But, and this is a big one, with all of these various ways to access our IM networks now, we’re leaving chat logs scattered everywhere with no way to effectively find stuff we need. Not only do you have to remember WHO you talked to, WHEN you talked to them, and WHICH network they were on, but you ALSO have to remember HOW you accessed that network so that you can find the log! It’s enough to drive a normal person insane! But, thankfully, it doesn’t have to be like that. I’ve spent the last 3 days pounding my head against my keyboard to finally come up with a solution that I find almost perfect (of course, YMMV).

I’ve been a big fan of Gmail for a while, and when they added Google Talk functionality right into the contact list I actually started using it. Shortly after that I started using an actual chat client to connect since having to use the web interface all the time drives me nuts. Then I noticed something cool. Gtalk not only logs your chats when you’re on gmail.com, it logs your chats no matter where you are! Now, privacy concerns aside, this was great news. I could chat from anywhere, using any client, and still access my entire chat history on Gmail. This was a fantastic feature! Unfortunately, out of 140+ IM contacts, 2 were on Google Talk… so this wasn’t all that great after all…

But wait! Google Talk uses the Jabber protocol… and Jabber allows IM gateways to other networks… hmm… I wonder…

So I present to you my Unified Messaging Platform™©®∞! You take one serving of GTalk, sprinkle in some Jabber-y goodness, fold in a handful of Jabber-to-other IM network gateways, bake for 35 minutes and voilà, pure messaging satisfaction!

I now use any chat client I want (including the Gmail web interface) and see all of my contacts from ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, and MSN. I can talk to anyone on any network and, as far as they can tell, it’s still my same old username. But, in fact, my chats are being logged to my gmail account so I can always find them when I need them.

Now all of this talk is just fine, but it doesn’t help anyone but me, right? Well, in short order, I will be unveiling the grand design to allow anyone to simplify their messaging. But it’s definitely not going to fit into a single blog post so it’ll be an actual guide under “Geek Pages”. (Look to your right.)

Photo hosted courtesy of Zooomr. It’s like Flickr, only better because they use OpenID.

Now I can understand someone like Yahoo not getting on the bandwagon just yet. They’re a huge entity and they need lots of time and manpower to make that big of a leap. While having them onboard would be a huge boost, I don’t expect them to hop on just yet. However, one of the things that I do expect is that all of these sites that are offering me an OpenID allow me to actually… oh I don’t know… maybe log in with one?!?!

I have an OpenID. I want to go to Technorati and log in with my OpenID. That’s the whole point, right? To make things easier for the end user?! I’d like to go to LiveJournal and tell them which OpenID I want to have associated with my journal so that I can log in with it. “No sorry, we can’t do that for you… but… would you like an OpenID?” No! I don’t want another stinking OpenID!

I’m extremely thankful that there are great sites like Zooomr out there where I can actually use my OpenID and get on with my business. And there are lots of great contributions to the community in the form of plugins. Evan Prodromou has written an excellent MediaWiki extension, Hans Granqvist wrote an excellent WordPress plugin (that I personally use here at The Love Shack), and there are plenty of others contributing to the community as well. Not to mention all of the people who are using the above projects to allow people to more easily log in to sites; using OpenID the way it was intended.

But I’m genuinely concerned that if this trend of companies only being providers doesn’t change, OpenID will end up just being another one of those great ideas that never quite caught on. Thankfully, other people are noticing this as well. Conor over at Argolon put up a great entry about this problem.

So what can we actually do to change this? Honestly, I don’t know. I’m open to suggestions. I’m hoping that my little commentary on it in this little obscure corner of the web will maybe help. I’ve expressed my disappointment to all of the aforementioned Chiefs whenever possible. I’ve also done what little I can to not support them by intentionally not linking to them. Not that that’s going to help that much, but hey. It’s my little form of passive resistance.

LiveJournal, the place where OpenID was born still won’t allow you to actually LOG IN with an OpenID. But, they’ll gladly give you a free OpenID to use as you see fit… since, of course, it’s much easier to remember someguy019287439632.livejournal.com instead of myrealname.myopenid.com or something else equally weird, right? Yes, thank you LJ, for your wonderful contributions to the OpenID community.

And let’s not forget the wonderful folks over at Technorati. They had a great big announcement a little while ago talking about how they’re going to so graciously support poor little OpenID. Turns out they’re nice enough to allow you to claim your blog using OpenID. So now that I can have a single login for all sites, here’s how using my OpenID with Technorati will work:

1. Go to technorati and find my blog
2. Select “Claim this blog”
3. Log in with my OpenI… err… hmm… I can’t actually LOG IN with my OpenID? Ok…
4. So… create a new user account with Technorati?
5. Pick yet another random username to use
6. Pick yet another random password, that I’ll probably forget in 20 minutes
7. Log in and select “Use OpenID Claim”
8. Wait… Use OpenID Claim isn’t there… hmm… ok…
9. Maybe it doesn’t like my OpenID Wordpress plugin… I know, I’ll try my LiveJournal, like in the example…
10. I’ll just type that in, hit claim blog and…
11. Nothing…
12. Storm away in disgust and write an angry blog-post about it…

Yes, thank you Technorati. Your OpenID support has really made my surfing experience so much more pleasant…

Ok, no problem, I’ll just log in really quick and then do my comment. At least that’s what I’ve gotten spoiled with on the handful of sites that use OpenID. Sadly, the rest of the web doesn’t quite work like that…

Instead, I had to create a new username and wait for my activation email to come in. After it came in, it gave me a temporary password to use. So I went back to the site, logged in using my temporary password and then had to edit my account settings to set a more convenient password. After all of that, I can finally post a comment. Except that, now, I don’t really feel like posting a comment anymore. I’ve moved on to better things, like Zooomr, for example, which does support OpenID.

This isn’t really intended to pick on Simon in particular. Much like 95% of the rest of the web, his blog just hasn’t gotten onto the OpenID bandwagon just yet. Though since it is powered by Drupal, it seems like a great candidate for the OpenID plugin for Drupal.