By the end of last year, two big players in the software and internet business have made some interesting steps forward in supporting OpenID.

Yahoo! Is Testing Simple Registration

In November Yahoo! started testing the Simple Registration extension (Sreg) with a limited number of Relying Parties. This extension allows sharing of some basic profile information stored at the OpenID Provider.

As far as I know, the tests are not finished yet, though users can already preview the implementation. As you can see from the screenshot below, I used my Yahoo! OpenID to log in to Plaxo. Don’t mind it’s all German, though.

My real name, nickname, email address (I crossed it out), language, and timezone are forwarded to Plaxo. As usual, Yahoo! provides some informative explanations to users, so they are always informed what’s happening. That’s a real advantage of Yahoo!’s entire OpenID implementation.

Microsoft Live ID Is an OpenID

Another news that almost got unnoticed by me, in October Microsoft announced that Live IDs will be OpenIDs. Microsoft will support the OpenID 2.0 standard only.

Currently, you have to create a Live ID test account to see it work. Already established Live IDs don’t work with the demo. So hopefully, the Microsofft’s tests will end soon. I hate creating test accounts.

More than a month has passed by since the last blog post on Spread OpenID. So it’s time to report about two new additions to the comparison page: the Estonian OpenID provider which is linked to the Estonian identity card, and Yahoo!’s OpenID provider.

Both projects are very interesting, we think. Yahoo! is one of the major players on the internet and it is providing a very simple and easy to understand implementation of OpenID. It’s cool to see tutorials and explanations on all steps during the login process.

Estonia certainly offers one of the most progressive projects related to eGovernment. The identity card is the basis of a lot of services: electronic voting, an email address valid for citizens’ lifetime, embedded certificates for encryption, and much more. The OpenID provider is using this identity card as well.

We have also added a contact form on the About page. If you want to add your provider to Spread OpenID, change details of your listing on the provider page, or if you just have some questions, please use that contact form. Thanks!

Some good news regarding OpenID have been reported the last two days. Two major media and internet brands have adopted OpenID.

Yahoo! Becomes an OpenID Provider

If you are reading tech blogs regularly you have read the news somewhere else already: Yahoo! will become an OpenID provider by the end of the month. This is really good news as almost 250 million users with a Yahoo! account will have an OpenID then. Yahoo! simply turns its IDs – the current login to Yahoo! – into OpenIDs.

We don’t know the exact details of the OpenID implementation yet, though a few things are known already:

• OpenIDs will be very short: yahoo.com
• Flickr – a Yahoo! property – will also work as an OpenID: flickr.com
• Only OpenID 2.0 will be suppported
• Yahoo! won’t accept logins with other OpenIDs (yet)
• Some phishing-prevention features are built in

I am sure we will have a closer look at Yahoo! once OpenID support is live. Maybe we can gather enough information to add Yahoo! to the Provider Comparison page (any Yahoo! developers reading here?).

By the way, what will happen to Simon Willison’s idproxy.net project which is using Yahoo! IDs as OpenIDs already?

Login to CNN Political Market with an OpenID

It is possible to log in to CNN’s Political Market with an OpenID now. Unfortunately users have to sign up for an account first and then associate an OpenID with it. Admittedly, this could be done a lot easier. I tested it yesterday and it works great, though. Maybe this is a first step of OpenID adoption at CNN.

[via David Recordon]