tumblr

Use WordPress Like Tumblr

QuickPost Plugin LogoWhile browsing around the WordPress.org plugin database for something completely different, I happen to stumble upon a plugin that was inspired by the Tumblr bookmarklet. It doesn’t have every feature of the Tumblr bookmarklet, but it doesn’t have to.

The plugin is called QuickPost and was developed by a company called Twelve Horses. After downloading, installing, then activating the plugin, you’ll have to go into the QuickPost options area and select a default category for each bookmarklet tab.

Setting Default Categories

The bookmarklet supports the following types of posts: Quotes, Text/Links, Photos, and Videos.

QuickPost Tabs

For those that are using FireFox, installing the bookmarklet is as simple as dragging a button to your bookmark toolbar. The process is a little more complicated if your using Internet Explorer.

Dear Internet Explorer Users: Yours is a harder path to walk.. Right click the bookmarklet below and select “Add to favourites”. Your IE will probably tell you that this is an “Unsafe bookmark to add”. Ignore your smart arse browser and click OK. The setup will thus be completed.

Although the bookmarklet doesn’t support every thing the Tumblr version does, I don’t feel as if it needs to. I think this bookmarklet covers the majority of content most people post to their Tumblr blog or regular blog. One thing about this plugin is that it does not allow you to preview the post before it’s published.

There is a checkbox that is part of the plugin options that allows you to use the WYSIWYG text editor but I ‘d rather see the option of choosing between both when making a post. The reason being is that, it’s pretty difficult to post YouTube Embed HTML codes into the WYSIWYG editor without it screwing up. I get around this by switching to the CODE view of the post and making sure that embedding the video is the last thing I do when creating the post.

Thanks to this plugin, I’m seriously considering disbanding my Tumblr account and using this blog as my Tumbelog and everything else blog. After all, lifestreaming seems to be where everything is headed so perhaps setting the site up this way allows me to get a head start on the trend.

P.S. The blog post before this one was actually me testing the QUOTE function of the QuickPost plugin. Apparently, it works.

Tumblr Makes Some Changes

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Looks like someone at Tumblr was home after all. Today is November 1st which is the date Tumblr promised would show off some new goodies while also making a few announcements. They have delivered on this promise in more than one way.

Tumblr now sports a brand new Dashboard design. Looky there! Tumblr now supports audio. Audio files can only be posted to your Tumblr account through the dashboard. The Tumblr bookmarklet currently doesn’t support the Audio feature. Tumblrs can only post one audio file per day and the file has to be under 5 MB in size.

New Tumblr Dashboard

The addition of channels. Taking a page out of Jaiku’s book, Tumblrs can now create private channels. The channels allow you to create mini cliqs within the Tumblr network. Once you invite someone into your channel, they can then invite someone else into your channel. Not exactly what I call great control, but a nifty feature none the less.

Tumblr Channels

Tumblr has also teamed up with Vimeo. Vimeo users can now connect Tumblr to their account which allows them to upload videos via their phone. The theme designer has become more user friendly, there is now an archive link at the bottom of Tumblelogs that makes browsing previous posts much easer than clicking the PREVIOUS link 500 times and last but not least, Tumblr has yet to add support for Podcasting feeds.

All in all, it looks like things are starting to look up for the service. I don’t use Tumblr as much as I used to but I’m sure this update and redesign puts them back on the radar. I hope that at some point, they add a stats feature which shows me who is reblogging my Tumblr content. When the reblogging feature was implemented, it was suppose to allow Tumblrs to see how their content would spread across the network. So far, this hasn’t been the case and in this latest incarnation of Tumblr, those features are still missing.

Do you use Tumblr? If so, how do you use it? Lifestreaming? Linkblog? Your one and only blog? Let us know in the comment section.

Tumblr Awakes From Its Slumbr

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Back in August, I wrote an article that speculated the fact that Tumblr may have been on its way out (Is Tumblr Dead?) but apparently, November 1st will be a big day for both Tumblr, and its users. According to Mark Rizzn on Mashable,  Tumblepedia has been updated to describe new features, optimizations and bug fixes.

Looks like Tumblr is still alive and kicking. Hopefully, Tumblr will add all sorts of features that make this service just shy of being a killer.

Is Tumblr Dead?

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Tumblr, the service that makes publishing to your blog a breeze seems to be showing signs that the service is dead. Granted, there have been no official announcements and the following is only my opinion based on observations that anyone can make. Upon visiting the official blog for Tumblr, the last post to be published – Tumbling Towards 2.0 was back on April 27, 2007.

The post goes on to describe the development of Tumblr 2.0 and what to look forward to. Since today is August 28th, many Tumblr users are beginning to scratch their heads, wondering what is going on. Take a look at the comments on their last blog entry and you’ll see users are already starting to ask if Tumblr is dead.

No one seems to know where Tumblr is heading. Wouldn’t that be interesting if Tumblr, tumbled into it’s own demise? As I said, it’s not for certain if the service is dead or not but all of the signs I’ve seen point to that observation. What do you think? Am I just blowing smoke?

*UPDATE* It would appear as though I’m not the only one who has brought this subject up within the past few days. Amit published a post a few days ago where Marco, a Tumblr team member responded to his post with the following comment:

Tumblr and Davidville are both doing great and we’re hard at work on Tumblr’s next release. We’ll have something to say on the blog when it’s ready, I’m sure.

This is not the Tumblr forum – it’s my personal site. Official Tumblr news will never be posted here.

But your comment is duly noted. Thank you.

New Fan Of Tumblr

After listening to the Net@Nite podcast with Leo Laporte where Leo interviews the founders of Jaiku and Tumblr, I have decided to take the plunge and give the Tumblr service a try. I must say that I am very impressed with how easy it is to publish content. Using the bookmarklet feature that you can use directly from FireFox, you can add content that you discover on the net straight to your Tumblr site to share with the rest of the world. The bookmarklet does an excellent job in creating the link to the source of the content allowing you to just copy the content, and add it to your Tumblr blog. The bookmarklet seamlessly does the rest.

Using Tumblr is also fun. They have a really cool feature which I feel Efx2.com could benefit from called Reblogging. ReBlogging let’s you quickly share content you discover on other tumblelogs, and even add or change the commentary. Imagine coming across a cool post on someones Efx2 blog such as one of those meme types of posts. You could simply click a Reblog link for that post and it would automatically put the same post into your blog, allowing you to change the content of the post and publish it on your own blog.

One of the downsides to Tumblr right now is the ability to discover other Tumblelogs. There is no central repository of Tumblrs nor are their any ways to browse amongst the active Tumblr blogs. However, it does appear as though they will be addressing this issue sometime in the near future.


“More ways to find friends – It seems like a no-brainer to show friends of your friends, but we have some interesting tools for this that aren’t quite ready uncover. More ways to discover tumblelogs are right around the corner. “

The reason I love Tumblr is because I can quickly add content that would otherwise take me quite a bit of time to publish on my very own blog. I also listened very closely to Leo Laporte when he described the three different types of blogging going on across the web. Those are:

Micro Blogging: This is where Twitter and Jaiku come in handy. With just 140 characters to create a post, this is used to quickly share thoughts random ideas. Something short.

MidRange Blogging: This is where Tumblr excels as it allows you to easily share content you deem interesting on the web. There is no need to write an extensive post about the particular piece of content. Simply post and move on. Continue reading →