I logged in to my LiveID account [turns out it wasn't a LiveID account but a Windows Live account, but didn't see anything about OpenID. Looked in 'more services' and FAQs - nothing. Hmmm, typical big organisation that doesn't really do the Web very well....so I searched LiveID OpenID using Live.com (just joking, I searched using Google and found a few results, of which https://login.live-int.com/beta/ManageOpenID.srf looked promising)
Although I was logged in to Windows Live the site didn't spot this and asked me to log in again (yawn, groan, typical Microsoft). So I tried to login and....I got an error message:
"The e-mail address or password is incorrect. Please retype the e-mail address and password, or sign up if you haven't already done so." (I typed it in ok)
Maybe my LiveID account is different from Windows Live ID? (Microsoft genius branding) So I tried to create a Windows Live ID account and used the same email and password as my LiveID account...
As a comic aside, when registering I used my mother's birthplace as my secret question I was told her place of birth was too short, and needed to be at least 5 characters long. I will ask my Mum to be reborn in a place with a longer name when I get time...
So having put in a longer placename.... the next screen shows a VERY scary messsage:
*** This is a Windows Live ID test cluster. Entry of any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in this cluster is prohibited under Windows Live ID security requirements. DO NOT enter production (actual) Windows Live ID credentials - member name passwords, question and secret answer, etc., or any other personally identifiable information such as email address. Information in this cluster is not protected under the standards for Windows Live ID PII. ***
What does that mean? I don't know but I will continue to register anyway.....
Success - or so it seems. Now I have a Windows LiveID and a Windows Live Account. Both with the same email address and password but seemingly not the same. Confused, I click on 'More about Windows Live ID'...the pop-up window says "You are not authorized to view this page. The Web server you are attempting to reach has a list of IP addresses that are not allowed to access the Web site, and the IP address of your browsing computer is on this list."
Anyway, it looks as if Windows LiveID is not the same thing as a Windows Live Account. The following wikipedia article confirms this. I wonder:
- do I have 2 accounts with Windows Live?
- why was there no link from Windows Live account to Windows Live ID?
- why was I able to create a Windows Live ID account with exactly the same credentials as my Windows Live Account?
- why can't my Mum be born in a place that is 4 letters long?
- why now does my Windows Live ID login take me to my Windows Live Account page? And why is it possible to have different secret questions for my Live Account and my LiveID account if they are the same thing?
Strangely enough, although I now have a LiveID OpenID URL it isn't visible in my Live account, and some of the settings I updated earlier (date of birth, gender) seem to be lost. I also have a Live unique ID that is not an OpenID. I also have a URL (http://cid-b74592fd20a7de07.profile.live.com/) that isn't the same as my LiveID OpenID.
The final indignity of course is that when I try to use my new Microsoft OpenID it doesn't work:
The specified ID provider has not yet been implemented in Scrapplet.
A message has been sent to the developers to add it pronto!
Current supported providers include: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, AOL, MyOpenId, LiveJournal, Verisign, and WordPress
http://openid.live-int.com/bentoth
Other
http://openid.live-int.com/bentoth
At this point I give up, and overall this just confirms my impression that Microsoft isn't yet a Web native outfit.
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