There's a new OpenID extension for "social browser" Flock, and it was created with the help of password management service Vidoop and News Corp.-owned social network MySpace.
It's now available for download for all Flock users who have upgraded to Flock 2.0. For MySpace, which initially announced its support for OpenID back in July, this is also a push for Data Availability, a universal-login project that the social network announced in May but has since only rolled out with a few partners.
Yahoo, one of MySpace's launch partners for Data Availability, has also thrown its weight behind OpenID.
"As three companies dedicated to empowering users to easily share content and experiences, this was a very rewarding--and relatively fast--collaboration," Max Engel, MySpace's Data Availability product manager, said in a release. "Our goal was to eliminate some of the work involved in jumping between social experiences on the Web so that people can focus on their connections and the incredible content that's out there. This Flock extension will give millions of people an easier way to expand their experiences and expression without boundaries."
The OpenID Flock extension allows for easier credential management within the browser and makes it more apparent when a site will accept an OpenID login. A handful of OpenID extensions already exist for the open-source Flock, but this one's got the seal of approval from some big names.
There are deeper reasons for MySpace being so vocal about OpenID support, though. The standard has seen its toughest rival yet in the form of Facebook Connect, a data-portability project which enjoyed a high-profile New York Times writeup this week and will reportedly be ready for a full debut very soon. (It's already been implemented on a number of sites.)
Flock, unfortunately, isn't an enormous player in the browser space. It has tons of bells and whistles, but is still well behind the likes of Internet Explorer and Firefox in terms of downloads, and has newfound competition from Google's Chrome.
Regardless, MySpace has been paying a lot of lip service to open standards recently, and it's always good to see real developments.
Three new products were demo'd today at the Web 2.0 Expo, rounding out the big product launches at this conference. (Yesterday's news came from Spock [review], InPowr, and Webex.) Today the pitches came from the following companies.
Swivel makes a great data exploration service. See previous coverage on Webware and ZDNet.
No new product news from Swivel, but the company is announcing that the OECD is an official partner to the company now. Swivel is a killer demo. If you like playing with data, this is definitely worth trying out.
Vidoop has a new system that replaces passwords with picture categories. See this morning's coverage.
One thing I didn't mention in this morning's post: Each computer that you use Vidoop on must be authorized, and that happens via a confirmation message sent to your mobile phone.
TellMe launched a free directory listing service to compete with Google's new 411 system. TellMe is adding a visual component to their old-school voice-recognition-based information retrieval service (1-800-555-TELL). The system sends you text messages for your results, and will map them too (it fires up your phone's browser to display it). Also new from TellMe: A downloadable client app to make accessing the TellMe data even easier... although it seems a little weird for a company based on voice response to release a standard phone app.
One of the companies presenting at the Web 2.0 Expo Launchpad sessions on Tuesday is the very strange security company, Vidoop. This firm makes a system that replaces passwords with pictures. It's quite ingenious, and much more secure than standard, hackable, or keyboard-loggable passwords.
Setting up my Vidoop account by choosing picture categories.
(Credit: CNET Networks)When you want to sign on to a Vidoop-protected site, you're shown a grid of pictures, each of which has a letter stamped on top of it. Your job is to select the pictures in the categories that you've selected as your password. For example, if you've selected car, boat, plane as password, then you need to find the pictures of the car, the boat, and the plane in the grid, and enter in the letter on top of each one of them. It requires more thought than just typing in your birthday, but it is more secure.
Each time you try to log in, the pictures change. The "airplane" one time may be a fighter jet, the next time a 747. The pictures' positions changes in the grid, too. And the letters that go with the proper pictures also change. This makes the password very difficult to hack.
Vidoop sign-on: Select the letters on top of your secret picture categories.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Vidoop can act as an authentication technology for a high-security site, like a bank. It's also an OpenID provider, so if you want to use sites that authenticate against OpenID, you can use Vidoop.com to provide the authentication. (OpenID is a great new technology for reducing password overload, although it's going to be hard to explain to consumers how it works.)
The twist on Vidoop that I really like is this: The pictures can be sponsored. For example, in the demo I saw, "car" picture was always a Smart Car. It may be a different picture each time, but when a car appears on a grid, it's a Smart.
I doubt Vidoop is completely unhackable, but it does look like a better and more secure password solution than requiring people to memorize (or, more likely, to write down) increasingly long and complex passphrases. And the sponsoroship angle is really clever.
The site should be go in to open beta soon. It's a closed beta right now, but if you happen to be at the Web 2.0 Expo, you can stop by Vidoops's booth and grab a printed invitation code to get into the site.
See also: The Hot-or-Not captcha.
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