To understand openID, you only need to consider the number of Internet accounts you currently maintain. Maybe you have one email account in Yahoo or Google, another account in Flickr for your photos, an account in YouTube for videos, another one in Friendster, Facebook, or MySpace for your social network, and many many more. For each of this site, you need to have a username and a password in order to use the provided services. As your online presence expands, keeping tab of all these accounts becomes more difficult. I have several so I know how difficult it is to remember all username-password combinations. This is the issue openID is trying to solve.
According to their website, "OpenID is a free and easy way to use a single digital identity across the Internet." Ideally, with one OpenID you can login to all your favorite sites eliminating the need to maintain several usernames and passwords. Imagine the convenience of using a single username-password combination for all websites you would like to visit. Well, this is still ideal since not all websites have already adopted OpenID. Surprisingly, you may already have one without knowing it. If you have an account in wordpress.com, your OpenID is simply username.wordpress.com, or if you have one in flickr.com, your OpenID is www.flickr.com/photos/username, and several others. Check this site on how to get one. The interesting thing is that you can use your own website or blog as your OpenID identity. How? Read on.
