that ain’t gonna rock nobodies world – except for Bard Fitzpatrick’s world – I guess.

It’s been a long time since I said identity management is the next big thing (and many of the names have changed since), but I stand by it. I also stand by the suggestion that blogs — user-driven technology — will drive it.

, attribute exchange, identity management, idm, libraries, marc canter, openid