There’s been a lot of talk about OpenID recently. Today, there was an announcement that Microsoft is going to work and collaborate with the OpenID community ( specifically JanRain, Sxip, and VeriSign).

OpenID is a way of maintaining an online identity through a centralized system. Simply put, instead of having to create accounts for every site that requires authentication, you just provide your OpenID credentials.

A picture is worth a thousands words, so it’s best to see OpenID in action. Simon Willison does just that with this screencast.