CommentsTrack, a weblog feature idea

solutions to track comments: +1

Jan — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 10:20:39 GMT

http://co.mments.com

Impressive parsing of posts and comments done by the server. Easy to use and to explain to new users. Like it.

Problems left: centralization and notification of new comments. Manual ping by "tracker" or pinging the service by blogs isn't optimal.

Tracking comments is hip!

Jan — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 14:07:10 GMT

There are 2 new players in the field of tracking comments:

1. CoComment
centralized service, tracking via bookmarklet

2. mycomments
centralized service, tracking via ping-server

Both don't meet the requirements Helge and me had for our approach. But it's good to see that something happens. Perhaps it will evolve to a real solution like we imagined it in August 2004.

Other people had similar ideas, too:
http://ouriel.typepad.com/myblog/2005/06/keep_track_of_y.html
http://th1nk.com/projects/ideas/

CommentsTrack once again

Jan — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 19:26:04 GMT

Long ago we tried to build CommentsTrack - but we failed. Now I have my own blog in German and had an idea for building something you could call "CommentsTrack Light":

http://betamode.de/2005/09...-commentstrack-posted-elsewhere/

Reverse Trackback - Next attempt...

Jan — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 02:22:23 GMT

Well, CommentsTrack is not dead - not really. Helge and me couldn't fix the problems, but there are other people who try to. And that's just great.

English:

ninjafish: Transparent Reverse Trackbacks

Lazyweb: "Wo habe ich kommentiert?"- Reverse Trackback

German:

Martin R�ll: Wo habe ich kommentiert

Pepino: Reverse Trackback

Martin R�ll: Zum Reverse Trackback

Codefreak: Reverse-Trackback

Nie mehr Kommentare vergessen: Reverse Trackback

Schockwellenreiter: Wo habe ich kommentiert?

tzwaen: Trackback f�r Kommentare

But: "Reverse Trackback" is only to keep track of your own comments - it's not for notifications about replies. I understand why this is easier to achieve, just read our wiki and you'll understand, too :)

Anyway, let's see how this story develops...

And hey: Merry Christmas :)

Specification v0.1 - v0.3

Jan — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 00:59:09 GMT

There are already 3 versions of specification in the project wiki we did before we released this page to public:

Specification v0.1: Working Draft, v0.1
Specification v0.2: Working Draft, v0.2
Specification v0.3: Working Draft, v0.3

We are working hard to get v0.4 ready, so it would not make much sense for you to search for solutions of the problems or security-holes in v0.3. Helge and I talked a lot about v0.3 and we have lots of things to add ready and waiting in our mailboxes.

Really working on v0.3 would be a waste of time, but if you found something interesting, just mention it here in the comments please.

We are also interested in in ideas other groups and people had to solve the problem with comment-tracking. If you know one, please post it.

CommentsTrack appears in public!?

Jan — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 15:36:22 GMT

Ooops, lots of visitors here on tuesday. What happened? - Good question: ideas tend to spread without much help, and so it happened to CommentsTrack.

Helge mailed with ad++ and he dropped a post on his weblog. Then, Nico, who runs blogg.de, discovered it and wrote about CommentsTrack too (He likes the idea!). And last but not least, smi from twoday.net wondered about how fast the meme "commentstrack" moved through the net.

Well, hello to all our new visitors! We didn't plan this, we wanted to work some more days on the basis to make a it possible to get the best out of all the ideas. But no problem:
We're working hard to complete our work here on this weblog to make a real discussion possible.
Helge and I are currently adding our thoughts and ideas that we already discussed via email into our Specification-Wiki to accomplish Specification v0.4 with lots of new workarounds for problems from Spec v0.3.

CommentsTrack - Draft 1.txt

Jan — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 05:47:08 GMT

...is sent out to Helge.

Wasn't easy, but I think I put it all together. Now I'm waiting for his answer what he thinks of it. I'm sure he has several things to add. After that we will released it here in the blog for public revision.

Fascinating how the idea grows and grows, more and more possible scenarios how to use it come to my mind. Hopefully you all will think the same way. We'll see.

Busy day

Jan — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 03:04:57 GMT

Lots of mainling today, Helge seems to be impressed how fast his idea was taken up. But good ideas need to be realized. And so I invited him to join me here. He's very busy, too, but he wants to try.
Later I will post all the things we wrote about. Very interesting, but much to type. I'm looking forward to release all the ideas to the blogosphere and get comments from all the bloggers out there. Only can be interesting.

I updated the weblog-system here and it got 2 Feeds:

RSS 2.0 Feed, validates
Atom 0.3 Feed, almost validates ;)

Very basic and surely not very "clean", I know. But better than nothing, isn't it? Hope you can use it. Post a comment if there are any problems.

Also fixed a litte bug in commentsform, forgot to escape date before insert it into database. Shame on me, silly mistake.

More, tomorrow...

Jan — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 19:28:44 GMT

Well, my new weblog system is online - perfect to test a new technology. Several domains are registered, I thought a lot about the idea and the problems of commentstrack.

Monday I will post several new ideas and solutions, some first technical drafts and I will mail and contact several people about the idea of "commentstrack". Especially Helge, who inspired me to this work.

How the idea began to grow

Jan — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 19:23:07 GMT

The idea was one I had in mind for a very long time, but I couldn't find the motivation and the technical idea to devise it. That changed rapidly when I read Helges post about "commentstrack" on his blog. He packed everything in one posting what floated around in my head. Funny that he chose almost the name I also had thought of: "commenttrack". Now I think his version is much better, and so I adapted it here.

Problem & solution

Jan — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 19:22:07 GMT

The problem every blogger knows:

You read your daily dose of weblogs. Then you discover an interesting posting and you decide to submit a comment. Sometimes you can enter your email and activate an option so that you get an email if somebody replies to your comment. But not always you want to leave your email-adress. Mostly there even is no option to do so. Perhaps you bookmark the permanent link to re-visit the page later. But mostly you forget to do so, or you recome too late to discuss with the others. You missed the chance to have a great conversation and to take part in an interesting discussion.

The idea that can help you:

With CommentsTrack you have one feed that you can add to your feedreader, where all your comments and the responses to them are collected. You post a comment somewhere; it appears in your personal comments-feed. Somebody replies to your comment; the reply also appears in your feed.

What it is about:

Jan — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 19:20:11 GMT

CommentsTrack can help you to keep track of your comments you post on the web and what people reply to them. It is a technology aimed to make your life in the web and blogosphere easier and more comfortable.