If anyone knows you by a web address, than you’ve got a web identity. And all around today’s web we can find interesting distributed services. So you need a way to tie your web identity to the services you need and use. That is what Yadis does.

Posted by me in February 02006.

The service you need is authentication. Really. Because you need amazon to authenticate you to show your wish list. Your bank needs to authenticate you to let you transfer funds. Hotmail needs to authenticate you to show you targeted ads. Or whatever.

Yadis is what makes OpenID 2 nifty. With it, your new web identity can authenticate with OpenID, or Lid, or Dix. In theory, you could extend your identity to support SAML, or some other authentication protocol you happen to like. I hear that Microsoft is even working on CardSpace integration. No, I don’t know more than a google would provide.

Why do you want authentication? Because it means that you don’t have to remember a username and password for any OpenID suporting sites. Instead of typing in a username and password for jyte, you simply enter your OpenID and it redirects you to your identity provider. Then you type in a password, or in the case of vidoop, select the images of the categories you’ve chosen. When your identity provider is confident you are who you say you are, it redirects you back to jyte. And jyte recognizes you are http://josephholsten.com (or whoever you are today).