Writer's block is a perennial problem - the average corporate blogger has  lots of interesting information tied up in their noggin. But how do they navigate the boundless seas of half-formed blog ideas and steer themselves towards the safe port of.... splosh... oops, my metaphor seems to have sunk. Never mind.

Anyway,  Skribit is a handy, free widget that can be integrated into any blog with the minimum of fuss. It lets readers propose topics for the blogger to write about, and it lets other readers vote on these ideas.

At first glance, you might think "so what - topics are often suggested in post comments anyway?" This is true. However the typically blogging set-up  reinforces an author-reader divide,. The blogger gets the big headline and large type-face text, the readers get the little comments tucked away.  The use of something like Skribit helps break down the barrier and brings the blogger's desire for interaction front-and-centre. And of course the blog author can always 'fly a kite' or two - proposing their own topics and watching how the voting goes.

Currently, the widget is implemented as an IFrame, and as you can see with the sample to the right, the styling it allows is a little rough-and ready. Its Javascript is also rather on the chunky side, which can slow page loading.  However some changes are in the works, first there is a new, lightweight version of the widget in development, which allows it to be styled using a blog's own CSS. Secondly there are moves afoot to try and put a business model for Skribit in place.

 Skribit doesn't look like a company yet, it hasn't apparently taken any VC financing and comprises three people: Student-founder Paul Stamatiou, developer-founder Calvin Yu and Lance Weatherby who is "Venture Catalyst" at Georgia Tech. and who appears to have a mentoring role.

However, it will start beta-testing a Pro version of the tool next month, according to a posting on the Get Satisfaction support site. The team has even started canavassing opinion as to what features should appear in the paid-for version. So far, support for multiple blogs, suggestion moderation, analytics and increased customisation all appear to be likely candidates.  That's good news since a decent revenue stream will increase the chances of a secure future for the the basic, free version.