Some of you may have noticed some new Passport logos  last night.  Hopefully that means Microsoft Passport Network 3.0 will be launching shortly.  Passport will loose the .NET name and focus on being used for mainly Microsoft sites.  eBay and others have already removed Passport support from their sites.  Although Passport was initially developed as a single sign-in service for the revolutionary web services market, Microsoft soon scaled it back as the Hailstorm initiative failed.  Although this doesn't mean that Microsoft isn't committed to web services.

The new Microsoft Passport Network will be much more user friendly, making it easier to manage the information stored in a user's account.  MSN Account Services site will be focused on providing an easy gateway to all that information, including marketing preferences, your children's accounts, account credentials, privacy and security.

The upgrade appears to be in progress now, but here's a little sneak peak of the new features and UI [sorry, you have to scroll down when opening the image].

Update [2005/04/27 16:42 -6]:  Mess.be has also reported on the new Passport, although they're mistaken on a number of points.

>View "Create a security key" (for strong-credential sign-in).

Security key was discontinued back in the beginning of March and is expected to be redesigned.  However, the security key may have been removed for security reasons as Passport 2.5 is upgraded to 3.0.  That is to say, that upgrading secure information could in itself be a security risk and the information was deleted to prevent that - part of Microsoft's increase security awareness.  Security key is used as additional protection against extremely private information, such as bank statements stored in MSN Money, so most people will not need to set up this service.

>View "Add or change your Mobile credentials" (probably linked to MSN Messenger 7's Offline/Mobile Messaging feature).

Mobile credentials is nothing new and will not be tied with Mobile Messaging, which will still need to be done at the MSN Mobile site.  Adding a phone number and PIN to your Passport allows you to easily sign in to Passport on mobile devices.  You can also sign in to Passport on a computer with this phone number and PIN if you add @passport.com to the end of the phone number.

/update

@Matthew

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