claimID is a pretty basic service that makes two major offerings. First of all, it supports the new OpenID standard based on the idea of having one login for many websites. When you register on claimID, you get your own OpenID URL which you can use on any other OpenID-supported website to login.

But the main feature of claimID is that it provides a place where you can keep track of all of your identities across the internet, and group them together. For example, on my claimID page, I have a group listing all of the Web 2.0 services that I’m a member of, with links to my profile on all those services. I also have a group that lists all of the blogs that I am a part of, a group that lists all the sites that I’ve designed, and all the forums that I’m a member of, and I’m considering adding a few more as well. When you add links to your claimID page, you can indicate whether or not they’re by you or someone else, and whether or not they’re about your or something/someone else, and of course, tag your links. claimID also allows you to verify that the links you add are yours by adding a provided meta tag to your website–this shows that you actually own your links. You can then share your claimID link with others so they can find all of your identities on the web, and then hook up with other claimID users for your Contacts. claimID also generates an hcard of your links.

claimID is a fairly simple but well-designed service for compiling all of your identities around the web, sharing them, and connecting them using OpenID. If you find yourself spread across the web using a number of different services and maintaining different websites, I highly encourage you to create a claimID page. Oh, and add me as a contact.

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Tags: contacts, hcard, identities, OpenID, review, services, Web 2.0