Following up on my post about the HTC Hero clock annoyance I'm happy to report that I've since discovered that HTC released a new ROM. In the update they've addressed battery life and performance issues by removing the clock animation and other pointless bits like it. I've now updated my phone and am once again happy with it (it really is a very nice phone!).

I discovered the ROM thanks to a comment from a first-time poster on codestore who was having the same issue. It was this comment that led me to do some Googling on the subject and hence I learnt of the ROM update. Assuming the original commenter would also be interested I replied to the thread. This triggered an email the user who then came back to reply. There's little chance he would have returned normally, were there no email alert. Proof, should I need it, that the new comments feature of getting alerted via email is working as I intended it to.

Further proof of its usefulness came yesterday when a question was asked on an old blog entry. Normally I'd be in two minds about replying as I'm never sure if answers are ever read. In this case though I know it sent him an email so it's worth doing so.

When I find time I plan on making further improvements, as per your suggestions, such as allowing non-commentators to signup for email alerts to threads. You can signup to individual RSS feeds as it is, but didn't you hear? RSS is dead!