Jourbals

[spudtater]

Edit: Originally posted on Livejournal

Have been tinkering with OpenID, which is very neat. I shall definitely be using it, should I go ahead with my planned dissertation project of a decentralised version of LiveJournal.

I had not realised that LiveJournal actually generates OpenIDs for all of its users! Try going to another journal site which supports OpenID, for example DeadJournal or LiveJourbal (hehe, livejourbal), and click "OpenID". Then enter your-user-name.livejournal.com, and you'll be logged on!

Actually, can somebody with a DeadJournal (or other non-livejournal OpenID) leave me a comment? You should be able to do so by clicking "more options", then "From: OpenID" and typing in your OpenID. Thanks!

Comments

[batswing.livejournal.com]

Without a password? Can someone pretend to be me on Deadjournal then?

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

No, you need to be already logged in to LiveJournal in order to use it as your OpenID. (Otherwise it will prompt you for your password).

Of course, somebody could register the name "batswing" on deadjournal, and then post to LJ with it, pretending to be you. That would be annoying.

[batswing.livejournal.com]

Ah! Ok, that makes sense now! Thank you!

That would be annoying. But since I dn't have, and probably never will have, a deadjournal, maybe people will notice it's not me. :)

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

And anyway, a person could just register batswlng or something, and be equally as annoying.

[batswing.livejournal.com]

Yes, they could if they were that desperate I suppose!
(It took me ages to work out what you'd done there!)

[zotz]

Again, this is just as I understand it rather than being based on deep knowledge, but I think LJ indicates that someone's an external user by using a different user icon next to the LJ name. In principle a site could choose one indistinguishable from LJ's, but I think LJ could then stop allowing them OpenID access.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Yes, the user appears as "name [full.authentication.url]", with an OpenID icon next to it rather than a little LJ person.

Look here, for example.

[zotz]

Cheers, yes. I think I've only once seen it actually used like that, and it was a while ago.

[zotz]

As I understand it, Livejournal actually invented OpenID for precisely that purpose.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Hmm... referring to OpenID users is still a bit fudgy.

To display ext_1 you have to type <lj user="ext-1" /> — not the best!

[markadm.livejournal.com]

Very interesting! You've solved the missing bit for me, i.e. how do I translate my LJ handle into an OpenID. Thanks again!

[stormclouds.deadjournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

*waves*

[luckylove.deadjournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

Maybe I should've used this one instead.

*waves again then wanders off to her DeadJournal crypt*

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Right, so friending works across jourbnals. I think the eventual intent is that if you write a deadjournal post, it should display on my friends page... don't think that works yet, though. Any chance of a random luckylove.deadjournal.com post to check that?

[luckylove.livejournal.com]

posted! Doesn't appear to work though. I might try it the other way around once I finally manage to get all six accounts to friend each other. It's taking forever.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

Nah, doesn't appear on my friends page. Oh well.

[stormclouds.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

*waves again*

[luckylove.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Are you suitably annoyed yet?

I just got luckylove and stormclouds on openid to stop other people using them. They're my usernames.

[luckylove.livejournal.com]

How do I refer to my open ids in lj terms? I don't know how to make that work.

[spudtater.livejournal.com]

You have to discover the autogenerated name that lj is using to identify you, which is not simple. I clicked on the little openID icon next to your name to get to your userinfo page. Then I hovered my pointer over the "add friend" icon, which revealed the link location of (...)/add.bml?user=ext_34254. Success! Then I type in <lj user="ext-34254" /> and get:

ext_34254

[luckylove.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I think they've now friended each other, with the exception of the myopenid ones. I can't be arsed doing that.

[drunkoncaffeine.com (from livejournal.com)]

figured I'd test this...

[yodathedark.livejournal.com]

nice :) it worked :D

and I'm using LJ as my OpenID server :D

[markadm.livejournal.com]

P.S. Haven't watched this, but this video (http://lifehacker.com/software/identity/video-demonstration-how-to-use-openid-239106.php) on Lifehacker may be useful...

[luckylove.livejourbal.net (from livejournal.com)]

Uh-oh. What have you started?!? I have two livejourbals already! Mark suggested getting some for the killer animals but I refuse to go that mad. I'll save that idea for my next manic phase.