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After reading yet another post about the value of comments and public discussions (I believe it was Fred Wilson''s post), I thought "Why isn''t there a decentralized method of gathering a person''s comments on the web?" Services such as Disqus and IntenseDebate allow users to post on multiple sites with one account, but require the service to be set up on the blog site. Why not have a standardized way of collecting a person''s comments on any item, regardless of what application the originating site uses or what service the commenter uses?

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Here''s how I envision it working: A user creates an account with an identity provider (e.g. OpenID, Facebook, etc.); she then provides a comment pingback address or is given one by the identity provider. When this user then leaves a comment at another site ("originating site") - logged in through the third party identity service - the originating site then "pings" (sends a POST request) to the comment pingback address it received from the identity provider as part of the user information. This ping would include the comment, the URL of the comment or the item to which the comment was directed, and perhaps other pertinent information.

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User---------------------[comment]---------------->Originating site
Originating site-----[identity request]------>Identity provider
Originating site<---[confirm identity]--------Identity provider
Originating site<---[pingback address]----Identity provider
Originating site-----[comment data]------->Pingback address

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My thoughts right now are that it would be

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1. Similar in function to a Trackback or pingback
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2. Tied to an identification system, such as OpenID
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3. Standardized and simple enough to be implemented quickly on virtually any site
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Now I''m not real familiar with the OpenID spec, but I would like to see this comment pingback address be an optional extension of OpenID. The whole system described here is person-centric, and it makes sense to connect it to identity.

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The advantage of using this decentralized protocol is that users don''t need additional accounts with the various comment services. I realize that some of the comment services already accept OpenID or other identities, but with comment "pinging", the comments can be aggregated at a site of the user''s choosing, and there is no need to go "claim" comments.

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One final issue is security and spam prevention. My idea for this is to provide a unique pingback URL for each login or for each identity consumer (originating site).

I've heard a lot of good things about Disqus, and I like the idea of comments being portable and not tied down to one particular site. And installing Disqus was simple: one line of html/javascript simple. Pretty handy. See the community page for this site on disqus.com for recent comments.

Characters

Mac: 20-something man dressed fashionably, but casually. Slightly overweight.

Win: 20-something man wearing a suit, perhaps glasses. May carry briefcase. Very overweight.

Linux's: 20-something women of varying appearance, some wearing casual clothing, others wearing business clothing. May carry various accessories. Optionally, have Linux-related logo clothing.

Ron Paul's newly released Economic Revitalization Plan outlines four major areas he feels the government needs to reform to bring stability and prosperity back to the American economy. Tax reform, Spending reform, Monetary Policy reform, and Regulatory reform are spelled out in more detail at his website and in this PDF.

So the people at Microsoft and the Web Standards group are all excited about a break-through new idea: Make web developers add an extra <meta> tag to get IE 8 to render according to W3 standards. Apparently, they don't realize that standards are supposed to be...how do you say...STANDARD! Apparently, writing good code is secondary to getting your page to look nice in Internet Explorer. And some people are defending this idea! I knew it was a questionable method as soon as I read the blog entry, and most people that posted there feel the same way. As for me, I want to know if I can use regular Ajax calls without having to work around ActiveX. Readers, please use Firefox or Opera or something that isn't Internet Explorer.

I have to say, this package phpMyID is very, very easy to use. It took me longer to read the README than to actually set it up. Pretty cool.

"Dude what's up? Where's the posts?"

I know, I've been slacking. Excuse #1: My hard drive failed. Excuse #2: I'm leaving for a 24 hour flight at 6 a.m. tomorrow. Excuse #3: Holidays, duh.

OK, enough of that. In other news, I heard a few days back about someone finding giant rats in Indonesion, and what's the first thought that popped into my head? R.O.U.S., of course.

That's right. At the moment I, er..., my computer is fetching the files needed to upgrade from Ubuntu 7.06 to 7.10, i.e. Gutsy Gibbon. What brought this on? The Christmas cheer? The long hours with nothing to do? Nope, it was Simcity.

From MTV.com:

In third place, "The Golden Compass" earned only $9 million in its second week, a ghastly drop of 65 percent. While the flick is scoring decently overseas it's nothing short of a complete disaster stateside, with only $40 million after two weeks. Our pledge: We will continue to remind distributor New Line of this debacle until it is shamed into agreeing with Peter Jackson on terms for a "Hobbit" movie.

I am really glad this happened. It just goes to show you that Christianity is not dead here like it is in Europe.

I've decided to do two things with this post. First thing is to announce that I will be developing an Atom feed for the site. Sure there are other things that need to be done, like actually using the left column, but this sounds like more fun. And for me, this whole website is about having fun learning web standards.

In fact, I think I may have discovered the elusive purpose for my site. <choir of angels /> But, somebody else has undoubtedly done that. If I weren't so tired, I'd look it up. So, even if no one reads this (and I can't blame them) at least I'll know more about websites.

What was that other thing? Oh yeah, I'm gonna try not posting a long text (the part that doesn't show up on the front page or Facebook box). So here goes.