OpenID Revisit

A while ago I wrote a joyful post about OpenID and how I thought it was great. Admittedly, since then I have hardly used my OpenID identity (any of them). I've remained positive about the idea, and keep hoping I'll find/make the time this summer to do enough webpage building sorts of things to get to a point where I would accept OpenID login.

So I've been brought down a bit by the article "The problem(s) with OpenID". It's a little lengthy, and apparently largely a wrap-up of many other posts from many other places. Still, it seems like a fairly important article to read.

Also today I listened to a podcast from April concerning DataPortability with guest Jonathan Vanasco, and found it to be pretty interesting. In particular, it made me think more about the idea of having many different faces online, e.g., something like a MySpace versus LinkedIn account. And, as coincidences go, just yesterday Mr. Vanasco wrote a post: "Data Sportability". All quite interesting, and I'm looking forward to the promised 'upcoming' posts.

I wish I was more thoughtful about security and privacy and things. The web sure is an exciting place. Articles like these tend to make me wonder what I should be doing with my life. There are smarter people than me, that work harder than me, all over the place, getting all sorts of amazing things done. What sort of contribution can I actually make? Where should I direct my energy, so that a contribution actually can be made?