Facebook is at it again, rolling out features in advance of the redesign we've been hearing so much about. The latest addition is comments in the mini-feed. Now when you find out that "Ashley changed her profile picture" you can click a little + icon next to that item and add a comment. This doesn't go for all mini-feed items: it seems to be only for profile and status changes. At least you can't comment on a mini-feed item about someone's comment (yet.)

Well, ok. It's one more way of communicating on Facebook, but what does it imply about the future of the wall? What used to be the main point of communication is now one of many, with photo comments, mini-feed comments and messages all in the mix. Will more places to comment make things easier for users? On the plus side for Facebook, users will stay on the site a few seconds longer to check one more place for comments, but is it a plus for you? Weigh in with your comments about comments.

Note to anyone developing an RSS reader: If you don't support OPML, we're not interested. While adding feeds for your favorite web sites one at a time might have sound like fun, once you've got more than 10 feeds, the charm of entering them by hand kind of wears off. And over the last few years, we've accumulated just a few more feeds than that. So when we first heard about new kid on the RSS reader block Shyftr a few months ago, we pretty much ignored the site. But now that Shyftr has added OPML support, we decided to upload our 465 feeds and take it for a spin.

What sets Shyftr apart from RSS readers like Google Reader or Bloglines is the service's social aspects. Users can leave comments on items they read, and those comments can be seen by any other Shyftr users who subscribe to the same feed. Shyftr got a bit of bad press last month when the company tried to add comments from the original article page to Shyftr, and eventually decided to remove this feature. The issue might not have been as controversial if comments left on Shyftr were automatically added to the original page, thus alleviating allegations that Shyftr was trying to move the discussion away from the blog itself and into the Shyftr community. But there are some technical challenges associated with doing that, not the least of which is that there are a number of different protocols that blogs use for posting comments.

Like any good social network, Shyftr lets you become "friends" with other users, view their profiles and activity, and invite friends who haven't already signed up for the free service.

One thing to note is that while Shyftr now has an OPML import feature, it's slow. It only takes a few moments to import a few hundred feeds. But it takes much, much longer to "process" those feeds. And if they don't process correctly they won't show up in your feed reader. So if you've got more than a few hundred feeds, you might want to hit the import button right before heading out for your lunch break. Maybe it'll be done by the time you get back. But if you leave the page during the process, you'll have to start all over again.

[via Louis Gray]

Ever wonder what you would get if you crossed Digg with Techmeme and gave the new site a slick Web 2.0 style theme? Yeah, neither did we, but that's a half decent description of Newspond, a news aggregation site that launched today.

Newspond is not a social news site like Digg. Articles aren't submitted by users. Newspond is more like Techmeme in that the site gathers stories from across the web using an automated system to analyze the topics that blogs and news sites are talking about. Articles show up on the front page or in a variety of subsections like tech, games, and science. Under each main article is a list of links to more articles on the same topic from other web sites. You'll have to click the "View All Sources" tab to see additional articles, but Newspond will pull them up without a page refresh.

While there's no user generated primary content on the site, Newspond does have a nifty commenting system which adds a social aspect to the site. The comments are threaded and easy to read. But you really have to play with them to get the full effect.

[via Mashable]

You love us. We love you. Aww. It's this unspoken thing we have. So why aren't you pimping your Download Squad commenter account by adding an avatar?

Recently, Download Squad received the same spiffy threaded comment system enjoyed by Engadget, Autoblog and Joystiq. Then we added a slick default avatar, just to make it official. We've noticed however, that many of you haven't added a custom avatar of your own.. so what gives? We've already established this deep, unspoken love we share (remember, back in our opening sentence?), so why aren't you showing that love by pimping your Download Squad commenter account?

We know, you've been busy. The holidays and all. You had that doctor appointment, the car needed to go to the shop, all those phonecalls to family, and all the shinny geek gifts you got which have distracted you from your daily grind. In fact, given the amount of political strife at home and abroad, we're lucky you even call anymore, right? Sure, we know how it is.

Just in case you've got a few minutes on this glorious first day of 2008, we've put together a brief how-to for pimping out your Download Squad commenter account; Show us, and yourself some love?

We're going to go ahead and give Microsoft some points for thinking outside of the box with their latest advertising strategy. The company has posted a series of videos to YouTube highlighting the features of Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Windows Live online services. Considering YouTube is owned by Microsoft arch-nemesis Google, that took some guts. But even more gutsy (or foolish), was the decision to leave the comments open on Microsoft's new YouTube channel.

