tumblelog – Climb to the Stars

Where Does Tumblr Fit in? [en]

[fr] Tumblr est un outil génial pour rassembler et republier les choses sympa que l'on trouve en ligne, agrémenté d'un réseau social à la Twitter (non-réciproque) qui nous permet de suivre sans difficultés les publications des personnes qui nous intéressent.

Last night on the way home, I was telling a friend about Tumblr. I have a blog there, Digital Crumble, and really really like using it. Many of my friends do not use Tumblr, and I realize that some explaining is not useless.

Tumblr is great as a scrapbook (scrapblog!) of content seen online. Not to say it can’t be used for original content, but that’s not where it shines (in my opinion) and I personally hardly ever put original content in Digital Crumble.

For me, Tumblr is somewhere between Twitter, Buzz, and WordPress.

One reason many people do not get Tumblr is that until you get an account, you do not know about the dashboard. The dashboard is the Tumblr equivalent to the Twitter stream. It is a neverending page of posts by people you have chosen to follow. That’s the big difference between Tumblr as a blogging tool and WordPress: Tumblr is really built around the following/being followed dynamic of Twitter and Buzz.

Here are two zoomed-out shots of parts of my dashboard page so you can see what it looks like:

Two things make Tumblr great for collecting non-original content:

the “reblog” button on each post in the dashboard
the bookmarklet.

If you’re familiar with Twitter, the “reblog” button is like Twitter’s “retweet” button (but the Tumblr reblog button was there way before Twitter’s retweet one). See something you like in your dashboard? You can “like” it, of course, but in a click of the mouse you can reblog it, publishing it to your tumblelog and pushing it along to your followers. A lot of the content in Tumblr is visual (photographs, design, videos…) — which is pretty cool.

When you stumble upon something interesting online, you can hit the Tumblr bookmarklet, and a pop-up window allowing you to instantly publish what you’ve found to your tumblelog appears. Tumblr makes a guess as to the nature of the content, too: video, link, quote, photo. Hit publish, and get on with your browsing. Tumblr takes care of the rest — including a link to the original source.

A lot of the things I post to Digital Crumble come from the people I’m following on Tumblr. Aside from that, I also reblog a lot of quotes from things I read online. If I’m reading something interesting, I have just to highlight the paragraph I want to save/quote, hit the bookmarklet, hit publish, and it’s on Digital Crumble. Let’s say it’s the web 2.0 equivalent of when I was a student and painstakingly copied out quotes and paragraphs from books I was reading into a small notebook. 😉 (Here’s an example of a recent quote I captured like that.)

What makes this all the more precious is that you can afterwards easily search through your Tumblr Dashboard or your own postings to bring up snippets you’ve saved. When I’m doing online research for a blog post or article, I’ll stick all the interesting snippets in Tumblr, which means I then have them handy (with link to the source!) when I’m writing up.

Finally, what I like about Tumblr is the playfulness of the community. It’s fun. It doesn’t feel too serious, or like the geek/intelligentsia quarters. I think that for non-bloggers who do spend time online reading and browsing without feeling the urge to crank out pages and pages of original writing, it’s a great publication platform to start with.

Give it a try, and let me know how it goes!

Tumblr ou le proto-blog [fr]

[en] A brief introduction to Tumblr, which is a really great blogging tool. It caters to a completely different need than WordPress, in my opinion: share stuff you've found online, easily. Collect photos, videos, quotes and links in one place, with some nice social features that allow you to re-share stuff others have found -- and them, your stuff.

Je veux vous parler de Tumblr, parce c’est génial. Si WordPress c’est un peu la Rolls des services de blog, Tumblr en est le degré zéro. Pas dans le sens que c’est nul, non, mais dans le sens que c’est basique et pas prise de tête. C’est le retour au blog “bloc-notes”, après le développement du “blog-magazine”. (Hop, filez voir mon Tumblr à moi.)

Tumblr est prévu surtout pour rassembler en un endroit des choses vues ailleurs. Des photos, des citations, des vidéos, des liens& On peut y mettre son propre contenu, bien entendu — même des textes.

C’est le blog sans histoires, sans prétention, et sans fioritures. Tumblr intègre une dimension communautaire, donc c’est aussi le blog “ooh, vous avez vu ce truc cool que j’ai trouvé? et le poème sympa qu’a écrit Juliette?”

Je vous explique

c’est gratuit, donc filez direct ouvrir un compte, qu’on puisse continuer
filez sur la page “goodies“, et faites glisser le bookmarklet dans votre barre de liens favoris
quand vous êtes sur une page intéressante, cliquez sur le bookmarklet — un clic de confirmation, et hop, c’est dans votre Tumblr!

Bookmarklet?

