OpenID Gets Closer to Real Usability

Until recently I hadn’t been impressed with the so-called “seamlessness” of how OpenID was going to make life easier for actual users trying to register on Web sites. But things may be starting to come together. RPX, for example, has commercialized a very easy OpenID login/registration interface. If you want to see it in action on a live site, go to UserVoice and register. It’s now not so hard to imagine a world where we have one identity and one password, linking not just all our social networks but all the content and commerce sites we have relationships with.

Now let’s use the same open-standard approach to make it easier for one e-commerce relationship to grant us easier access to premium content across sites, without having to make multiple individual subscription purchases.

(And by the way, if you are a connoisseur of elegant registration/purchase screens – you know who you are – UserVoice’s are beautifully designed, well engineered, and short.)

Quick Thoughts on Times Extra

On the home page of the New York Times, you can now turn on Times Extra, which will add news and blog items from Blogrunner underneath the headlines of the top Times stories.

Many of the links seem intelligent and interesting, although with all the little scrolling windows it adds to the home page, it’s pretty ugly. And I wonder if the links to external content wouldn’t make even more sense on the actual article pages, rather than pockmarking the home page. Isn’t the article page where you’re more likely to want to dig even deeper on a topic?

Tougher Passwords = Lower Revenue?

Just finished trying to order a simple $30 online print job at Fed Ex Office (the happy life of a consultant!). I abandoned the whole process in the middle of trying to create an account to make this purchase. Why? I got this message after my third attempt to choose a password acceptable to the system:

I’m all for security, but how does it make my life better to force me to choose a password I can’t possibly remember? And how is it good usability to tell a user the password rules (in an error message) only after he or she attempts to choose one?

Some online program manager at Fed Ex (assuming they have one) simply wasn’t doing his or her job: Wondering if a checkout process like this would help customers spend more money.