NoteMe

I was for a long time posting thousands of posts around vBulletin forums about programming, and web design, and every time I had to sign up for a new one, I was thinking why no one at vBulletin ever thought about making a database of members where info could be pulled out, so you didn't need to sign up every time. But the problem is much bigger than that. Every day you probably sign in to a lot of pages that is not vBulletin powered, and many of those you won't return back too at all. BugMeNot became an answer to the latter one, but what about those you want to return back to over and over again. Should you really have to register all your details every time you find a new page. Lately there has been a few ideas running up as strong candidates as a solution, where OpenID is the one I personaly opt for.

But the way I see it today it doesn't solve every problem with registration. Just look at the registration for an account here at My Opera. You probably also want an avatar, and you had it before, so why would you need it again. Gravatar and even Pavatar has been set up as some kind of solution, but for me it sounds like it works against what OpenID is about in the first place. Why would you need more places to register when you have your OpenID already.

So what about uploading your avatar and maybe a pass photo to the OpenID server. Would it put too much strain on the servers? Would a link to the image be enough? And what about different sizes. Chris Messina pointed out some really good suggestions in the OpenID mailing list. Maybe the solution favicons use today could work. My first thought goes to all of those that doesn't have a domain. What about them? Should they not be allowed to have avatars? I guess that problem could be solved by allowing an arbitrary URL to be used, but then it would again be overcomplicated and we don't want that do we?

An other issue Chris Messina points out is that most web pages allowed different sized avatars. How to cope with this? Should it be allowed? Why shouldn't it? I guess there is no perfect solution to the problem in mind, but there has to be a better one than what is going on today. But where is it?