While Windows may be installed on the vast majority of work and home PCs, it probably won't come as a surprise to you that Microsoft has a few detractors. And they tend to be somewhat vocal in their criticisms. The comment section of the company's YouTube channel kind of reads like a collection of prison letters from Sideshow Bob to Bart Simpson.

We also would have expected Microsoft to post the promotional videos on its own MSN Video site, not YouTube. So overall, the YouTube channel appears to be a way of reaching out to potential customers wherever they may be. And as we're seeing, those potential customers are more than happy to reach back -- even if it's not necessarily in the way Microsoft may have hoped.

[via istartedsomething]

Myspace, which acquired photo-sharing powerhouse Photobucket back in May, now allows users to easily insert their Photobucket pictures into Myspace comments. To take advantage of this feature, just login to Myspace and attempt to comment on another user's profile. When the comment box appears, enter your witty, extremely original comment, then click the "Add image from Photobucket" link. You'll be prompted to login to Photobucket and select a picture to post with the comment.

If you don't think your own photos are exciting enough, you can also use Photobucket's "Find Stuff" search feature from within Myspace's comment editor. This allows you to find totally cool animated icons, funny (while relevant) seasonal pictures, or pictures from other users' albums.

As Mashable points out, for some reason Myspace doesn't automatically log you in to Photobucket. At least the second login is inline and doesn't require a new tab or window to go hunting for a picture URL.

If you've spent the last week looking up good recipes for leftover turkey, here are a few of the yummy stories you may have missed on Download Squad.

Google removes thousands of malware sites

Google has removed more than 40,000 sites from its index. This is a good thing, because many of those sites were pretending to offer useful information and instead viciously attacking your computer. Keep in mind, those sites are still out there, it's just that Google has removed them from its index, which hopefully means you're less likely to find them accidentally. But make sure you always download the latest security updates for your computer and web browser.

What's your favorite program launcher? - Ask DLS

Launcy, Rocket Dock, Object Dock, FARR, Quicksilver, and SlickRun are just a few of the excellent program launchers Download Squad readers use. If you're looking for the fastest way to launch applications on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer, make sure to check out the recommendations in the comment section of this post. We're always amazed at the wealth of knowledge our readers possess.

The Squadcast #04 - How to be social

Everything you ever wanted to know about social networking and more. This week Grant and Christina teach you how to make friends and influence people with help from Facebook and Insomnia Radio's Jason Evangelho.

You may have noticed that we've done a little spring cleaning with our commenting system lately. Sure, it may almost be winter, but that's beside the point. The point is that leaving a comment on Download Squad posts has never been easier or more fun.

Here's how it works. If you've never left a comment before, just click on the comment link at the bottom of a post, and enter your name and email address in the "New Users" section. Then go ahead and leave your comment. We'll send you an email for verification purposes.

We'll also enter your information into Blogsmith, the beast that runs Download Squad, Engadget, and other Weblogs Inc blogs. If you've left comments on any of our sites over the past few months, you probably already have an account. All you have to do is click on your name in any comment you post and you'll see a page with all of your comments. You can login to edit your profile, add a URL, or upload a picture that will show up next to all of your posts.

And the race for complete and total dominance of the blog comment marketplace is on. OK, not really, but Disqus isn't the only blog commenting system launching today. After spending a few months in private beta, Intense Debate is launching an open beta this morning.

Both Intense Debate and Disqus offer web publishers an advanced comment system with support for threaded comments and the ability to track users' comments. Both services also offer integration options with popular blog platforms like WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, and Moveable Type.

As a reader/commenter, you can subscribe to comments via email or RSS. And both services let you create a profile allowing you to see all the conversations you're currently participating in from one user-friendly screen.

Intense Debate is doing more than emerging from private beta today. The service has also added a few new features which set it apart from Disqus:

If you only read one website every day, it's probably not too difficult to keep on the conversation around various posts. Just leave a comment with your two cents and keep checking back to see if anyone's responded. Some sites will even let you subscribe to blog comments by e-mail.

But if you read and comment on dozens or hundreds of blogs on a regular basis, this can get a bit tedious. A few months ago we reported on Intense Debate, a new startup that tackles this problem by providing a unified commenting platform. Sign up for an account, and you can easily track all of your conversations on various blogs. You can even syndicate your blog comments as an RSS feed.

Now it looks like Intense Debate has some competition from Disqus, a company launching a similar service today. Like Intense Debate, Disqus has several components. Web publishers can incorporate Disqus into their blog or website to offer advanced commenting features like threading and avatars. And users can create profiles to track their comments across various sites.

Google's Blogger platform makes blogging about as simple as it gets. You can start writing your blog a few seconds after signing up for an account and choosing a template. But Blogger has long been a few steps behind other popular blog clients like WordPress and TypePad when it comes to enabling new features.

