Hurry!

The co.mments API is finally out. Feels like giving birth to a child.

Right now you can use it to manage the conversations you are tracking. All the UI features are available in the API.

I’ll be adding more features in the future, this is just the first release.

It’s also an early release, I just put it out yesterday and I’m still testing it. So you can expect some minor changes. In fact, if you have any feedback, post it here. I’d love to know what you think and what I can do to improve it.

There’s no documentation, that’s also something I’m working on.

But it’s RESTful, and it does XML, JSON and HTML, which means it’s not hard to figure out. In fact, you can try it from your browser right now. Play with it and I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

1. Is this the right place to ask for help?

2. I’ve got the bookmarklet on my Opera Browser. When I click the bookmarklet, I’m taken to the co.mments.com page, where I have to click Track. Isn’t this second step redundant? Or is it just in Opera?

Now 2 things regarding being updated with new comments:

3. It seems that I have to click the “Recheck” button on each individual conversation I’m tracking in order to find out if there are any new comments. Is this the way it’s supposed to be? I’d rather have co.mments.com automatically recheck all my conversations.

4. I have added the feed into my bloglines.com account. But yet, it doesn’t seem to be able to find updates. What’s up with that? Or it only finds updates, after I click the “Recheck” button on a conversation in the co.mments.com website and if I don’t “Clear” the new updates. hmmm… If I have to go to the co.mments.com website first before my bloglines will tell me of new comments, it’s kind of useless to add this feed to bloglines.

I wrote a plugin for LifeType to automatically add the co.mments links for each post. I am interested in seeing how well this works. I don’t know how well co.mments it will parse the comments on LifeType. If some tags are defined to be put in the comments to help parsing, I will modify the plugin.Right now it is check into svn, I will update the wiki as soon as it is posted on sourceforge.

I just rolled out some UI fixes, based on several requests I got from you. So thanks for e-mailing and commenting, your feedback will help make co.mments a better service for all of you.

Clicking on the Recheck button or bookmarking a conversation will now update it in real time.
I also fixed a mysterious problem that made co.mments impossible to use with Internet Explorer. I have to admit, I’m still not sure what the problem was, just that I found a workaround.

In fact I’ve been struggling with Internet Explorer the past week. The computer I use refuses to work with co.mments at all, and I can’t get to re-install IE. It might be time to reinstall windows.

I’m also rolling out an API for co.mments, in fact the code is almost finish and it’s time to write up the documentation. I’ll keep you posted.

Hi,

Any thoughts on making an OPML available or provide multiple RSS feeds structured where each comment is an item and the permalink is the channel? Possibly keeping same url format and adding a parameter to decipher a feed/channel by using permalink title.

A Curious Stranger posted this:

Enter co.mments. Use the bookmarklet to save a post you’ve commented on, and co.mments will magically keep track of new comments on the post. You can then pop your co.mments tracking page into your RSS reader, and you’ll never miss a good conversation again.

I kept this post in my feed reader for three days now, I just like reading the title.

Awesomer than David Lee Roth doing Bluegrass. Now that’s catchy.

(Read elsewhere on that blog to find out if that’s good or bad)

You asked for it and you got.

I just completed support for LiveJournal and Vox. So together with MoveableType and TypePad, we got the Six Apart family of blog services covered.
More services coming down the line.

Also, thanks to R. Francis Smith for mentioning us in his Sturgeon’s Law Podcast.

Yes, you can click New post, register and post on this blog. It’s an open blog. I like this to be a place to discuss, and blogging happens to be a great way to start conversations. You already know how easy it is to track comments

Here’s how it works. New posts are held for moderation. Unfortunately, some people decided to post spam, we all know how the Internet works. If your post is about co.mments and in good taste – criticism is ok, being abusive is not – it will get published. I’m not going to edit your post, so watch your spelling

Start a discussion on whatever you like. If you keep it short, interesting and to the point, more people will read it. If your bring up an interesting topic, people will respond.

Posting images is ok, as long as you own the copyright or can do so legally (Creative Commons, public domain, etc).

The short answer to that question is : a lot. I mean that in a positive way. co.mments has such a huge potential that much of that is as yet untapped. Growth potential from this point is huge and impossible to properly define. Here’s are a few things which I think would be pointed in the right direction:

• Harvest comment metadata. You’re pulling in data from the blog page already — why display the metadata as just part of the comment body? At very least the permalink to the comment should be harvested — this would be a huge improvement by itself because we could click from co.mments to a specific comment and not just the whole page. Author data comes next, and then timestamp. It’s all there, you just gotta get it out.
• Track Main/Archive/Category pages. This works, but it’s really ugly. If I enter a non-post-page URL on which there are comments (such as http://singpolyma-tech.blogspot.com/) I expect a similar result to having entered all of the posts on that page. Instead I tend to get each comment section as a comment. Not that cool.
• I’ve said this already, and I know it’s in the works, but a RESTful API. XML or JSON(P) (or both!). You’ve got my data! Give it back!

co.mments is one awesome service with huge potential. All you’ve gotta do is tap it. Incidentally, one of the reasons an API would be cool is that then you can harness the larger sphere of programmers who will be writing code working with it. They will write code so that you don’t have to. The more you open your site to us, the more we can do for you and save you the work!

I just got hold of a Mac G4, ran a few quick fixes, and as of today, co.mments work with Safari.

If you’re curious to know, I’m testing co.mments with:

• Firefox 1.5 (my main browser)
• IE 6 (the other browser)
• Safari 2.0
• Opera 8.5
• Konqueror 3.5
• Lynx 2.8