One of the benefits of using a standalone MovableType install over a hosted solution is the substantial amount of control you get over comments and trackbacks. The bad thing about it is all the spam you get, but with additional tools such as MT-Blacklist and SpamLookup the job gets a lot easier very quickly.

Now, Typepad users are about to get some additional additional features to manage comment and trackbacks as well.

Included in the soon to be released feature set are the following:

- Support for TypeKey-based comment authentication;

- The ability to moderate comments and trackBacks;

- An enhance user interface for managing comments and trackbacks; and

- The ability to set preferences on whether you’d like to use plain text or HTML email.

Six Apart, makers of Movable Type and Typepad, are saying there will be additional announcements regarding the features over the next few weeks.