We're turning off Clickpass March 15. How to keep your HN account.

crosses fingers scribd next, right?

Bringing OpenID To The Masses: Clickpass

http://techcrunch.com/2008/03/11/clickpass-could-change-the-...

Is there a standard to support web callbacks (or whatever they're called)? I wouldn't mind hooking up HN to Prowl, since that's what I did with Notifo anyway.

The fact that Clickpass even exists made me realize openID was DOA.

I spent a day implementing openID for the users of my website, because I realized, hey, what a cool idea, a URL can represent a single user on the internet, and that user can authenticate against it universally.

The sad truth was that I could not expect a single one of my users to even understand what the hell was going on, because for most test openID accounts I set up on yahoo, etc, I couldn't figure out how to use them. Only the hand-holdy sites exclusively for openid even bothered to tell me what my personal URL was and how to use it.

That was when I realized that Clickpass only exists because the implementation of OpenID was a total pooch screw.

If the OpenID standard had required it be simple, like the URL must follow this template - google.com/openid/kevinms and yahoo.com/openid/kevinms, and the user just pasted this into the box, I think it might have been a success. But because they didn't, and they convoluted it more with the concept of your "unique identity on the internet", you need third party services, which are unnecessary layers that are completely confusing to the user.

PSA:

Putting your email address in your profile is important. I once used to be "rb2k", but then I forgot the password I used back then and ended up as "rb2k_". There is no way to reset the password on an account if you're not adding an email :(