I don’t imagine it’s high on their priority list, but it’d be nice if Six Apart would add OpenID pointers to the default TypePad headers. Every TypePad user automatically gets (I think), a TypeKey identity at http://profile.typekey.com/username, and TypeKey profiles all include OpenID identities. If TypePad pages all had a delegation to TypeKey, they’d join LiveJournal and Vox (also Six Apart products, LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick having invented OpenID in the first place) in offering OpenIDs for all their users.
At present, if you’re already logged into TypeKey and want to comment on a TypeKey-enabled blog, all you have to do to sign in is click the sign in link. Then, if you want to enter your URL to be displayed with your name in the comment, you type that in when you type in your comment. Switching to OpenID would be exactly the same process, except that you type in your URL before clicking “sign in” instead of after.
What I’m getting at here is that, since I’d wager a large amount of TypeKey’s and TypePad’s users overlap, and since TypeKey profiles are OpenID profiles, OpenID could replace TypeKey without anyone missing anything. Anyone with a TypePad page would log in using their TypePad URL, and any other TypeKey users could just log in using their TypeKey profile as their OpenID, if they don’t have another one. My present comment form allows OpenID or TypeKey authentication, but it seems somewhat redundant. I’d like to remove the TypeKey thunk, but I don’t want to scare off all the TypePad users who are used to it (not that I get many comments).