For those of you that were shut out of Google Analytics when I posted my review a while back, you can now try out the service. Google Analytics has reopened registration and you can sign up now along with AdWords.

I don’t talk about how cool my job is much, but it’s events like the Super Bowl that remind me why ESPN.com is special. Is there any other web site, seriously, that does as good a job visually and editorially covering a game than ESPN.com? Just take a look at our home page compared to any others. The visual impact is so different and so unique. It’s one of the big reasons I always used to come here and why I’m really proud to work here.

Here’s this morning’s front page:

I’m watching the Sxip presentation given by CEO Dick Hardt. I spoke to their marketing person yesterday and went to their little shindig up in their suite and have to say, I’m still skeptical. Very quickly, Sxip aims to create a user-centric identity system they’re dubbing Identity 2.0. The idea is a single sign-on (SSO) system that, unlike systems like Passport, puts you in control of which companies host your data, what data to share, and which data from which provider to share. So, theoretically, if you had an ESPN.com account, you could make ESPN.com the authority for one of your online identities. If you went to Amazon.com, in a Sxip/Identity 2.0 world, you’d be able to tell Amazon to use ESPN.com to authenticate you. ESPN.com would only pass on the registration data you authorized to Amazon. Sxip doesn’t have to be the solution for Identity 2.0, but of course they want to be the preferred choice.

The problem I see with this system is that it’s too cumbersome for users. The problem I have isn’t that I have multiple identities on different sites, but that I have to fill out the same email, name, address, phone number, etc. all over the place. It’s annoying. I do actually really like having multiple identities.

The system doesn’t do anything about naive users making “bad” privacy choices. Instead, if I add my cell phone, say, for a particular site to use, I might just always opt to have my authority site (home site in Sxip jargon) keep that data too. Just for ease of use, if nothing else.

What I’d rather see is a browser/computer centric solution that would allow users to store certain data on the client and then come up with a microformat-style system where the browser or a plugin could fill in the form using the hints provided in the form.

That would be simple, and easy for users to understand. Every time they add data to the local schema, it’s always convenient and it makes it more difficult for users to make “bad” privacy choices. People just read forms, see the fields that get filled in, and then can either just delete the fields they see filled in. Perhaps the persona idea from Web 2.0 could be stored locally as well. Anyway, anything that works well on the client and keeps data with me I think is better. Most users won’t know this, but will get the convenience of SSO and simplified registration. That’s all we really need, right?