You'll notice I don't currently have the ability to comment on posts and the like. There's a reason for that. Actually, there are many reasons for that. The biggest reason, however, is spam. There's nothing I hate more than going to a blog and seeing that most, if not all, of the comments are complete spam. I get enough of that in my inbox, I don't want to see it anywhere else. However, I'm also not a huge fan of CAPTCHAs, and don't much have time for the overhead of moderating every comment.

I read Lifehacker every day (thanks to great syndication), and stumbled across an article about phillipino people using their cell phones to make purchases. My ears perked because I work for a company that's trying to do that here in the States, and I decided I'd leave a comment. What I found was a great surprise. They have a "comment audition" form for new users. You fill out your comment, create an account (with an optional email address field), and submit. There's one review process to enable your account and comment, and after that, comments are open to you. Sure, it's another account that I have to keep track of, but it wasn't a painful experience to get it set up. It was easy enough that I was done in just a few keystrokes.