<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<font face="Arial,sans-serif"><font size="2"><span type="cite">Kaliya *
wrote on 10/20/2006, 11:57 AM:</span>
</font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,sans-serif" size="2"></font></p>
<blockquote type="cite"
style="border-left: thin solid blue; padding-left: 10px; margin-left: 0pt;"><font
face="Arial,sans-serif" size="2">I think it is a terrible idea.<br>
<br>
1) If you put something out into the market that looks like an e-mail
it will be used like an e-mail. I have personal experience with this. <br>
<br>
I had a AIM handle for the Mac part of the universe <a
href="mailto:kaliya@mac.com">kaliya@mac.com</a> (it was not an e-mail
address) but because it looked like one people used it like one and I
basically had to go to .mac and pay for an account so that the wires
did not cross.
</font></blockquote>
<font size="2"><font face="Arial,sans-serif">This came out of the
discussions we have about a smooth migration path for our users at
AOL. In our case the <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:user@example.com">user@example.com</a> nickname is also a resolvable
email address, though it may not be the primary mail account of the
user. I'd suggest that as a best practice, anywhere that a
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:user@example.com">user@example.com</a> nickname is used, it should also be a resolvable email
address. And there should always be an option to not use something
that looks like an email address.</font></font><br>
<blockquote type="cite"
style="border-left: thin solid blue; padding-left: 10px; margin-left: 0pt;"><font
face="Arial,sans-serif" size="2">2) I think OpenID is new and needs a
new way to identify folks. And it is our job to teach people about this
new way. Lots of services give people homepages within their
spaces...myspace, AIMpages etc. so they can use those URL's if they
don't have one yet they can get one. </font></blockquote>
<font size="2"><font face="Arial,sans-serif">There's a bootstrapping
problem here. It's very, very hard to promote the use of something
that requires a more complex login flow to replace something that is
very simple (albeit limited and in its own silo). How can we cross
this chasm? Our suggestion is to support existing practice of
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:user@example.org">user@example.org</a> in a standard way, while being open to new practices.
Once we can support both we can gain experience and start gradually
migrating people over to the new world. At least that's my take.<br>
</font></font><font face="Arial,sans-serif"><font size="2"><br>
<span>-- <br>
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/aol/SzHO"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/aol/SzHO.gif"
style="border: 0pt none ; float: right;" alt="Abstractioneer"
></a>John
Panzer<br>
System Architect<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://abstractioneer.org">http://abstractioneer.org</a><br>
</span></font></font>
</body>
</html>