>> "Or is there a login and a username? Stupid again"
Lots of sites allow you to login with a username or an email address. I agree it can complicate things but is you need an email address to validate a user is real and a unique username for the service (e.g. it's social) allowing either for login will probably result in less forgotten logins.
Maybe I'm wrong, I was always under the impressions one of the main reasons to ask for an email address was to make things more difficult for bots. Rather than just setup a script to create accounts on your server they would also need a valid email address for every attempt.
Lots of sites allow you to login with a username or an email address. I agree it can complicate things but is you need an email address to validate a user is real and a unique username for the service (e.g. it's social) allowing either for login will probably result in less forgotten logins.