We’ve made some changes to our OpenID 2.0 support. Our OpenID integration has been live for some time now and we’ve had some excellent feedback from our users on how to improve it. So we took it back into the lab for a bit of an overhaul and it came out being much more user friendly. We’re pleased to announce that we have enhanced our OpendID 2.0 integration to support more providers. Thanks again for the great feedback!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We’ve released some great features in the past weeks – Lijit integration, Reply-By-Email, Twitter, Me.dium and Orkut integration – and we’ve got more on the way. It seems that people have taken some notice. Yesterday, Jon Fox (co-founder & CTO of IntenseDebate) and Tom Keller (CEO IntenseDebate) joined Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur on Net@Night to chat about IntenseDebate. You can check out the podcast here to learn about the roots of IntenseDebate and some of the features to come.

Brad Feld also gave IntenseDebate some much appreciated blog love early this morning (5:44am). Honestly I don’t think he sleeps.

IntenseDebate was also featured in the Mashable post, “Head to Head: 4 Tools For Improving Comments On Your Blog.” Be sure to check that out as well!

Posted by Michael Koenig in News

It’s Wednesday and here at Intense Debate that means we rolled out some new features in last night’s release. As always, kudos to everyone here for cranking out these sweet features.

Reply-By-Email
We’re extremely pleased with the beta features we released last week. Many thanks to our beta testers for their excellent feedback! Thanks to their help we’ve rolled out Reply-By-Email. Now blog owners will be able to reply to comments made on their blogs, approve friend requests and moderate comments all via email.

While this feature can be used with all email clients, you may have to include !END at the end of your reply. If you use any of the following mail clients you do not need to enter !END at the end of your message: Outlook, AOL, Gmail, Hotmail/Windows Live, Yahoo!, Blackberry, iPhone, Apple Mail, Windows Mobile. Again, for all other email clients you must include !END at the end of your reply. Please let us know which mail clients you use and we’ll work on integrating them. Also, please do not remove any of the original message text from your reply. If you’re mail client is in a language other than English, this feature might not work. Our apologies.

Twitter Integration
We’re really excited about this feature. Now when you comment using IntenseDebate, you can opt to have a notification sent via Twitter. You have full control over the wording of your notifications. For instance, my notifications read, “Commented using IntenseDebate on %POST% / %BLOG% %TINYURL%” But again, you can have the text be whatever you want. Pretty nifty.

To enable this feature, please visit your edit profile page. On the right side of the page you’ll find a list of other networks where you can enter your profile URL’s for members of the IntenseDebate community to check out. Below this you’ll find our Twitter section (screenshot below). To enable Twitter integration, enter your Twitter profile URL and select “tweet about my new comments.” Of course, you may want to use caution with this feature for your followers’ sake.

Me.dium & Orkut Integration
Again you’ve requested it, so you’ve got it! You can now include your Me.dium and orkut profile information in your IntenseDebate profile. Here’s a bit about each if you’re not familiar with these services. Be sure to check them out!

orkut – “orkut’s social network can help you maintain existing relationships with pictures and messages, and establish new ones by reaching out to people you’ve never met before.”

Me.dium – “Me.dium is an add-on for your web browser that allows you to surf, chat and experience the web with your friends in real-time. Bump into friends and interact with the crowds just like you would in the real world.”

We’ve got a ton of awesome features coming down the line that are going to blow your mind. So stay tuned and keep commenting!

Cheers,
Michael

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We’re really excited about our latest beta release that we rolled out last night. The main attraction is Reply By Email – blog owners can now reply to comments made on their blogs, approve or deny friendship requests, and moderate comments all via email. If you’re interested in getting in on this beta, please drop me a line at support@intensedebate.com.

In addition, email and IP addresses will now be included in your new comment posting email notifications for our beta testers. We’ve had numerous requests from our users to be able to privately chat with each other. This is the first step! This new functionality is just a stepping stone of some awesome features to come, so stay tuned and get in on this beta!

Kudos to Jon and Isaac on a job well done!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We’re making great strides here at Intense Debate in indexing comments! We’ve teamed up with Lijit to help bring light to what we call “the Dark Matter of the Blogosphere,” by which we mean most blog comments, which are usually not indexed by big search engines. For the first time blog readers and commenters have the ability to search through the vast number of comments made on blogs with Intense Debate.

What does this mean exactly? Glad you asked! In the past, comments have been unsearchable. You’ve invested your time and written informative essays in response to blog posts only to have them lost into the comment abyss. Finding comments was like searching for buried treasure – unless you had some sort of map where X marks the spot you couldn’t find them. Even if you had a map there was no guarantee. Well now with the first phase of our Lijit integration you can search for comments a bit easier. Consider it a far more reliable treasure map, or an awesome metal detector.

Lijit provides bloggers with an enhanced ability to let their readers search for and discover content on the Internet. If you haven’t given Lijit a try you’re missing out. Now, Intense Debate and Lijit have teamed up to put the wisdom of your comments on the map.

Stay tuned for further innovations…

Posted by Michael Koenig in features