At IntenseDebate we’re all about shaking hands, kissing babies, and contributing to the community. I may be stating the obvious here, but IntenseDebate cares (period). With that in mind we are extremely pleased to pledge one percent of our overall equity to the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado.

EFCO (as it’s known in the halls of many a Colorado high school) is a philanthropic program with the mission of assisting entrepreneurs and start-ups in giving back to the community. I can’t explain it better than how the good folks at EFCO describe their mission:

Rather than wait for success to encourage philanthropic activity, at which point the successful entrepreneur is likely to be besieged by requests, we decided to create a new program to help all entrepreneurs contribute early in the creation of their companies to the long term health and sustainability of Colorado.

Along with our fellow EFCO members, we are delighted to have the opportunity to contribute and become involved at this stage in our company.

Yeah that’s right, we’re IntenseDebate and we bring change you can believe in.

Posted by Michael Koenig in News

You can’t rush perfection. Like wine, code needs to mature to ensure excellence. This has been on the down-low for months. We’ve been taking our time to massage out all of the knots, dot all i’s and cross all the t’s. If you’ve listened closely you might have heard quiet whispers about our new IntenseDebate WordPress plugin. Over the past couple of months I have been recruiting testers for our private alpha testing. When I first told our good buddy, Chris Farley about our new plugin for his blog ViewfromaFarley, his response was:

I started reading this e-mail and by the time I was finished I was ecstatic. This is everything I’ve been looking for in Intense Debate and more. These features are great for bloggers!

I would be more than happy to be a tester. Strange as it may sound, I’m getting as excited about the new plugin as I am about the new iPhone.

And with good reason… The new IntenseDebate WordPress plugin is one of a kind, featuring advanced integrations that you won’t find and can’t get anywhere else. I can’t spill the beans on our full feature list yet, but one of the key ingredients is complete data sync like nothing you’ve seen before. That’s all I can say right now, but let your imagination run wild with this – if you can dream it, well, we’ve most likely done it.

Private beta starts Sunday, August 24th with the public release following shortly thereafter. If you would like to get in on the beta, drop me line at support@intensedebate.com. If we’ve already chatted about it there’s no need to email, I’ve got you covered. For all of my alpha testers out there who have yet to receive the plugin, there’s no need to email – I know who you are and you’ll be hearing from me soon.

Peace, I’m outta here!

Posted by Michael Koenig in WordPress Plugin

Last night’s release marks the start of the IntenseDebate revolution. We’ve had our heads down over the past few months working on several projects that are now all coming to fruition. We’re unleashing an unrelenting stream of new game changing features, improvements and developments. Hold on to your hats, it’s about to get crazy.

New Sleek Feel
If you’re a regular visitor of IntenseDebate.com then you’ve probably noticed our new sleek design and layout. Our Swedish designer, Isaac Keyet, has been working tirelessly on our website redesign (install, registration process and all) for around three months now, so you can imagine our excitement to have it up and running! Congrats Isaac on a job well done!

Advanced Spam Ass-Kicking
In addition, we’ve also released our Akismet spam filter integration. It’s a preemptive but necessary measure against one of the evil forces lurking about on the net. Plus we had to do something to put a final end to the days of that pesky jewelry spammer some of you may have encountered.

New WordPress Plugin Beta Testing
And now the pièce de résistance – later today we will announce upcoming beta testing dates and a full feature list for our new WordPress plugin! People will bow to it.

Stay tuned for details…

UPDATE:
Sorry all, I spoke too soon. I will not be divulging a full feature set today, just some. Gotta leave some gravy for the big launch day!

Posted by Michael Koenig in News

We’re constantly searching the globe for talented developers to join our crew here at IntenseDebate. Drum roll please…

Please meet the newest rockstar to join our crew here at IntenseDebate, Mehmet Alkanlar. New to Boulder, Colorado, Mehmet joins us from Izmir, Turkey and has some heavy PHP/MySQL experience under his belt.

Mehmet holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Montana State University. But there’s more to Mehmet than meets the eye. He’s a skydiver, windsurfer, and classical guitarist – that’s a pretty well rounded developer right there.

He’s been here a little over a week and his abilities are already blowing our minds. Currently he’s tackling some back-end projects but you can expect to see him flex his dev muscles with some shiny new features soon enough. Please drop Mehmet a line in the comment section below, and be sure to check out his profile to learn more about him. Oh and swing by his twitter profile – he’s brand new and trying to get the hang of it!

Stoked to have you on the team Mehmet!

Posted by Michael Koenig in News

All right, here’s the skinny. We’re getting ready to release our new Google Reader and Bloglines plugins for Firefox 2 & 3 and we’re looking for beta testers.

This isn’t your normal run of the mill RSS reader integration. Our Google Reader and Bloglines plugins allow you to not only access IntenseDebate comments, but also respond to them directly from your reader! Amazing right?!?! I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been playing around with our Google Reader plugin on Firefox 3 for the past week and it is so choice.

If you’re interested in testing out our betas please drop me a line at support@intensedebate.com and we’ll get you all set up.

Start getting excited!
Michael & the fellas at IntenseDebate

Posted by Michael Koenig in features