We really like snarky comments. Or maybe we just really like the sound of our own voices, if by saying sound we mean "incessant tapping" and by voices we mean "keyboards." So needless to say, when we heard about iComment, we were intrigued.

iComment is a plug-in for either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox-based browsers. The install instructions have a definite Windows slant, but we can verify it seems to work quite dandily in Linux. The idea behind iComment is simple. It allows you to leave your two cents on any website, or photo, or bit of text that appears on a page. You want the rest of the world to know how freakin' annoying a gratuitous bit of Flash on a page is? Tell 'em!

Of course, there are some issues that limit the usefulness of this plug-in at the moment. The first and foremost is the one that really can't be helped -- every plug-in starts somewhere. Through iComment, we are able to see the comments other people have left on a site, as well as our own. Very cool, but it's a bit of a hunt to find sites with comments, as this is a relatively new service. It is sort of interesting to hear, though, that the development team is working on a "friend/private" function where you can share comments with approved friends.



Second, though the iComment page advertises (loudly) that there are no viruses, adware, or spam involved, we are a little uneasy with a few things. First, we don't really seem to have any sort of formal, er, account on iComment. We entered a username, but no password. We gave it an email address (hey, it asked). So we're wondering what's going to stop someone from just saying they're us?

We checked out the Privacy Policy. We skipped over the boring bits, but it seems as though it was actually written for something else and adapted to iComment. They didn't ask for a lot of the stuff they say they do in the policy (just as well, they wouldn't have gotten it). They don't seem to offer some of the services in the policy. With the amount of stuff they did ask for, we were okay with giving them a teeny bit of info. But be careful out there, 'kay?

iComment also wanted to give us money via Paypal, just for leaving useful comments on the web. Nice of them! Honestly, though, in light of the Privacy Policy confusion and no formal account login (and because leaving snarky comments is its own reward), we would recommend anyone using iComment not actually link their comment profile to a Paypal account.

That being said, iComment is an interesting concept. With a friend list and something to put our paranoid minds at rest, it could be endlessly entertaining (and, yes, useful). There's nothing that's going to keep us from playing with it a bit more, anyway. It's not like we entered a real email address.