With the help of Simone and his team at eVectors, I've finished porting activeRenderer's update/registration code to liveTopics.

I reckon it's now up to Matt to decide when the first version is ready for public use.

As I understand it, liveTopics is the first step in a terrific new blogging experimentation, so I can't wait, even if, being slightly maniac, I feel there are still a few things that need polishing.

In the porting process, I've created a demo updateTool which does nothing but register on eVector's server and handle updates. More on this and are tool update initiative later.

Reading Matt again this morning, the difference between backtracking and referring finally got through:

[TrackBack] allows me as the author of an item to "ping" the original during the act of publishing.  This ping does not require someone to read my item and then click through to his.  Simply by publishing he is notified that someone has referenced him. [Curiouser and curiouser!]

Using current refering practises - and if we were not reading each other's posts on a regular basis :-) - Matt would only know that I published this text if:

• someone actually clicked on the above link pointing to his original post,
• he checked his own referers page on UserLand server.

If we both used backtracking, he would know about this text as soon as I first clicked the Post Changes button on my local home page - not that it would do him much good though...