[OpenID] Combining Google & Yahoo user experience research

[Ben Laurie]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 10:10 PM, Johannes Ernst
<jernst+openid.net at netmesh.us> wrote:
> On Oct 14, 2008, at 11:48 , Allen Tom wrote:
>
>> I do think that URL based identifiers are ideal, however it seems that RPs
>> may want an even lighter weight way to start using OpenID, so defining a use
>> case for Email Verification could be a way to transition RPs to OpenID.
>
> I'd really love to have a general-purpose e-mail address to HTTP URL mapping
> scheme. [but read on]
>
> That would:
>  - let users use e-mail addresses in all places of HTTP OpenIDs
>  - let anybody type the e-mail address printed on my business card into a
> browser address field, and miraculously my home page came up.
>
> It would also keep one of the (the biggest?) reasons for having URLs in the
> first place as identifiers for people, which is that they can participate in
> a peer protocol with sites. (Imagine if companies only had e-mail addresses,
> and no HTTP sites)
>
> Big downside: browser support needed.
>
> It could be a as simple as resolving an e-mail address to an XRDS file,
> which contains a "home page" service entry.
>
> Am I just dreaming?

Pretty clearly, the hard bit is resolving an email address to a URL.
Once you have a URL its easy. Seems you glossed over the hard part
there...

>
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> Johannes Ernst
> NetMesh Inc.
>
>
>
>
>  http://netmesh.info/jernst
>
>
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