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All the recent frenzy over the Apple iPad might be too much for the tech nerds of the world to handle. Tuesday, Josh Topolsky of Engadget reported on a disturbingly high volume of "ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening" comments on the Web site and took action by indefinitely closing all comments on the blog. We appreciate Josh's wake-up call, although vocalizing one's opinion through anonymous blog comments is just another extension of the Internet.

We definitely empathize with the site's moderators, however, who must be tearing their hair out trying to protect Engadget visitors from trolls, predators, idiots, and all the other lobos on the Web. Good luck with that, guys!

In other tech news, TechCrunch gives us a first look at Google's interpretation of a modern tablet device, as imagined by Glen Murphy, Google Chrome's designer. The video you see on the site is just a mock-up, however, so don't get your hopes up! At this point, we'll take just about any tablet that doesn't have an Apple on it.

We can't thank our buddy Props Guy Jim enough for making the awesome "The 404 Bunch" poster you see to the left. Jim is the same gentleman who came through with 3k temporary tattoos, so thanks again! Look for a full-size poster coming to a 404 studio near you.

We've been testing a new commenting system called Echo on my Deep Tech blog for a few weeks, and now we're looking for your thoughts about it.

What do you like or dislike about reading and posting comments using Echo? How do you think Echo could be improved?

One thing we like about Echo: it allows readers to comment on our stories by logging in through CNET or through various social networks of their choosing. For example, there may some readers who don't want to create a CNET account.

Also, Echo collects some conversation about our stories … Read more

One missed feature from the old MacFixIt site was the ability to easily contact us. In the move to CNET's main website layout there has been some delay in getting this implemented, but it is now available.… Read more

If you're a frequent Google Reader user, you know full well that user comments on blog posts do not come along for the ride. On some blog feeds, it can tell you how many user comments there are, but on others, you typically have to visit the post to know.

A new solution called GReactions has attempted to fix this by slurping up comments from around the Web that are related to the post you're looking at. When it works, it's a seamless experience.

The Firefox extension is powered by Context Voice, which does the dirty work. … Read more

PDF-XChange Viewer presents users with an alternative to Adobe's Acrobat Reader. With some interesting additions, it's not hard to see this reader gaining some fans over its more popular competition.

The program's interface looks and feels remarkably like Acrobat Reader, but with more command icons along the top. Users who are familiar with viewing PDFs will find this fairly intuitive, but newcomers are advised to experiment with the options and pay attention to the Help file. Viewing PDFs is incredibly simple and should not be a problem for users. The documents look good through the reader and … Read more

Next week, Yelp is set to roll out a new feature that will allow business owners to respond to user reviews--both good and bad--of their establishments.

In an e-mail sent out to the service's "Elite users," one of Yelp's local community managers Don Bourassa said the service is being set up to give business owners a way to provide constructive feedback in a public forum, as the current system requires businesses to correspond with users through private messages.

"The goal is for all comments to be pleasant and useful," Bourassa said. "For example, … Read more

Please just look at that headline.

It's a set of words that fills one with such joy, such magnanimous giggling that it makes one consider "Jennifer Aniston marries somebody" as society's next attainable hope.

Ann Althouse is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She appears to have quite a following on her blog, romantically entitled Althouse.

She writes about politics and law and other things that caused society to have raw knees of late. However, what is important is that the New York Times persuaded her to reveal the delicious story of how … Read more

I can't think of a worse place to look for editorial than YouTube comments. Historically, they've been so bad that YouTube was forced to create a comment playback feature so users could hear what they had typed before sharing it with the rest of the world.

That hasn't stopped two Firefox developers from coming up with OpinionCloud. This small Firefox add-on will give a video's comments a quick once-over and show you which words are most often used, and the general user sentiment based on a percentage of keywords that are either positive or negative. Clicking … Read more

Google Reader users can now leave comments on shared items. Google has introduced it as a way to have a discussion with friends outside of a site's main commenting system, and specific just to that shared item and their group of contacts.

To help manage this new stream of information, Google Reader now has a filter that shows you the latest conversations in one place. Here you can view all the latest chatter, and continue to add more comments just like a forum.

In addition to reading and adding comments through Google Reader in your computer's browser it … Read more