[OpenID] Combining Google & Yahoo user experience research

[Johannes Ernst]

On some level, it isn't, you are right.

On another, it's huge:
  - enter your e-mail address into your browser's address bar.
  - have del.icio.us bookmark e-mail addresses just like web pages --  
with all the same functionality, including clicking on the bookmark
  - what about an HTTP POST against an e-mail address? (opens all  
sorts of interesting possibilities for non-SMTP e-mail)
  - all the world's business cards (with an e-mail address) now also  
list their personal home page (without reprinting)
etc.

I think I'm simply bringing up a different perspective on the same  
technical problem. Which substantially expands the "market" for this  
kind of technology from "only interesting to newfangled  
projects" (like OpenID) to "everybody".

And, with all due respect to our friends who argue that e-mail  
addresses are the "correct" identifier for faster end-user adoption, a  
perspective that does not make those end users second-class citizens  
because their identifier is "not on the web".

An e-mail address becomes just an alternate syntax for http://something.or.other


On Oct 14, 2008, at 15:51 , Martin Atkins wrote:

> Johannes Ernst wrote:
>> What about -- instead of "merely" figuring out how to use e-mail  
>> addresses for OpenID and friends -- we treated an e-mail address as  
>> a form of HTTP address all across the web?
>> This means: all e-mail addresses become REST-ful. E.g. you can type  
>> them into your browser and, at the minimum, they support a redirect  
>> to the "real" page.
>
> Aside from the need to get browsers to implement it -- which is a  
> political problem rather than a technical one -- I don't see how  
> this use case is different to any other email-to-URL mapping use-case.
>
> Can you elaborate?
>