Post comments on any site on the web

So I was reading the box.net blog when I saw that they’re allowing visitors to chat with the box.net team. Even cooler than that is the way that they’re doing it. They’re using Gabbly, a neat service that lets you chat about any URL on the web. All you have to do is visit gabbly.com/http://www.intelliot.com/ (for example), to chat about that site. It’s genius, and a very slick interface, too. You can continue to chat, even while you browse around.

That reminds me of something else I’ve always wanted to do. When you visit blogs, you can comment on entries. The comments often give me insight into the article that I wouldn’t have seen before. Additionally, I often find solutions to problems in the comments. Sometimes, people share experiences that are crucial to helping other people make informed decisions.

But there’s a problem. Many sites aren’t blogs. They’re news sites, article sites, community sites, or just plain informational sites. They don’t offer a comments box. Some other sites do allow comments, but have harsh restrictions: you have to register to comment, or you have to pay a subscription fee, or enter a Captcha, etc.

The solution? I see it as something like Gabbly. A centralized place for commenting. Sites could even display the comments accepted and stored by this site on their own site, and the individual pages that have been commented on! Why not?

To some extent, you can do this now, if you have a blog. You can use Google’s Blog comments extension (or whatever it’s called), and write a blog post about any URL you want to comment on. Yeah, that works, it uses Google Blog Search, but it’s not perfect. And not everyone has a blog. So, when it comes to commenting on the web for the masses… well, I haven’t seen a solution yet.