I just installed the public beta of Movable Type 4, and was pleasantly surprised to notice that out-of-the-box authentication is no longer limited to username/password and Typekey.

The beta comes with support for several different authentication mechanisms, including Livejournal, Vox, and OpenID.

Of course, this has been possible for a long time using different plug-ins, but having it included in the base install makes for one less plug-in.

If only Typepad would follow suit, and add OpenID support in their hosted service, but that seems unlikely to happen any time soon, or they would have done so by now as they practically already have support through their Typekey system.

It seems incredible that they would actually believe that a centralized authentication system is feasible, given the fate of Microsoft Passport.

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