An OpenID startup called Vidoop aims to replace your usernames and passwords with a grid of pictures that may contain visual advertisements. To encourage adoption of its user authentication technology, Vidoop will announce today at the Internet Identity Workshop its intention to pay affiliates, starting January 1st. Logins to their site will be with it.

MyVidoop serves as both a password keychain for all of the sites you log into across the web, as well as an OpenID account provider. Signing into an OpenID-enabled site with myVidoop, or retrieving all of the passwords in your myVidoop keychain, involves not a username and password, but rather a visual grid of images that fall into particular categories. When you first create a myVidoop account, you pick 3-5 types of images (e.g. birds, skyscrapers, flowers, cars). Then whenever you need to authenticate with myVidoop, you simply type the letters of the images in a randomly generated grid that fall into your chosen categories.