The more time I spend on the internet after having an OpenID account the more I get annoyed. There are tons of places that should allow you to login using it: anywhere you post comments, review sites, anywhere that you would post content only once or twice, anywhere that you would use only to subscribe to a service (newspaper, magazine, etc), job application websites.

I've found myself on sites like this this week and refused to open up an account because I find it ridiculous that more people have not adopted this system. The voices of the internet must cry out in rage soon.

That being said, it should be understood that OpenID should not just be used in these small areas. It's a great place to start a a good example of why it should be used, but it's a platform flexible enough to be used for authentication just about anywhere on the web.

Unfortunately I think it's a ways off. Site owners are still interested in 'owning' their users and their content; the technology is still a little complex to understand for less net-savvy users - could be difficult for them to get accounts; for non-net-savvy users more large sites like google or ISPs will have to become OpenID providers for it to become mainstream.

More links:

• http://openid.net/
• http://openid.net/get/ - you may already have an OpenID account (aol, blogger, flickr, livejournal, wordpress, etc), but if you don't figure out where you can get one here.
• http://openid.net/what/ - another explanation of what OpenID is