gHacks technology news » id http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:31:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Log in to websites with your site’s URL as your OpenID http://www.ghacks.net/2009/07/17/log-into-websites-with-your-sites-url-and-openid/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/07/17/log-into-websites-with-your-sites-url-and-openid/#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:12:56 +0000 Joe http://www.ghacks.net/?p=14457 OpenIDA few years ago, Martin covered OpenID, an open authentication system. Since then, it has become increasingly popular and a wide range of sites, from AOL to LiveJournal provide OpenIDs, and OpenID login is also quite common. OpenID is particularly popular for blog comments, with Blogger now integrating support for it.

An OpenID is an URL. However, using an URL like http://computerjoe.myopenid.com/ to log-in and post comments with just doesn’t look sophisticated. I much prefer to use my own blog’s URL to post comments and log-in; it pumps traffic to my blog and frankly just looks better.

Whilst you could run your own OpenID identity server to do this, this takes quite a bit of expertise to set-up and whilst it is probably more secure, it isn’t needed in my opinion.

It is possible to use a any identity server with your website’s URL. I personally use MyOpenID, but I log in to sites with joeanderson.co.uk/blog; not with computerjoe.myopenid.com.

This can be done by simply adding a few lines of HTML to your website’s <head>.

For example, I put

<link rel=”openid.server” href=”http://www.myopenid.com/server” />
<link rel=”openid.delegate” href=”http://computerjoe.myopenid.com” />

Naturally, these have to be modified depending on your username and server, but the provider should provider the information.

There are several benefits using this type of OpenID identificatin. The main one is that it just looks better but the most practical one is probably that it allows you to change provider whilst keeping the same log on. So, if I suddenly decide not to use MyOpenID, I can change to any other provider but my URL remains the same.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/07/17/log-into-websites-with-your-sites-url-and-openid/feed/ 4 ID Card Photo Printing http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/10/id-card-photo-printing/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/10/id-card-photo-printing/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:10:02 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=11068 ID card photo printing refers to the process of printing a number of photos in ID card format on a local printer. The ID photo has to be on the computer system and can be loaded directly into the ID card photo printing software. Once the photo has been loaded it is possible to select the number of photos per page that shall be printed. The maximum number of photos per page is 30.

A click on the Print Now button will send the print job to the local printer so that the ID card photo can be printed the selected amount of times on the page.

There is not anything special about this printing software and the same effect could be initiated by almost any software that can display images and provide printing possibilities. The main advantage of using ID card photo printing software is the ease of use. It does not take longer than a few seconds to start the print job whereas it usually takes longer to do the same in non-specialized software programs.

id card photo

ID Card Photo is compatible with most versions and editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website and requires that at least one printer is installed on the computer system.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/10/id-card-photo-printing/feed/ 5 Another Story From The Land Where Everything Is Possible http://www.ghacks.net/2009/02/06/another-story-from-the-land-where-everything-is-possible/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/02/06/another-story-from-the-land-where-everything-is-possible/#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:03:13 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2009/02/06/another-story-from-the-land-where-everything-is-possible/ The favorite country for funny tech stories has to be the United Kingdom. Government officials seem to lose confidential data all the time, be it in front of pubs or by selling it on eBay. Well, the next too good to be true story is that they spend 4.7 Billion British Pounds for new biometric identity cards that contain additional information about every citizen like fingerprints, facial scans. The funny part of the story begins now.

There is not a single card reader in Great Britain – with the exception of prototypes probably – that can read the new cards. This essentially means 4.7 Billion pounds well spend on a piece of plastic that does not serve any other purpose than a standard old fashioned ID. One would think that the production of card readers would be set to the highest priority. This is seemingly not the case as Identify Minister Meg Hillier mentioned that “there’s no prospect in the immediate future for the government directing anybody [...] to buy those things”.

Minister Hillier did point out that the British government will not direct anybody to purchase card readers in the near future. They do expect on the other hand that organizations will start buying card readers once a critical mass has been reached.

via Dailytech

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