Last week Windows Live ID announced support for OpenID with the release of a Community Tech Preview (CTP) of their OpenID Provider. A growing number of sites have begun accepting OpenID as their means of authentication, and it’s encouraging to see that Microsoft’s Live ID will support this standard. Live ID is one of the most widely used authentication providers in use today, but previous attempts to establish it as a single sign-on service (as Passport) across a wide portion of the Internet never took hold.

Personally, I think OpenID is a great step in the right direction, and it’s something I’m eagerly looking forward to adding to my sites, including ASPAlliance.com,LakeQuincy.com, and ASPAdvice.com, among others. How important is OpenID support to you? Do you regularly use an OpenID account? Will you use your Live ID (assuming you have one) as your OpenID once this support is released to production?