[fr] Un tumblelog, c'est un blog réduit à sa plus simple expression: des articles, des liens permanents, un fil RSS. Pas de commentaires, pas de gadgets, pas de tags, pas de catégories. Un bookmarklet permet de facilement choisir entre six sortes de billets prédéfinis (texte, citation, lien, photo, chat, vidéo) et devine même pour vous si vous le cliquez depuis une page web.
C'est un lieu idéal pour bloguer en passant, au fil des lectures. Noter une idée en vitesse. Mettre en valeur une photo ou une vidéo qu'on a appréciée. Prendre des notes sous forme de citation lorsque l'on lit.
I’ve had a [tumblelog](http://steph.tumblr.com) since February of this year, but it’s taken me a long time to figure out where it fit into my online presence.
I first tried importing **everything** into it, but that was a mess. [Jaiku](http://steph.jaiku.com/) is better when it comes to lifestreaming, for the moment. (Wow, just checked, and [Suprglu’s still alive](http://steph.suprglu.com/) — head there if you want the “fuller” version of my lifestream… with the lag, though.)
Anyway. This is what I publish on it nowadays: comments from other blogs, screenshots, quotes, and passing thoughts.
Let’s take a closer look.
#### What on Earth is This Tumblelog Thing?
A [tumblelog](http://tumblr.com) is a blog stripped of all the non-essential stuff: no categories, no comments, no monthly archives, no fancy layouts, widgets. What is left? Posts, permalinks, RSS feeds… and a simple, no-nonsense layout.
Back in 2000 when I started blogging, the revolutionary thing about blogging tools (which at the time meant Blogger, there weren’t that many others) was that they **made it dead easy to publish** things online.
Tumblr has focused on that. Make it simple. Remove everything that gets in the way. Make the act of blogging so effortless that it can really [become a true backup brain](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/09/08/la-paralysie-du-blogueur/).
It’s a place for passing thoughts, interesting links, a video here or there. No time lost for anything else than the act of posting. Whatever you do, don’t think before posting.
A tumblelog is really a “me first!” thing. Stuff for me, first. Maybe you’ll find it interesting too — but if you don’t, no heat.
#### What I’m Importing
At the beginning, as I said, I imported everything into my Tumblr. But then, I wanted to import my Tumblr into my lifestream on Jaiku, and I ended up with duplicate content.
I decided to remove all my imports from Tumblr except for comments — through [coComment](http://cocomment.com/comments/steph). Comments on other people’s blogs are an important part of my online activity, and they deserve to be “kept” somewhere. CoComment does that, of course, but not in a really comfortable way for readers (the RSS feed is fine, and included on my blog, but it’s only the last comments). Reminds me that I never wrote that post about the disastrous launch of the 2.0 version, btw. Oh, well.
So, my comments go in my Tumblr.
During my stay in San Francisco this summer, I was converted (quite easily) to [Skitch](http://myskitch.com/) by [Mr. Messina](http://flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/tags/skitch), and since then, my (http://flickr.com/photos/bunny) has seen the arrival of a great many screenshots. I feel like I finally have a camera to take photographs of my online life — as soon as I see something of note or bump into a problem, Skitch allows me [http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/tags/skitch](effortlessly upload a screenshot).
These screenshots are a narrative of my online wanderings, and as such, deserve to be displayed in a timeline separate from my thousands of photographs.
In the Tumblr they go.
#### What I’m Posting
So far, I’ve found two really important uses to Tumblr: quotes and thoughts. The Tumblr bookmarklet is smart enough that it recognizes that I want to post a quote if I select some text on the page before clicking it:
This makes posting quotes dead easy. It’s suddenly made my online reading way more valuable: I’ve always read books taking notes on what I was reading, copying quotes so I had them handy in the future — and when a lot of my reading shifted online, I lost that. With Tumblr, I’ve found it again. (Finding the quotes will be trickier, I hope Google’s indexing of the Tumblr will be sufficient.)
The [Tumblr Dashboard](http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard) has six pre-set types of posts: text, photo, quote, link, chat, video.
These pre-set post types offer different formatting and posting forms.
I’ve started to use the text post type to jot down random thoughts that occur to me, or notes to myself. For example, I’ve spent quite a bit of today thinking about a talk I’m going to give tomorrow, and jotted down some thoughts like [this one](http://steph.tumblr.com/post/12816615).
As you can see, Tumblr allows me to link to an individual post.
A few times, I’ve also posted [snippets of chat/IM conversations](http://steph.tumblr.com/post/8217594).
Similar Posts:
- Where Does Tumblr Fit in? [en] (2010)
- Tumblr to Capture Comments? [en] (2008)
- New Tumblr iPhone App [en] (2009)
- My Heritage Celebrity Collage and Tumblr [en] (2007)
- Secrets of my Online Presence Revealed! [en] (2009)
- On Liveblogging [en] (2007)
- FriendFeed's Missing Feature [en] (2009)
- More Musings on My Blogging [en] (2009)
- Split Identity Crisis [en] (2005)
- An Experiment (Seesmic and The Black Swan) [en] (2008)