OpenID is now Open for Blogliners

Today is our first release devoted to supporting OpenID for Bloglines Classic and Bloglines Beta. In the near future, Bloglines will also support consuming OpenIDs and OpenID 2.0 which was just released this week.

Now our more technical users will know right way what's going on and will be excited. In that case, you can go to id.bloglines.com and get started. Note - OpenID is just the beginning of us working with true open standards. Other formats getting our attention include oAuth (Open Authentication) and APML (Attention Profiling Mark-up Language). For the rest of you, let me outline a little bit about OpenID and what it will offer you in the future.

OpenID allows you to create an identity online and use that identity to login to any OpenID supported site. In other words, you will no longer need to create a new username and password for every single website. How many times have you gone to a site and forgotten your login. You might ask yourself, was the username "joe578" or "joejoe" or "bigjoe" or "joeanne?"

Now you can imagine that if your favorite sites allowed you to login with a single ID you would be able combine services and create some pretty cool mashups. You would be able to pick and choose the sites you like to use and the features you want.

While OpenID is getting some momentum from major sites who have offered OpenIDs, it is still very early. So in the meantime, you will still need multiple IDs. But keep looking for the OpenID symbol. You will see it popping up more and more.

If you're looking to get better informed about OpenID you can check out the OpenID Foundation or a few of the bloggers who cover the topic.

Enjoy!

- Rob Emanuele and the Bloglines Team