title: Best way to create a TOKEN system to authenticate web service calls?
body: <p>I'd like to create a web service architecture that can be called by various platforms such as mobile devices, winforms applications, iphone, blackberry, you name it.  So going with something like WCF and wsHttp binding probably kills this and I would need to downgrade to a basicHttp binding for compatibility.</p>
  
  <p>With that said, I need a system to generate a token on initial login (authentication) and then use this token for all subsequent calls, I guess, to validate the authentication and allow the method to execute.</p>
  
  <p>Anyone have tips or suggestions on how to go about this?  1) Generate a token and what's involved in a secure token?  2) How long is the token good for, some users may use their application for hours and possibly even "sleep" their computer</p>
  
  <p>Thank you for the advice.</p>