2010-02-01
Rich Feeds for Tumblr Blogs
benw:
the RSS output from Tumblr stinks. I assume it’s an evil incentive to use the Dashboard.
So, I’ve written a feed script. It’s called Tumblfeed, which sounds like tumbleweed… which I suppose is a metaphor for the semantic desolation of the Tumblr RSS feeds… or something. It was an accidental rhyme.
This looks good. I may even start offering feeds of my stuff through it.
2010-01-24
post/350632479
2010-01-05
Per-tag RSS feeds for Tumblr
I didn’t think that Tumblr offered per-tag RSS feeds, but after spending some time trying to hack the JSON output from the Tumblr API into my aggregated front page, I tried appending “/rss” to the URL of one of my tag archive pages, and somewhat to my surprise, it worked.
Of course, RSS is more useful if it’s discoverable, so in addition to the standard
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="All items (RSS)" href="{RSS}"/>
I’ve added
{block:TagPage}<link rel="alternate"
type="application/rss+xml" title="Items with this tag (RSS)"
href="/tagged/{Tag}/rss"/> {/block:TagPage}
The second line uses Tumblr’s custom themes, in particular the {block:TagPage} element, to only advertise the RSS feed (through the standard autodiscovery syntax) on tag archive pages. This is in addition to the standard feed; you can decide between them thanks to the descriptive titles.
If you use tags and a custom theme, think about adding the same: it might help people who want to follow a particular subject.
2009-09-24
Still Wireless
A week or so ago Tumblr launched their new Wire feature, which was more like Radar (which old-time (ie six month old) users might remember) than the Popular pages that it replaced. I wrote that I didn’t like it.
Since writing that, I’ve occasionally glanced at the page, but compared to the two or three times a day (at least) that I used to look at it, and the now-gone popular/upcoming page, that’s pretty small beer. So, well done Tumblr! I’m now confined to my insular little backwater.
Meanwhile, Posterous imported my Tumblr theme with no trouble. Jumping ship never looked so straightforward.
2009-09-15
Wireless
Going on the reaction to the staff post announcing Tumblr Wire, I’m the only person who took an instant dislike to it. It’s the worst of Radar, back. Where’s Recent / Popular / Upcoming gone? Bah. I demand a refund. (Yes, I know Tumblr’s free. That’s called irony. Or sarcasm. Or something.)
Having spent a little more time with it: I still hate it. That scrolling box has zero refindability. Good luck if you want to actually capture anything from it. You thought Twitter had the memory span of a goldfish? Man, that’s like writing in stone compared to this.
On the other hand, maybe I’m just not Tumblr’s desired audience. I write posts of more than two paragraphs; perhaps I should just give up and shuffle off to Posterous. Or ignore all the social crap beyond the Dashboard. At least then I’d only have one source of pseudo-meaningful bollocks.
Edit: Oh dear, it’s even worse. Links from the Wire go through the Digg-bar style tumblupon UI, which has nasty framesets stopping you from easily sharing stuff. Nasty.
2009-08-18
Tumblr Staff: Introducing Tag Channels
Whenever I have a tag field, I use it, and I try to be consistent. So Tumblr finally having some sort of global support for tagging is nice. Because I was away today, I first noticed it when looking at other people’s posts on my dashboard (although this example is one of my own):
My first thought was “why the fuck are they using a hash in front of the tag? This isn’t bloody Twitter; Tumblr have more sense than to force metadata into the body of a message (well, except for all the post types that don’t have titles, but that’s another matter)”.
My second thought was to try clicking on the links, and it turns out that despite the post (which I eventually got to after wading through some Facebook nonsense and promotional rubbish) claiming that tags are normalised, they’re not. Or maybe they are, but not all tags. In any case, the ‘victoria line” tag page is coming up empty.
Still, one hurrah for highlighting tags, a half hurrah for a global tag search (that sort of works), and a big fat raspberry for pointlessly aping Twitter’s use of # to indicate a tag when there’s no bloody need to.
2009-08-06
post/157137823
The 24 Hour Idea by Patrick Rhone, talking about how he created minimal mac.
Despite the buzz about Posterous (and its default minimal theme), if I wanted to set up a curated group blog, I’d do it on Tumblr. (Mind you, I’m hardly the first to notice how well suited it is for single-serving sites.)
2009-07-22
post/146862807
2009-07-17
post/143400463
By popular demand: J and K now jump between posts on the Dashboard.
Works great with endless scrolling.
Hurrah! If you want this in your theme, this code does the job on notes.husk.org. More or less.
2009-07-13
In Praise Of Tumblr
It’s been a couple of weeks since Mashable’s comparative review of Tumblr and Posterous was published, and since then I’ve noticed a few of my friends trying out the latter service. I thought it was time I explained some of the reasons I’ve found Tumblr to be such a good fit for me, and why I think the review was a little unfair.
Posterous’ knockout posting punch is email — the technology that most of us take for granted on a daily basis.
Other people might still be email-centric, but I’ve long since moved to the browser rather than the email client for everything. (Surely the popularity of Gmail proves I’m not alone?) Tumblr’s excellent (and recently upgraded) bookmarklet is fantastic for easily posting images found online. Meanwhile, the composing pages on the web are wonderful: lightweight in just the way MT, Wordpress and Vox aren’t. OK, it’s not quite as simple as Twitter, but then, I couldn’t put this in 140 characters. Relatively friction-free posting makes me write far more (just compare the frequency of posts here to that over on my grown-up blog).
Tumblr’s also got something else that, sadly, nobody else has quite nailed - community. Since I gave up RSS in 2004 or so (I’ve since relented, a little) I’ve used the network/friends/contacts pages on the sites I use most to follow what’s up. Twitter, Flickr and delicious all do this really well, and so does Tumblr, with the Dashboard. Once you’re logged in it’s easy to follow another Tumblr user, and keep up with what they’re doing. (If you’re that sort of person, you can even drag in your Twitter friends updates. I don’t.)
Beyond that, though, there’s reblogging. Unlike the folk practice of retweeting, which is broken in more ways than I can be bothered to list, Tumblr’s feature is right on the money. Attribution and feedback are nicely handled within the dashboard. It even makes the decision of the site’s founders not to have comments a minor drawback rather than a killer - you can always add something to a post and end up with a real conversation, which is actually readable in future. Compared with Twitter or any other blogging platform, that’s a real achievement.
Suffice it to say, Posterous has nothing like either feature. If I run across your blog and want to follow it, I have to use feeds. (Obviously, Tumblr does offer RSS, if you want it.) You might not see this as a drawback, but nowadays, I think I would.
[Edit] I had another look, and it turns out Posterous does offer subscriptions. That’s still not as impressive as reblogging, but I thought I should mention it.
What else? I really like Tumblr’s per-month archive pages (Posterous only has per-tag). Tumblr has a good customisation engine, which I’ve used to make this site look like my main one (whereas Posterous locks you into a pleasant, but anodyne, theme). I’ve used a custom domain; although you can do that on Posterous too, Tumblr’s implementation is quite good. The “popular” pages gives a window into the community (even if it’s occasionally a bit scary). On top of all that, Tumblr has a straightforward API for import and export (which also makes me feel like I own my data; like edd, I find this pretty important).
Is Tumblr perfect? Of course not. The theme engine isn’t infinitely flexible, and getting an export isn’t one-click easy, when it could be. There are niggling missing pieces (I’d like per-tag RSS, for example), but all in all, it’s a pretty flexible, easy, and pleasant platform. I can see myself staying here for quite some while.
