Montreal Tech Watch

AgentSolo.com, a website made for freelancers and consultants looking for contracts, is now supporting OpenId for authentication and new user signups. AgentSolo writes that they’re proud to be one of the first to implement the protocol on their website. AgentSolo has also been implementing new features on their website, such as social networking and friend activities for members, under Yves Williams‘s leadership.

The feature is introduced as a solution to the multiplication of websites, and solving the problem of having an array of credentials. The company also says it’s now supported by behemoths like Google, Yahoo or myspace.

Furthermore, they encourage other web companies in Québec to use it:

En tant que pionnier au Québec dans l’utilisation d’OpenID, AgentSolo.com souhaite inciter les autres sites et services Web au Québec à adopter ce même standard afin de faciliter la circulation des usagers entre les différents des sites Web québécois, et en stimuler encore plus l’usage.

I’ve also seen users asking openly for openID implementation, although my final stance on this was that the authentication dance in openID makes it completely unusable, on a UXP point of view. Having to go to a third-party website, authenticate, then allow usage of credentials, then coming back, completely trumps the theorical benefits of openID, imho. A YCombinator startup, clickpass, did have an elegant & usable implementation, but it’s rescricted to a few websites. So as far as I’m concerned, openId make a normal user’s life more difficult. Of course, this is just my opinion. There’s a poll below for those who disagree and want to weigh in.