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True Open ID adoption is still far, and the NASCAR approach doesn't help much to bring it closer.
Initiatives like Personal Web Discovery are cool but translating an email address to an Open ID URL is just a part of the equation.
What if we are open to any user input, taking the responsability for understanding what the user meant?
We let him progressively learn about different choices, i.e., we could slowly push the concept that Vanity URLs are also useful for logging in.
Then it would become common to use an URL as an "username".
In this example, the user is allowed to enter his Twitter @username, or his Facebook.com/vanityurl, or his Flickr screen name, or his Gmail address, or his blog URL.
Even if he just writes down an username, we find which one he could be referring to.