New feature: OpenID commenting

Blogger in Draft now lets you enable OpenID-based commenting, in your blogs' Settings | Comments tab:

(OpenID comments work in both the Anyone and Registered Users modes)

This means that users of OpenID-enabled services — such as LiveJournal and WordPress — can comment on your blog using their accounts from those sites, rather than with Blogger/Google accounts:

For example, if you see an OpenID comment with the URL http://brad.livejournal.com/, you'll know that it was Brad who wrote that comment, and not an impostor.

This feature is in Draft because we'd like to hear feedback about the implementation, and to test it further before moving it to Blogger's main site. We're also working on functionality to let Blogger's URLs (both Blog*Spot and custom domains) be used for commenting elsewhere on the web.

Let us know how this is working for you in the comments below.

Update, 12/3: We recommend Sam Ruby's OpenID for non-SuperUsers, which explains how to set up OpenID delegation. Delegation is a way for you to use your own URL for OpenID, but still sign in with AOL, LiveJournal, etc.

New Feature: Gadgets for your Blog

We’ve added some fun new functionality to Blogger in Draft: Google Gadgets for your blog. This feature lets you add pretty much any Google Gadget to your blog’s sidebar.

The Gadget directory is the same one used on iGoogle, which means there are thousands of Gadgets available for you to try. (Note: since most Google Gadgets were designed for iGoogle, they won’t all make sense for display on a blog.)

The Gadget directory is available directly in Blogger Layouts, in the Template | Page Elements | Add a Page Element popup:

This is an early version of our integration with Google Gadgets, so there will likely be some rough edges. Let us know what you think in this post’s comments!