I have to signup for everything!!!

This week, I am at the SXSW Interactive conference that is here at the Austin Convention Center. After the first real day, I am still excited about all that I can learn from all of these really smart people. I am having a great time. A third party application provider, sched.org, seems to have created a really great tool for for planning your day. With this, you can view all of the sessions, and the details of the sessions. You don't even need the $40 book to know what you want to do.

I kinda got put out by the fact that I had to sign up for an account in order to use their service. I am tired of signing up for accounts. I think there are a few reasons that I would rather not sign up for an account.

1. It takes too much time. I just want to make my schedule! click, click, click, and I am done.
2. I do not like everyone having my email address, so they can solicit some new widget or service every couple of days.
3. Privacy. Some people care about this, and others don't. I feel better if I am able to use a unknown service anonymously until I get to the point that I trust the site and the community.

Now, I know that collecting email address and accounts is the best way to save user preferences, track growth, and market the new features of an application, but there has got to be a better way. Ideally, I would like to use a web application that does not require you to sign up. Application providers need to be more creative in the way that they are designing their applications in order to provide this. Second, the use of openid would cut down on the time to take to sign up for an account. This would also allow for saving user preferences.

More later...