<div style="float:right; margin:10px; text-align: center;"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/135/355232758_4689237613_m.jpg" alt="" /><br />
Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/crazyneighborlady/">P. A. M.</a>
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<p>Everyone who uses the Internet has this problem: So many login protected websites and so many different username/password combinations used. A long time ago, people used txt&#8217;s to keep their passwords, but with current browsers they keep it for you. But it&#8217;s still a pain when you&#8217;re not on your computer or you format or even change browsers. What if there was only one login system for every website?</p>

<p>Well, <a href="http://openid.net/">OpenID</a> solves that problem. You can login in any website that supports this system (and that number is increasing) only with your OpenID url (ex: alcides.myopenid.com). As this is an open system, you are not stuck with some company, like you are with Microsoft if you use <a href="http://winliveid.spaces.live.com/">Live ID</a>. There are a few OpenID servers and you can even have your own. And even if a server goes offline, there is a solution for it: use your own website as your OpenID. Mine is alcidesfonseca.com and to have that, I just had to add this lines to the head tag in my homepage:</p>

<div class="code">
&lt;link rel=&quot;openid.server&quot; href=&quot;http://www.myopenid.com/server&quot;&gt;<br />
&lt;link rel=&quot;openid.delegate&quot; href=&quot;http://alcides.myopenid.com/&quot;&gt;
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<p>If someday I stop using MyOpenID.com and start using another, I just have to change those lines. Simple and secure :)</p>


<div style="float:left; margin:10px;text-align: center;"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/95/235404704_bbd53f1c90_m.jpg" alt="" /><br />
Photo by <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/8pril/">April Joy</a>
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<p>If you haven&#8217;t started using OpenID, I strongly suggest that you take a look at <a href="http://simonwillison.net">Simon Willison&#8217;s</a> screencast on <a href="http://simonwillison.net/2006/openid-screencast/">How to use OpenID</a>.</p>

<p>If you own a website with login/password, think about the possibility of adding OpenID support for your users. Here is a list of plugins for <span class="caps">CMS</span> that you can use:</p>

<a href="http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,2590/Itemid,35/" target="_blank">Joomla</a><br />

<a href="http://verselogic.net/projects/wordpress/wordpress-openid-plugin/" target="_blank">Wordpress</a><br />

<a href="http://www.openidenabled.com/software/drupal" target="_blank">Drupal</a><br />

<a href="http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/OpenID/" target="_blank">MediaWiki</a><br />

<a href="http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/FeatureRequests/OpenIDSupport" target="_blank">MoinMoin</a> (needs some hacking)<br />

<p>Of if you need to code your own, <a href="http://openid.net/wiki/index.php/Libraries">here are some libraries to help you out</a>. In a near future, when adding OpenID support for my blog, I will post and How-to add support for Python applications.</p>