Pimp my Blog

The tech wonk in me has really enjoyed reviewing Google's Friend Connect features, and playing with ways to incorporate them into this Blogger blog.  The goal with this is to make my blog more of a community rather than just a navel-gazing set of rants.  Is this stuff important for the loosey-goosey purposes I've outlined in the half-dozen posts on this site (cover my gaming, a healthy dose of nostalgia for nerd-dom past, and random musing)?  Not necessarily, but by making blogging a community activity, it opens up a dialogue that allows readers to more actively say what they're enjoing and what they're not.  Commenting has provided that for a while, but by adding community features it can take on a new turn.  Facebooking-blogs, so to speak. 

Indulge me.

I've added a few to the left hand navigation of the site, here:

• The Social Bar (yeah, sounds like my kind of place) up top, which serves as a summary of what's happening in the blog.
• The updated Followers box that allows you to invite your friends to 'follow' my blog
• A Sign In box that allows you to log in using your Google, AIM, or Yahoo ID
• A Members box that shows who is a "member", not just a "follower" of the blog
• A Wall/Comments box, which allows you to leave site-wide comments ("gee, Tyler, less talk about blogging, and more stuff about old school d&d, puh-leeze...")
• And a Ratings box (validate me!)

Leave a comment, post a rating, become a member.  Let me know what you'd like to see more of, and how you think these features could add value.