As part of my new commitment to keep my blog reasonably well updated (and for keeping up on all ya' all's blogs), I've found some really nifty blogging and commenting tools.
CoComment is a tool for keeping up with all those comments you've made on everyone else's blogs (well not *everyone's*, just those people whos blogs support CoComment. Incidentally, Mine does). Here's the basic LD from the CoComment web site:
coComment keeps a copy of all comments you make on the web (on blog sites, <flickr, digg, full list of compatible platforms is here). If privacy is a concern, you can of course hide your comments from other users if you want. coComment displays all the conversations you're tracking in one convenient place - it works just like an email inbox. See it in action here! once you're tracking those conversations, coComment will show you whenever someone's added a comment, so you can effectively follow the whole conversation. f you're a blogger, coComment allows you to display the comments you make on other sites back on your own blog. With one simple line of script, you can show your readers your comments and conversations. See it in action here! browse the coComment community to see who are the most authoritative or active commenters, what are the hot topics of the moment, and who is commenting on the same articles you're commenting on. View the community page here! There isn't even any software to install or website to register for! Give it a whirl!
I've also been playing with a few free off-line blogging tools. I've tried w.bloggar - which works very well if you know how to configure it for your blog and you don't mind crafting your html a bit to make it look "just so". It is a tad primitive, however and hasn't had an update for a while.
Zoundry lets you craft your blog entries and also allows you to create links to products which you might be blogging about. If people click through and purchase any of those products you actually get a kick back (which you can use to pay for part of your hosting - yeah right). This one has some potential....
Microsoft has a slick tool called "Windows Live Writer". Its completely WYSIWYG (just checkout this screenshot and tell me its not;)
it supports most blog protocols and has some cool features. I really like this one as it was almost like typing directly on my blog page and having it stick. However, its a tiny bit buggy so I'm not yet sure if this one is going to become my main blogging tool. I really hope Microsoft continues to develope this one, because its by far the coolest of the free products I've tried...