[OpenID] Windows Live ID Becomes an OpenID Provider

[Peter Watkins]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 12:19:35PM -0700, Jorgen Thelin wrote:
> FYI, this news has just been announced at the Microsoft PDC conference today:
> 
> http://dev.live.com/blogs/devlive/archive/2008/10/27/421.aspx

Jorgen, that's great news. I'm very pleased to see that your CTP test
implementation supports https URLs (https://login.live-int.com/), and
really hope that the final offering does, too. I feel quite certain
that we'll make it easy to use Live ID if that's the case (and fully
expect that we won't accept Live ID at all if the official provider 
you launch next year doesn't support https).

Someone else asked about our app, which is currently under development.
I work for a mid-sized city (population > 100,000), and we're developing
a simple app for residents to request & print certain no-cost permits.
Currently residents must appear at City Hall during business hours to get 
these permits. Since this is an "occasional use" app, our thinking is 
that it'd be good to allow residents to use accounts they already have
for other, more frequently used, systems instead of forcing them to 
create new "city" accounts that they'll only use once or twice a year. 
(We will offer city-specific accounts as an option, and have no
immediate plans to act as an IdP.) I would *love* to accept Yahoo, AOL, 
GMail, Live ID, Facebook, Flikr, Twitter, etc.

Currently we plan to launch with dedicated buttons for Yahoo! and Google,
since both work pretty well with https-only directed identity. We're
holding off on Windows Live ID until it gets past tech preview stage,
though we will also have a traditional OpenID text input box and accept
the Live ID if somebody enters its URL. If anybody from AOL is here, I'd
be happy to add an AOL button, too, if/when you offer an https service.

-Peter