I just upgraded/finished the "Block" feature for comments. This allows you to Block specific people from posting comments on your blog. It has always been an option but never quite worked right... now it should work. If you are the blog owner and you click on the [del] link next to a blog post, you can choose to block the author (or unblock).

One problem I have to fix still -- if you delete all of a members comments on your blog, and have blocked him or her, you cannot unblock them. (You must keep an old comment around to access the unblock feature). I will be adding a way to resolve this. For now, just write in to us if you want to unblock someone and cannot.

You can now make "Private" comments to blog owners. When making a comment on a Blog post or the Guestbook you can checkmark the Private box. The message will be emailed to the blog owner and will not show to the general public on blogs.

Please let me know if you experience any problems with this feature.

You can now show your age in your Blog page (calculated automatically).

Just go to My Account -> Profile -> Edit and Choose YES for the "Show Age" option.

I just added a new feature on blog pages -- when a blog post has comments, an asterisk will appear next to it in the "Recent Posts" on the right side of the blog page.

The asterisk will be different colors depending on how long ago the comment was left -- red means recently, green means last day, black means over 1 day.

I might change the color scheme or icon -- want it to be subtle but still easy to see.

It will only appear on blogs that have been updated since about 4 PM EST today -- meaning you won't see it on your blog until your blog gets updated from a post or comment.

Let me know how you like it or if you have any other ideas on how to improve navigation or monitoring of your blog!

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Update: I have to thank Mr. President for locating a bug. Apparently asterisks were appearing on blog posts that had no comments. It turned out that if comments were deleted then the asterisk would still appear. I have fixed this... although in rare situations you may see a "red" asterisk when there is no visible new comment (ie: the recent comment was removed). I'll fix that later but it will be a little more complicated (and it's not that high priority).

I am testing a new Chatroom feature here at Blogstream. It is available to registered members.

You can reach it by clicking on the Chatroom link on the front page of Blogstream (either on the top or bottom of the page).

You do need to setup your chat settings before you can login. You can do this by editing your profile (in the "My Account" area) and then choosing the "Chat" tab. There are full instructions on the chat page.

We are going to test this out and see how it works. Let us know if you like it or have any problems.