Track Shared Expenses with Buxfer; Sign In with Yahoo or Facebook Accounts

Buxfer isn't particularly noteworthy in of itself: it's simply a tool to manage shared expenses, say, if you want to keep track of who owes who what for dinner last night. However, for long term record keeping, it does have some use. As an Associated Press story notes

For example, one housemate could pay for dinner and a movie for everyone, earning credits in his Buxfer group and therefore paying less than his roomies on the next month's utility bills.

What caught my eye is that you can sign-in to Buxfer using your Yahoo or Facebook accounts. A default username (in the form Yahoo_num or Facebook_num) gets assigned to you, which you can either keep or change. It's a clever way of getting users to try out the site with minimal headache as well as a clever use of the Yahoo and Facebook APIs. Buxfer's also transferred the burden of authentication. I bet we'll see plenty of other sites taking this approach soon.

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