Accounts

I just realized today that I have more than 30 accounts and service subscriptions spread across the internet.

Hmm, is it actually possible to create an interface that would unify all these and act as a hub?  Possible features:

  • Have an overview of all accounts: A screen full of widgets (Hooray for info overload!)
  • Track how often each account has been used: This will help the user decide if that account should be disposed of
  • Possibly integrate feeds…but then, the user’ll probably have another service to handle that so it’s not important
  • List all/most (or at least the most popular) services on the internet
  • Social aspect
    • Rate services
    • View top services
    • View new services
    • View services in open/closed beta
    • Suggest services to friends
  • Possible interface between services…but not that important since other people has mostly done work on this already and a lot of services already have their APIs public.

If OpenID or something similar was implemented long ago, this would have been easier.

Filed under: Uncategorized by Loki

  • Justin dela Cruz
    You know what, the ubiquity of having a central ID can also extend to mobile phones. It can be inconvenient at times when your contacts change their numbers and then you'd have to update your phonebook. If there's a central referring ID, then even if they change numbers, you still refer to that ID and it will call the new number for you.

    For all the profiles & accounts we have all over the web, ProfileFly, do appear useful to manage our online identity. But what about the services provided via these accounts? The future might have to go beyond just listing our accounts. It might also mean having the need for an "API Aggregator."
  • Hmm...central authentication like OpenID seems like a good idea indeed but only a few seem to be adopting this. :(

    One advantage of this is that it's difficult to forget your e-mail address. One downside though is that if all services ask for the e-mail address, users could be hesitant to sign-up for fear of spam.

    I just found ProfileFly today by accident. It's somewhat what I was looking for but it doesn't provide access to the services, it just gets the feeds. One good thing about this though is tries to "unify" your online identity.

    On another note: Rawr. The Pownce client seems to be bugged right now o.o;;
  • Oh and yes OpenID looks like it :)
  • To an extent, I think this is already possible - but only for inside a group of services. Take Google for example, and their iGoogle (is that what they call it now?). Smaller services don't have this luxury.

    I'm actually going to be contented with a service that just provides central authentication to other services. It will provide all the basic information out there, even just username or password.

    Instead of creating a new account in another service, say, Pownce, I just give it my ID (email should work best here) and it will automatically use it - central username and password.

    I think Microsoft's Passport system tried to do it but haven't really picked up. I'm not sure why so it should be a good reading.
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