--- 
layout: post
title: That old Trackback magic
created: 1084123071
categories: 
- Personal Publishing
---
A comment I posted on at <a href="http://flowdelic.org/archives/000005.html">flowdelic</a>, a new blog by Mason Hale of <a href="http://www.frogdesign.com">frogdesign</a>:

Actually, why do we need trackback? I very much agree with John Gruber's thoughts on trackback &mdash; <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2003/06/take_your_trackbacks_and_dangle">Take your Trackbacks and Dangle</a> and <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2003/06/trackback_addenda">Trackback addenda</a>.

I agree that a "threaded" or otherwise centralized view of the flow of conversation would be incredible. But I don't want to shut out non-trackback using tools. The referrer is common across all web-platforms &mdash; it's just links, after all!

That being said, for tools that don't do trackback, you can use <a href="http://kalsey.com/tools/trackback/">Simpletracks from Kalsey Consulting</a>. I use it on occasion, but other times I'll just do this &mdash; post comments on my site as well as type them into the comment box.

Some other thoughts: Is "trackback" capitalized or not? Is it a trademark of MovableType?