Interesting to see that AOL has taken on board Vidoop, the visual authentication system, as part of its OpenID initiative. Whilst this will help users to sign on to OpenID, exactly what are they going to get to once they have signed on? AOL is not yet a relying party so AOL users can’t use OpenID to access any AOL services. As previously said, OpenID needs to start getting some heavier weight service providers on board to be truly useful. Compare this with the UK federation where we’ve been busily getting service providers on board as well as identity providers…
It’s also good to see AOL adopt Vidoop. There have been quite a few studies in this area as it has been proven to increase usability, within certain limits (searching for ‘Sasse’ and ‘visual authentication’ gives a good number of links if you want further readable background) . Vidoop gives us a chance to see what the pros and cons are on a much larger scale.