Many of you probably have heard of OpenID, but have never had a chance to use it. However, I predict that most of you reading this blog will have used it by the end of the year. I can make this prediction with an almost 100% certainty because there is a growing movement behind it that has many big players actively buying developing and integrating their platforms with the OpenID protocol. Some of the biggest players are:

1. AOL
2. Yahoo
3. Google
4. Microsoft

OpenID according to the official OpenID site is explained as the following:

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

To facilitate my prediction, of most of you using OpenID by the end of the year, I am going to give you 2 easy steps to turn your blog, or any website, in to a OpenID gateway. That will work for OpenID 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 versions of the protocol.

The first thing you need to turn your blog into an OpenID Gateway is an account with an OpenID provider, my favorite is MyOpenID, because of the abundance of features offered, but more providers can be found on http://openid.net/get/.

The second thing is pretty easy to accomplish and just involves adding some meta data to your HTML header. Just take the following snippet and replace {youraccount.myopenid.com} with your OpenID provider URL that was provided to you (there are 3 places in the snippet to replace the URL):

  <link rel="openid.server"
        href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />
  <link rel="openid.delegate"
        href="http://{youraccount.myopenid.com}/" />
  <link rel="openid2.local_id"
        href="http://{youraccount.myopenid.com}" />
  <link rel="openid2.provider"
        href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />
  <meta http-equiv="X-XRDS-Location"
        content="http://www.myopenid.com/xrds?username={youraccount.myopenid.com}" />

After that is done you just need to type your blogs/websites URL in to any OpenID text box. Most of the OpenID authentication text boxes look like the following (with the little OpenID logo in the left of the text box):

You probably already have an OpenID authentication account that you can use right this moment. Some of the common ones that most internet users have and don’t even realize are (just replace {username}):

• Yahoo: http://yahoo.com/
  Flickr: http://flickr.com/
  To enable your yahoo account to use OpenId visit http://openid.yahoo.com/
  Also while there check out their gallery of OpenID enabled applications
• AOL: http://openid.aol.com/{username}
• Blogger: http://{username}.blogspot.com/
• Live Journal: http://{username}.livejournal.com/
• WordPress: http://{username}.wordpress.com
• Technorati: http://technorati.com/people/technorati/{username}

So have fun, and check out IdeaPipe at the end of this month, we will be officially supporting OpenID.

When we first came up with the idea for IdeaPipe (no pun intended), we saw a need to fill a void in the social networking landscape. There are countless sites dedicated to connecting friends, classmates and business associates, sites that provide opinions and commentary around a specific topic and even sites that simply point to other sites, but there were few if any that enabled individuals or groups to share their ideas for the purposes of gathering feedback, collaborating or simply being heard.

There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
-Victor Hugo

For decades, corporations have relied on costly market research initiatives to gather opinions and insights as a means of measuring customer satisfaction and developing product road maps. Each day, we see politicians like Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain floating their ideas in the form of trial balloons only to wait on daily polls to determine voter’s reactions. By building upon this concept and giving everyone a voice, not just large corporations, we’ve created a platform that empowers individuals to have their ideas and opinions heard AND measured on everything from politics to their favorite products.

With your ideas, in concert with the collaboration of others, innovation will flourish. In fact, the world as we know it was built upon the unique ideas of individuals and it is exactly that which we hope to promote. Let’s face it… the solution to the energy crisis, global warming, and every other problem that plagues mankind, exists deep within the minds of individuals and it is our goal to assist in getting them out.

Ok, enough of the Mom and apple pie! IdeaPipe was created as a free service where individuals and/or groups can post their ideas on a variety of topics. Once posted, others will give your idea either a hype (i.e. “thumbs up”) or gripe (i.e. “thumbs down”) vote and optionally comment on the idea. For more specific information on how it works, visit our page on how it works! Sharing your ideas on IdeaPipe is a great way to:

• Gain valuable insight into how others perceive your ideas
• Meet and collaborate with other likeminded individuals
• Gain customer feedback
• Improve customer loyalty
• Impress your friends!

IdeaPipe is available to anyone who has a thought or idea. On top of that; within the coming few weeks, we’ll be rolling out new functionality that will enable you to even create your own public or private group. Individuals or companies large and small will even be able to create their own IdeaPipe and linked to it from, Facebook, MySpace or any other web site. And yes, we’re even going to eat our own dog food! Let us know what you think the future of IdeaPipe should look like by posting your ideas about what functionality you would like to see in the future!

So create an account and get started today. Time is wasting to get your ideas heard.

I have been working on this new social networking website that is based around the collaboration and sharing of ideas. I have talked about this project in the past, in very vague details, but today I have decided to open the curtains and give everybody a look.

http://www.ideapipe.com

Currently there are a couple websites out there that are doing the same thing, but in a more focused way for their specific business. One of the examples of these focused websites for sharing of ideas is Dell Idea Storm. In the case of Dell each of the users go to their website and submit ideas on how they can improve Dell’s products. The platform has worked really well for Dell, they seem to be getting a positive response from their community of users. It has led to them introducing a couple of products that they probably wouldn’t have, such as Ubuntu as an alternate to Microsoft Windows, if there wasn’t such an overwhelming support for this install option.

Idea Pipe was born about 7 months ago, when I realized that this type of platform would be useful to businesses, projects, and people of all shapes and sizes. Especially the ones that wouldn’t be able to pay the Salesforce.com Tax. Idea Pipe has actually been released for about a month now, however I was waiting to announce it officially until we had support for groups. Groups are a way that anybody, with an Idea Pipe account, can create their own personalized Idea Pipe, that provides all the same features and functionality as Dell’s Idea Storm, but at no charge to the group owners.

To kick off this announcement I created a group so that my readers can share and collaborate on ideas for me to post about in the future, on this blog, that will interest you my readers: http://www.ideapipe.com/groups/coder-journal

This site is still new and like any new site you will probably have suggestions on how to improve the site or the architecture, so please submit them to: http://www.ideapipe.com/groups/pipeline

If you happen to find any bugs, please send them to bugs@ideapipe.com.