"Recent Comments"

Since it is easy to lose track of ongoing conversational threads, as new posts scroll older stuff off the screen rather quickly with a team as big as ours (even with so few of you actually posting -- hint hint) I'd really like to have some kind of indication of "Recent Comments" visible high up in the sidebar so you can see who is responding to what as it happens. But I can't figure out how to do it. Does anybody have the skills for that? Help me out.