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While browsing Google Labs, I noticed new Firefox extensions.

Well, not all that new: I guess it's been a while since I looked in here because Blogger Web Comments is a year old, but I never noticed it before.

Here's the basic idea: you download and install the extension, restart Firefox, and now there's a new icon down in the bottom right corner of your browser. Or, if you happen to be on a page that already has Google Comments, they show up:

If you want to add comments, you need a Blogger account: your comments are really posts to your Blogger account. So far, so good: no anonymity: you know who made the comment, and the requirement for a Blogger account might cut down on spam.. or will it?

I'm ambivalent here. So far, I don't see a lot of pages with these comments added, and I haven't noticed any junk yet. And of course if there were junk, it isn't part of the original page, so the only people who would see it would be those who have opted in. I think this could be a nice way of connecting related posts across blogs, but I do wonder if abuse will creep in over time, and if it does, what (if anything) Google might do to help control it.

By the way, I had trouble signing up to Blogger.. that part was easy, but then signing in through the Blogger Comment extension wasn't working. For some reason it is using a different login name than any of my other Google services - perhaps I once set up a Blogger account under that name and then forgot about it. I had to use the "recover login name from email" and then change my password to get this working. But then it broke again.. apparently it is related to converting old Blogger accounts.. so I can't actually use this at the present time except to view.

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*Originally published at APLawrence.com

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A.P. Lawrence provides SCO Unix and Linux consulting services http://www.pcunix.com