Blogger comments using openID & Google's Knol

Two interesting tech-related developments.

Blogger now supports openID

Blogger has fulfilled one of the most persistent demands. It now allow readers to comment by using their blog URL with openID-enabled services like Wordpress, Livejournal etc.

What is openID?

When we visit websites, some of them require us to register with them using a username and password. The problem is for different sites we need to login with (sometimes) a different username and password. Websites that conform to OpenID technology allow us the convenience of logging in using the same username and password for all. Read more about its what, where and how here.

Blogger has chosen a few popular OpenID providers -- like Wordpress, Livejournal, Typekey etc -- to highlight on the comments form. But since the whole technology is literally "open", we can use any URL that we control as our "OpenID URL". Read more what is Blogger is doing about it here.

A competitor for Wikipedia?

The other bit of interesting news is that Google is testing a possible competitor for Wikipedia.

"The service, called Knol, which is short for knowledge, would allow people to create Web pages on any topic. However, unlike Wikipedia, which allows anyone to edit an entry, only the author of a “knol,” as the pages in the service would be called, would be allowed to edit. Different authors could have competing pages on the same topic," says this article in The New York Times.

Related links:

• 'Encouraging people to contribute knowledge' by Udi Manber, VP Engineering, Google.
• 'Google's Knol experiment to rival Wikipedia?' by Rafe Needleman.