In what's presumably an attempt to curb the comment cesspool at YouTube, the popular video sharing site has added an Audio Preview button to the comment section. Inspired by web comic xkcd, the positive effect of the audio preview seems questionable. Until audio previews prove their efficacy, we'll stick with the previously mentioned YouTube Comment Snob extension, thankyouverymuch. [via]

Free web service BackType aggregates all the comments you make on various blogs and web sites. The site uses the URLs entered in commenter forms or in the posts themselves to track a person's musings, or can combine URLs under a single account URL. It's a great tool for those who want to catch up on discussions they left behind, but the site also provides a search engine of its indexed comments and links to see another social-browser's comments. This type of URL tracking would normally leave the door open for comment impersonators, so BackType offers a moderation option to have you approve any comments posted under your name. BackType is a free service, requires a sign-up to use.

Read More »

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension YouTube Comment Snob filters comments on YouTube videos that don't meet your snobbish standards. It does so using a combination of criteria, like a user-defined threshold of spelling errors (using Firefox's spell-checker), excessive punctuation, and excessive capitalisation. You can enable or disable any of the filter options if you don't mind capital letters, for example, and you can view any hidden comment by simply clicking Show. It's a pretty saucy little extension, but now it's hard not to want a full-on Internet Comment Snob.

Read More »

US-centric: Firefox with Greasemonkey only: Two of the Lifehacker editors may reside on the West coast of the US, but a lot of the US readers are on Eastern time, and that means you'd probably like to see our... Read More »