ReadWriteWeb

Despite the competition and rumors of its demise, email remains a very prevalent part of our daily lives. (That's one reason why Google continues to pour effort into Gmail.) Yet even with its familiarity, we're still discovering new ways we can use email to control other applications and perform simple tasks.

Now WordPress.com has embraced email for exactly that purpose. A new WordPress.com feature - currently in closed beta - adds actual utility to those "You've got a comment" emails: Reply via Email.

One of the biggest topics in the tech blogosphere at the beginning of this year was 'comment fragmentation.' With services like FriendFeed, SocialMedian, Digg, Reddit, and others often creating unconnected conversations around a single blog post, many bloggers felt that they had lost control of their content and the conversation around it. Artiklz, which launched its private alpha test today, wants to put an end to this discussion. The company aggregates comments from a wide range of external sources, including FriendFeed, Digg, Mixx, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz, and Delicious, with more to follow very soon.

If cookies were the multi-billion dollar magic for much of the web's first iteration, tiny technologies to power conversation could play a similar role in the future of business online. More fun than that, though, is the innovation we hope to see in the technology of conversation.

Comment and review plug-in suite JS-Kit announced today a new round of funding and the hire as an adviser of one of the web's most forward looking innovators, Data Portability Working Group co-founder Chris Saad. Though JS-Kit has a funny name, the company has a big installed base. In addition to being very easy to install, it recently partnered with red-hot content sharing service ShareThis and acquired the early market leader in plug-and-play commenting, Haloscan. What does the future look like for JS-Kit and how might that relate to the web at large? We asked Chris Saad for his thoughts this morning.

Automattic, the company behind the popular blogging platform Wordpress, has acquired IntenseDebate, a blog commenting plugin that works on almost every blogging platform. The price of the acquisition was not disclosed. This is the third major acquisition for Automattic after buying Gravatar in 2007 and BuddyPress in early 2008. Automattic promises that IntenseDebate will remain platform agnostic, just like Aksimet, Automattic's comment spam blocker.

Maybe to counter some of the bad news around YouTube today, Google just announced the acquisition of the Y Combinator funded video annotation and mashup company Omnisio. According to Google, the acquisition of Omnisio will allow them to keep pushing the envelope of what is possible with online video. Neither Google nor Omnisio have commented on the price of the acquisition, but it is clear that the Omnisio team is going to join YouTube.

Evite, the social planning service which has been around since 1998, announced a partnership with JS-Kit today. Evite will use JS-Kit's commenting and polling features to allow organizers and guests to communicate with each other. Evite is also expanding the social networking features of its site, including the ability to share photos and stories after the event has taken place.

Recently, Facebook changed its layout involving the commenting functionality on Mini-Feed items. Before, you had to click on the plus sign ("+") to add a comment, but now the word "comment" is written out. VentureBeat is reporting on this change and notes that it's probably to make the new commenting functionality more visible to users, since it appears that few are currently using this feature. But is it possible that the lack of use isn't because Facebook users didn't notice it, but because they just don't care?

For every 1000 people who read a tech blog post, there may be one that leaves a comment. Lurking in the crowd are any number of people who work for companies related to the subject of the post. They almost never comment, and when they do they often come across as obnoxious, self-promoting and spammy. It doesn't have to be that way, though.