This is Clarice, ladies and gentlemen

Here in the Scouta development centre (a large roughly spherical campus that we share with about six billion others) we name major releases after people. Our first production release was Ariel, and that was followed by Bernice which was the release we went public with.

A couple of days ago we rolled out Clarice and I want to talk a little about some highlights:

• Comments: We’ve added threaded comments to both Faves and Groups, so one and all can discuss group issues or particular media Faves. There are large helpings of ajaxian goodness that makes it all work smoothly and quickly (thanks Simon) which means you can watch video or listen audio on the site while joining in the conversation at the same time. For example, take a look at London to Brighton time lapse, set the video going and browse the conversation near the bottom of the page.
• Scouta HQ: Because we now have comments running, we’ve made a special group called Scouta HQ which is a good place for you to come and chat to the Scouta team about the what and how and where and why of Scouta. Drop in there and start a conversation. We’d love to know what you are thinking.
• Invite friends: From your MyScouta page, you can invite friends by email to come and join Scouta, and when we email them we tell them how to find you. Or otherwise you can just tell them to get on over to scouta.com/members/join and fill in the quick form there.

Those are the big ticket items. We’ve also made lots of little changes that just make it better. Enjoy.

Our next big release is called Don, due in a couple of weeks. I’m not going to announce features here just yet, but just let me say that after Don, Scouta may well feel quite different.

Update: Simon blogs about the comments implementation: Sometimes, you _need_ AJAX.