Invisible email, hooray!

Since I've started reading blogs, I've been frustrated by Blogger's inability to allow blog owners to respond to comments via email. If a person has a blog hosted through Blogger (as I do), and you leave them a comment, there's no easy way for them to respond. They can answer you in their own comments, but there's no guarantee that you're going to check back. They can go to your blog (if you have one) and leave you a comment there, but that's awkward (and the approach I've tried to take).

I've finally hit on a solution for my own commenting. I don't trust the common practice of including email addresses by spelling them out: me at yahoo dot com. It is, after all, common. And that means that any day now there will be spambots that can translate that into an actual email address.

So my solution:

Over on the sidebar of this blog is a link that says 'email me.' I've set up a (free) account with Contactify, which provides me with a secure email link that does not reveal my email address. The email through that link is forwarded to my email account.
(One note: when you sign up for the Contactify account, it will ask for your email address and a password. You don't have to use your email password -- it's just a password for Contactify so that you can go in and edit your email address if you ever change it. So use any password you like.)

So if I've left a comment on your blog, the URL in my comment will lead you over here ... and you can email me directly through the link.

Not a perfect solution, but more elegant than others I've seen. I hope others will start to include similar email links on their own blogs.