Check out their website for other great icons.

Open ID is an open identity system that allows you to use one single identification (or digital identification) across many of your favorite sites. Participant sites include the likes of Ma.gnolia, pbwiki, 37 Signals, Technorati and Plaxo.

With Open ID, you register once for an ID then use that to identify yourself on different sites. The result: you don’t have to remember numerous login and password details. It makes surfing much faster, more secure and less of a pain.

Developed by the OpenID Foundation an organisation that was formed in June 2007 to help promote, protect and enable the OpenID technologies and community, the group is quickly expanding and some of the behemoths in the industry are now OpenID providers.

To claim your ID use a reputable providers such as MYID, Claim ID or Vidoop and make the process easier by using a downloadable browser plugin like Vidoop’s to manage your standard logins.

At last my brain can take a rest and doesn’t have to store all those endless password details.

When potential customers search Google Maps for information about a business in a specific area (e.g. Flower shop in Vancouver), they will find details like a business description, address, hours of operation, methods of payment, unique services, and even a coupon or a photo of your storefront.

It’s easy, free and takes just a few minutes to set up your business with Google Maps. Remember to use your keyphrases in your business description whenever possible.

Once you’re registered, Google Maps will send you a postcard to confirm your address before adding the listing. This may take a few weeks. When your business is on Google Maps, you can update or edit your listing at any time to improve its effectiveness.

Following a meeting with Cameron, we discussed the idea of creating a map to which companies could be added easily. Cameron worked on a flash version of the site and came with with version 2.0 of the map. Although much improved, the map did have limitations and grew crowded very fast.

Techvibes has also been growing rapidly these past few months and in an effort to cover more cities and different technology, we knew that a better solution was needed. The idea of using Google maps had been mentioned from the very beginning but we never had the time to implement it – until now.

This week we launched version 3.0 of our map. The title “Techcouver” has been dropped and we’ve added different technologies. Techvibes goal is to provide visitors with the perfect tool for locating technology service providers across Canada and eventually the US.

If you’d like your company added to the map, fill out the request form and we’ll get you on there. If you have any feedback on the process, please report back and we’ll continue to make improvements.

Josh William, the founder of Firewheel Design and founder of my favourite invoicing system, blinksale gave a great talk on how he took his company from the bedroom to the boardroom. His presentation was very insightful and made me realize that some of the business issues I’ve been casually sweeping under the carpet, will need to be addressed soon.

Tara Hunt presented a series of examples where citizens have come together and created solutions to better their cities, transit and build better communities. Although I wish her talk would have provided more examples of government sites as the title had promised, she managed to convince me that we can’t wait for governments to take action and fix everything. By trusting their citizens, governments can use eager web developers who build websites and web applications and build better communities or change their way of thinking.

Indi Young also demonstrated how people are the ones who need to be listened to and influence the web. When coca-cola came up with their new formula a few years ago, they weren’t fixing any problem, but instead just focusing on their product and the result was a disaster. Innovation doesn’t happen when people create great products, but rather, when they fix people’s problems. Using mental models, Indi Young discussed a series of examples where she showed us that by asking the right questions she was then able to look at marketing and product opportunities. As a result, her mental models enabled me to think of a new way I can visualize web projects.

This year’s Web Directions North conference was a great showcase of how people are using Web 2.0 technology and web apps. The message that stood out for me, was that webmasters no longer have roles to play but every site needs a “community manager”. The Web is no longer about “The Company” or “The Man” but rather about communities. For the past year or so we’ve had a huge increase of requests for blogs and content management systems (cms) at Bluelime Media. As a result we’ve been building more and more sites using WordPress and our clients seem to be happy, but Boris Mann’s presentation made me think that other types of cms may be better or at least worth a look. I haven’t downloaded my copy of Drupal yet and I’m not 100% convinced, but I may need to follow his advice or at least attend a drupal templating meeting just to see what the fuss is all about.

As with every conference, my brain is full and I’m knackered, but I would do it again in a heartbeat.