Zeit For OpenID

German weekly news magazine Die Zeit recently has published an introduction on how to use OpenID.

Nothing spectacular, but a good visual turorial on what OpenID is, why it is useful for webizens, where and how to get an OpenID – they use German OpenID provider xlogon for that – and how to use your brand new OpenID to sign up at a service.

This might not sound like a big deal, but considering how up- and coming web technologies have been covered by German newspapers and mainstream media in the last two years or so this article comes as a pleasant surprise.

It is not that German publishers don’t get the economic shift that has been going on in the media landscape. All major ones have been experimenting with social features or investing in Web 2.0 companies – e.g. Die Zeit also runs its own (not very popular) social network for students and parent company Holtzbrinck snaps up startups basically on a weekly basis.

But there is a big chasm in what they are doing or how they are strategically positioning themselves and what the are reporting to their readers. German newspapers are excellent in general, but when it comes to the web all they usually come up with is ironic or cynical, it almost seems like they are proactively trying to disinform the public. Anyways, kudos to Die Zeit for helping their readers and putting this interesting topic on a larger map.

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(This article originally was written for blognation Germany. Since blognation is gone I have reposted it here)