Quick News Update

One of the issues I've had with Blogger (or, to be more precise, blogspot.com) is its inability to use what are known as "trackbacks." To oversimplify, trackbacks are a mechanism by which one blog can comment on or blog about another blog, and the latter gets notified about it. For example, I intend to comment on something written on another Blogger blog, but I would like for his blog to know about it.

That other blog, the Sarcastic Xtian, uses a different comment system than the standard Blogger one. He uses DISQUS, which does allow trackbacks and reactions.

I've decided to use that here, effective immediately. I mean, it's not like this blog is so busy that it has gotten a lot of comments anyhow, but I'd like that to change. (I know, if I'd post something more often than once every other odd leap year, it would help.)

Some other features of DISQUS are:

• the ability to reply to a comment, and have it come out "threaded." That means that you see replies as replies, near to the original comment.
• the ability to post using a variety of different user IDs, including Facebook, Twitter, Open ID, and more. Each login method also allows echoing back to the service through which you logged in. For example, if you log in through your Twitter account, you can tweet your comment.
• automatic anti-spam and anti-profanity filters.
• the ability to "like" a comment or to "flag" a comment.

There are probably more cool things here that I missed, or am not thinking about at this moment.

Oh, I should add that using DISQUS will require opening up some permissions in your browser. Sadly, I forget right now which ones are required (mainly because I had to fight them for another comment service, Intense Debate, which required me to open up Quantcast, of all places), but I believe they should be obvious to regular users of utilities like NoScript, AdBlock (which shouldn't require any extra handling), and Ghostery (which might need some unblocking).