For the past few days, I have been thinking about Doug Kaye's Consumer-Centric Form-Fill and Sign-on post.  There was really nothing new to Doug's proposal, but his post made me fall back into thinking about authentication, privacy, payment, and user experience; things I used to spend great deal of time thinking about while working for Arcot Systems.

Doug's solution centers around client-based form-filler like RoboForm and server-based storage of encrypted profile, meaning the user needs to download and install a form-filling software and somehow negotiate a remote storage.  The main problem with this approach is that people rarely take actions to overcome non-accumulative inconveniences. 

Forms are incidental, meaning one runs into them while trying to do something, and form related inconveniences are amply rewarded by completing the form (otherwise the user would not have completed the form in the first place).  Unless the task is as painful as filling out tax forms, people won't bother to install software especially if they have to pay for it.

Luckly, I expect Microsoft to add form-filling feature into Internet Explorer.  But I expect it to work only with Passport and MSN until people have gotten used to them.