ReadWriteWeb

If I were truly mischief and wanted to game the system, I would have named this article, "Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login, Part 2." If you're not familiar with the incident to which I'm referring: One of the most illustrative cases of the incomplete state of the Internet as an information system was in February 2010, when ReadWriteWeb itself happened to publish an article with "Facebook" and "login" in its headline. It soon found itself at or near the top of Google search results for the phrase "facebook login," with the result being that hundreds of Web users to this day happen upon this page when they're trying to reach Facebook itself.

The Web was not designed to require identity or authentication for data to be accessed. Up to now, most consumers have not considered this a problem - at least, not the ones who found themselves staring at ReadWriteWeb when they were expecting Farmville. This will change.

What's the difference between Live Free or Die style independence and acting like Lady Gaga posturing in a dress made of meat? It could be economic viability, if you're a tech startup.

Long one of the most visible leaders of the open, federated identity technology OpenID, Portland, Oregon startup Janrain announced tonight that it has raised $15 million to build itself into a leading provider of identity management, for big branded websites seeking to leverage big brands of tech ID like Facebook Connect, Twitter and Google. The Wild West had terrible UX and never caught on like the dreamers dreamed. Now Janrain is building a business with OpenID in the background, almost just out of politeness it seems. Big ID has won and Janrain is serving it up on sites like CitySearch, MTV, NPR and yes, LadyGaga.com.

Vincent Van Gemert and the Floorplanner team ran into a few stumbling blocks while preparing their product for the Google Apps Market. "We found out that a lot of people were struggling with the existing Rails libraries and the OAuth authorization method," Van Gemert wrote. That's why Van Gemert created a guide for integrating Ruby on Rails applications with Google Apps and the Apps Marketplace, which Google has published on its Apps Developer Blog.

Google has announced that Yahoo users will now be able to quickly and easily sign up for Google products using their Yahoo email address. The feature, according to some in the industry, will be a boon for Google and OpenID, the Internet standard behind the feature. But what benefit does this provide for Yahoo?

Will making it easier for Yahoo users to sign in to Google - a direct competitor - draw users away from the portal, search and mail provider, or will it help create an overall better user experience? According to Yahoo, making a process that users were already engaged in simpler will provide a better user experience and keep them interested in one of its most solid products - Yahoo Mail.

Must include at least one number. Must be longer than six characters. Cannot have more than four sequential characters from your previous seven passwords. The rules for password creation vary wildly from site to site, an effort to protect users from those who would hack their identities.

These protective measures don't go very far, according to the New York Times, because hackers can get ahold of passwords with software that remotely tracks keystrokes, or by tricking users into typing them in. The story touches on a range of issues around the problem, but neglects to mention the obvious: the march toward a centralized login for multiple sites.

JanRain Engage provides a convenient way to enable social logins on a site via a single API. This includes support for Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and over a dozen additional services.

Implementing JanRain Engage on your site is a lot less work than implementing each login provider one by one. Also, as any changes to each login will be handled by JanRain, you won't have to keep updating your authentication code if changes are made by the login provider.

Janrain is a Portland company working with the federal government to replace login and registration blocks with an OpenID framework. The company is the only service provider that is working with the Apps.Gov site to provide OpenID-based login and registration tools.

We asked JanRain CEO Brian Kissel to provide some background about OpenID in the federal government and the role the company plays in its adoption. Kissel is chairman of the OpenID Foundation.

Janrain recently relaunched its OpenID service as Janrain Engage.The service helps connects sites to the social web through APIs and widgets. Janrain Engage allows visitors to sign-in to sites with their social network accounts and then publish comments, purchases, reviews or other activities across the social Web.

One of the most significant developments for Enterprise 2.0 happened last week when Google Apps Marketplace announced that it would be standardizing on OpenID.

Google is leveraging its strength as an identity provider to create a single sign-on ecosystem for third party applications and enterprise customers. This does not mean that we will see immediate adoption of single sign-on across the enterprise landscape. But it does represent a shift that will lead to more seamless application integrations, platform diversity and a sizable community of enterprise customers.

We're seeing a lot more discussion on the topic of single-sign on for SaaS environments. The issue is becoming more important as security emerges as a top concern for companies considering making the move to cloud-based environments.

OneLogin is a new company that offers single sign-on, cloud-based service that allows for small and mid-sized companies to enjoy the same level of security as large enterprise companies.

NTT docomo, the telephone provider patronized by approximately half the population of Japan, today linked its mobile identity layer with a general web identity for users through OpenID, according to the OpenID Foundation. NTT docomo users will now be able to quickly and easily log-in to any OpenID supporting website online with the same account credentials they already use in the country's flourishing mobile ecommerce and content ecosystem.

Just when you thought the Identity game was over and Facebook or Twitter had won, now you can welcome 55 million more docomo customers onto the OpenID side of the contest.