Comments from non AOL users

A few years back I was fed up with the difficulty non-AOL users had in commenting on my journal, so I added a link on each entry to an off-site guestbook that doubled as a comments page.

I've long since given up on it, in part because the circle of frequent commentors has become smaller and smaller.

Tonight I stumbled on this comment by AOL in the Magic Smoke Journal - I guess you don't have to sign up for AOL or AIM to comment nowadays:

Just to set the record straight, you are no longer restricted to AIM or AOL screen names. You can use your email address as your screen name. So, for instance if your email address is krissy@yahoo.com, you can use that as your AIM screen name.

You can see that option on the sign-in page where it says "Screen Name or E-mail" and also when you go to get an Account.

Another user authentication system that is garnering attention is OpenID. With this you can use your blog url as your ID and sign in to any of the sites that support OpenID.  AOL supports OpenID, but the experience is less than optimal right now. Hence we have not implemented it on Journals. But it is something that we will addressing down the road.

Times change, things improve . . anyhow, I found it interesting.