Yahoo! adopts OpenID specifications

What is an OpenID?

According to Wikipedia,

OpenID is a decentralized single sign-on system. Using OpenID-enabled sites, web users do not need to remember traditional authentication tokens such as username and password. Instead, they only need to be previously registered on a website with an OpenID “identity provider” (IdP). Since OpenID is decentralized, any website can employ OpenID software as a way for users to sign in; OpenID solves the problem without relying on any centralized website to confirm digital identity.

OpenID is increasingly gaining adoption among large sites, with organizations like AOL and Orange acting as a provider. In addition, integrated OpenID support has been made a high priority in Firefox 3 and OpenID can be used with Windows CardSpace, which is part of .NET Framework version 3.0 (the .NET Framework version 3.0 comes with Windows Vista by default and can be downloaded for Windows XP).

Now the latest news from Yahoo! is related to the future oriented thinking for using OpenID 2.0 norms. Here is a news from Yahoo to look at::

Yahoo is moving in a big way to embrace the new OpenID 2.0 specification, which eliminates the need for Web surfers to create separate IDs and logins at each of the Web sites, blogs and profile pages that they may visit during an online session.

Beginning Jan. 30, Yahoo’s 248 million active registered users worldwide will be able to use a new beta test version of Yahoo ID to seamlessly sign in to hundreds of OpenID-compatible Web sites, the search engine giant said.