The Download Munkey : Download This, Download That :)

Currently, I’m trying out coComment (currently in beta) as a one-stop service to keep track of my own comments on blogs all over the .NET. Actually it works for any site which you can comment on e.g Flickr, Digg, Wordpress and Blogger blogs and more.

I have seen Wordpress blogs with a nice Subscribe to Comments plugin which Blogger sorely needs - it’s a pain to keep bookmarks every single post on a Blogger blog which you commented just to keep track of comments. Hopefully, I can get rid of that bookmarking madness with coComment

Features
With CoComment, I can see at a glance which posts have followup comments. I’m using Opera so I have to install a bookmarklet and click on it everytime before I post a comment on any blog that I want to track. After clicking on the bookmarklet, I click the Submit button as usual to send the comment to both coComment and the actual blog. Firefox users have it easier - installing a Firefox extension is all that is needed. Read more on how to use coComment to track your conversations here.

The main Conversations page

To keep track of conversations, login into coComment and look for any conversations marked in bold - they’re the ones with new comments. Click on the conversation to view the new comments or go to that particular post. Very convenient right?

There are also widgets to show the top coComment commenters for your blog as well as the comments you left on others’ blogs (see below), although I’m not sure what’s the value of the latter for your visitors

Issues
Sometimes, conversations with newer comments aren’t marked in bold (usually the Blogger ones, Wordpress blogs work very well) At least I can see the time of the last comment and roughly figure out whether there was a new comment.

Which brings me to one more issue : it would be much better if the Last Commented column could show something like 26 hours or 32 hours instead of a generic Yesterday. For example if I check coComment this morning (20 Jun) the Last Commented column will show Yesterday when someone happens to leave a followup comment yesterday (19 Jun) to a conversation I commented on that same day (19 Jun). I can’t tell whether it’s updated if the conversation doesn’t get marked in bold and time on the Last Commented column is so vague.

Then again, Opera is not officially supported so I’ll use it for another two weeks or so and see how everything goes

If you comment on a lot of blogs frequently, do try out CoComment. It’s free to use anyway so there’s no harm trying.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Blogger Backup Utility