For example, Google has just added the ability to subscribe to post comments via email. Up until now, if you left a comment on a blog post and wanted to keep up on the conversation, you had to keep checking back with the page. While this might seem great if you're trying to generate more traffic for your site, the truth is most people will forget they ever left a comment and move on.

So it's great to see Google add this feature to Blogger. On the other hand, you can only subscribe to comments if you have a Google account. No Gmail? No e-mail notification for you.

[via Googlified]

Automattic, the owner of the popular blogging platform WordPress, has announced they have purchased Gravator, a popular avator system used mainly in blog commenting.

Matt Mullenweg, Automattic's founder, announced the details of the deal on the Gravatar blog (now built on WordPress of course), saying that the decision to acquire the company stemmed from scalability issues they were dealing with. Gravatar allows users to keep the same 80x80 pixel image beside their name when they travel from blog to blog, so long as it supports the platform which the new version of WordPress does. Automattic saw this as the perfect fit since they have plenty of experience scaling, and saw a great opportunity with Gravatar believing it closely resembled what had been previously accomplished with Akismet, another one of their products, open API and its ability to be used with any platform.

Since buying the company, Automattic has also made all premium Gravatar plans free, and has noted that avatars are being served three times as fast. Refunds are available for those that had purchased the plans within the past 60 days. Look out for a new Gravatar API to be developed as well, plus get ready to see plenty of pretty pictures in blog comments soon!

The New York Times and other papers are facing a conundrum. On the one hand, people are canceling their paper subscriptions left and right. That's largely because they can get the news online for free. And when papers like the Times try to charge people for access to web content many readers just look elsewhere for their news.

Enter the brave new world of online advertising. Newspapers generally aren't making the kind of money from online ads as they did from print ads and subscriptions. But advertising revenue is going up. And if the Times can build the kind of brand loyalty online using Web 2.0 techniques as it did offline using Print 1.0, the company could be rolling in dough. Or at least it could stay afloat.

Earlier this year, the New York Times announced plans to open up its archives and make available articles that had previously only been available to paying customers. The company also embraced search engine optimization techniques, pushing its web traffic way up (even though the same move now means that Google will often return a 15 year old newspaper article as a top search result even when it's not the most relevant article by a long shot).

Now it looks like the paper is taking a major step to engage users by putting reader comments on the front page of the paper. Right under the photo of the day's top stories. Is this act alone going to save the newspaper industry? Probably not. But it shows that the mainstream media are learning a few tricks from blogs. It's only fair. Every now and again bloggers actually learn a thing or two from mainstream media, like how to cover the who, what, when, where, why, and how of a good news story.

[via Silicon Alley Insider]

If you're like us, you probably spend a significant portion of your day with Google Reader or your favorite RSS reader open. But sometimes it's nice to see pages in their original context. For example, if you want to see comments other readers have left on a blog entry, there's pretty much no way to do that with most feed readers.

That's where fav.or.it comes in. The web service is still pre-private beta, but the goal is to create a Google Reader like RSS interface with support for comments.



Here's how it works. You read Download Squad or some other blog or news site (don't ask us why) using the fav.or.it. You find an article that you want to comment on and you can leave a message without leaving the page. You can also read comments left by other fav.or.it users.

There are also tools that allow web publishers to integrate fav.or.it with their sites, which pushes fav.or.it comments to the original web page. It's a little less clear whether the same tools will allow comments left on the original site to show up on fav.or.it.

[via Read/WriteWeb]

TechStars has released Intense Debate, which at its most basic level is a blog commenting system. If you're a blog author, you can plug Intense Debate into WordPress, TypePad, or Blogger blogs. You'll get more control over your comments area as well as analytic tools.

Visitors to your site will be able to leave threaded comments. But by far the coolest features of Intense Debate show up when you register for an account.

Users can create a profile, add friends, and post a link to their blog. When you leave a comment on an blog with Intense Debate installed, your avatar will show up. Readers can click on it to add you as a friend, find you on Twitter, visit your blog, or subscribe to your blog or comments.

That's right, you can syndicate your comments from various blogs. If you're a prolific blog commenter, the messages you leave on the blogs you visit might often be more interesting than some of the posts on your own web site. Of course, it could also be hard for readers to comprehend what the heck you're talking about as you leave messages on various blogs if they don't take the time to visit the original sites and read the posts you're responding to.

You can see the system in action at the TechStars blog, or you can check out Intense Web Media co-founder Josh Morgan's profile and comment feed.

Intense Debate is still in beta, meaning you can't install it on your blog yet. But you can sign up for an account.

[via TechCrunch]