I received some press-release-spam this week that I actually didn’t mind. TrustBearer Labs, a home-town startup has released their new OpenID provider, TrustBearer OpenID. What makes this interesting is that it utilizes their browser-based authentication hardware support to instantly provide strong, token-based security to any OpenID enabled site (application?). Their browser software is interesting in and of itself — cross platform (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux), cross browser (Safari, IE, Firefox), and capable of interfacing with USB smart card readers and authentication tokens. This is a great demonstration of what open standards really allow — innovation that benefits everyone who utilizes the standard.