Sunday, June 04, 2006
Tracking blog conversations
I've recently trialled two potential solutions to the problem of tracking comments on diverse blogs: coComments and co.mments. Both use javascript bookmarklets to track conversations.
It wasn't tough to decide between them: coComments is crippled; co.mments is not! Let me explain: coComments only tracks posts from other coComments users. So if someone posts to a conversation you're "tracking", but they're not a coComment user, you don't get notified. That makes coComments rather useless.
Co.mments, on the other hand, simply tracks new posts on whatever page you are viewing when you click the bookmarklet - i.e. any any new posts, not just other co.mment users. (Both, incidently, offer RSS feeds of new posts.)
Co.mment's website is also a lot simpler to navigate. CoComment's website looks great with plenty of AJAX, and many geeks are suckers for eye candy, but there's a clear winner in functionality here.
It wasn't tough to decide between them: coComments is crippled; co.mments is not! Let me explain: coComments only tracks posts from other coComments users. So if someone posts to a conversation you're "tracking", but they're not a coComment user, you don't get notified. That makes coComments rather useless.
Co.mments, on the other hand, simply tracks new posts on whatever page you are viewing when you click the bookmarklet - i.e. any any new posts, not just other co.mment users. (Both, incidently, offer RSS feeds of new posts.)
Co.mment's website is also a lot simpler to navigate. CoComment's website looks great with plenty of AJAX, and many geeks are suckers for eye candy, but there's a clear winner in functionality here.
// posted by Dan @ 9:50 pm 
