Yahoo announced yesterday that it will be supporting the OpenID 2.0 protocol with a public beta starting on 30 January. Not only does this mean that Yahoo’s 248 million users will have access to an internet-wide single login, it also means that other website can have a “log in with your Yahoo ID” button.
It will bring the number of people with OpenID-compatible accounts to 368 million. Other sites that currently use OpenID include AOL, LiveDoor, LiveJournal, Technorati and hosted versions of WordPress.

This is a great step by Yahoo. I cannot be the only one who is sick of having to register on a site every time I want to try out something new. Remembering the passwords is horrendous.

This also opens up some interesting possibilities for WebCards.

Currently, I am very reluctant to add membership services to WebCards. This includes features such as address book, favourites and reminders. This is because a user would have to register for every domain they want to send a Webcard from. If you wanted to send a WebCard from example.com and then send one from somesite.com you would have to register on both sites.
I do not have the resources to operate a central database, so OpenID seems like an ideal solution. It’s one thing having a single login for multiple sites but it is another thing to have a single login for multiple sites and have access to your Yahoo address book from this single login.

Obviously, this is something that will take some time to roll out (I am talking about Yahoo and WebCards here) but it is definitely something to watch. It may now be possible to implement one of the most requested features of WebCards.

What is OpenID
This is taken from the OpenID website:

For geeks, OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity. OpenID takes advantage of already existing internet technology (URI, HTTP, SSL, Diffie-Hellman) and realizes that people are already creating identities for themselves whether it be at their blog, photostream, profile page, etc. With OpenID you can easily transform one of these existing URIs into an account which can be used at sites which support OpenID logins.

Take a look at the OpenID website for more information.