Richard Wyles presentation on Open Badges at MaharaUK. Contains timeline of developments and ideas on open badges.
Badges to be created by modifying the existing certificate module - can then be sent to Mahara.
Lots of good stuff here.
Via gideonwilliams, Ramesh Sharma, michel verstrepen
Found an update to this at http://docs.moodle.org/dev/openbadges - doesn't seem to be much "openly shared" progress as far as I can see. Also a googledocs forum at https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/openbadges/WyWIz4b_vQw