Quand vous êtes sur quelque chose d’intéressant que vous avez envie de mettre dans votre Tumblr, cliquez sur le bookmarklet. Le bookmarklet fait apparaître une petite fenêtre pop-up et il essaie de deviner quel genre de contenu vous désirez publier:

Si vous êtes simplement sur une page web, Tumblr va partir du principe que vous voulez partager un lien sur votre blog. Si vous avez sélectionné du texte, il va vous proposer de publier une citation. J’avoue que j’utilise énormément cette fonctionnalité:

Si Tumblr devine mal, vous pouvez simplement changer le type de publication. Il va sans dire que vous pouvez faire des modifications au contenu avant de le publier. Et si vous avez envie d’écrire une petite bafouille, utilisez le mode “texte”!

Communauté?

Tumblr, comme toute bonne plateforme de blogs qui se respecte, est un réseau social (à la facebook, si vous voulez, puisque c’est le plus connu ces temps). Vous voyez un blog Tumblr qui vous plaît? Cliquez sur “follow” en haut à gauche (ça rappelle Twitter, non? lire mon article pour plus d’infos). Allez, ajoutez mon Tumblr et celui de Michelle, au hasard, pour commencer.

Comme votre page d’accueil Twitter ou Facebook, celle de Tumblr vous montre une liste des dernières publications des personnes que vous suivez. Vous aimez quelque chose? cliquez sur le petit coeur en haut à droite de l’article. Vous voulez republier quelque chose dans votre blog? cliquez sur “reblog”:

Il va sans dire que Tumblr ajoute automatiquement un lien vers la source originale, tant lorsque l’on reblogue quelque chose de Tumblr que lorsque l’on ajoute un lien, un citation, une photo ou une vidéo.

Règles avancées?

Pour ceux qui aiment bricoler, on peut:

choisir le layout de son Tumblr, voire créer le sien
permettre à ses lecteurs de laisser des commentaires
utiliser votre propre nom de domaine (je planche sur la question pour mon propre tumblelog)

Moralité?

Tumblr est idéal pour un blog dans l’esprit “collection de choses un peu en vrac que j’ai glanées ici et ailleurs”. C’est très facile à utiliser. Ça va à l’essentiel. C’est sans prétention, ce n’est pas intimidant.

Laissez l’adresse de votre Tumblr dans les commentaires (qu’ils soit nouveau-né ou déjà bien rôdé), et je vous suivrai!

Finally Getting Tumblr [en]

[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).

My Heritage Celebrity Collage and Tumblr [en]

[fr] My Heritage Celebrity Collage prend une de vos photos et cherche à quelles célébrités vous ressemblez. Tumblr est un endroit où bloguer, mais style "degré zéro du blog".

While I was [waiting for Dreamhost to give me back CTTS](http://dreamhoststatus.com/2007/02/25/power-outage-update/) so that I could finally post [On the Road to Being a Healthier Geek](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/02/25/on-the-road-to-being-a-healthier-geek/), both [Facebook](http://facebook.com) and [Google Reader](http://www.google.com/reader/view/) offered me new toys to try out. I guess I’m [a joiner](http://leoville.vox.com/library/post/tumbl%C3%A9o.html) too — I spend my time signing up for things.

#### [My Heritage Celebrity Collage](http://www.myheritage.com/FP/Company/celebrity-collage.php)

This one is [Francesca’s fault](http://blogs.driversofchange.com/globalvillage/). It’s a photo recognition thing that will analyse a photo of you and match it to celebrity photos.

**What I liked**

* sign-up without a glitch
* allows me to [upload a photo by URL](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/402637203/) (yesss!)
* allows direct posting to FaceBook
* saves my collages silently

**What I liked less**

* finding guys in my celebrity lookalikes (yeah, I know)
* default “spam all your friends with this” when posting to FaceBook
* [ugly album URLs](http://www.myheritage.com/FP/albumPage.php?siteID=1&albumID=3383062&indID=0&page=1)

About the quality of recognition itself: it seems that things like hairstyle, face inclination, etc. have quite a lot of impact on who you’ll be matched to. I tried three different photos, and got three different sets of faces. (I’ve been told at times I bear some resemblence to Reese Witherspoon, Tilda Swindon, Nicole Kidman, or Sandrine Kiberlain — but never any of the names I saw in the collages. The names are gone now, but I’ll let you judge.)

#### [Tumblr](http://tumblr.com)

OMG, the fragmentation of the online self! The disappearance of the letter “e” in the web2.0 world! What shall we do?

Seriously, Tumblr has some interestingness to it. It aims at what I call “zero-level blogging” (*le degré zéro du blog*) — something I know I tend to use [Twitter](http://twitter.com/stephtara) for at times. I’ve been using Facebook for that too, and my [Cheese Sandwich Weblog](http://steph.wordpress.com).

**What I liked**

* easy sign-up (that’s always good)
* I can make it [pink](http://steph.tumblr.com)
* bookmarklet (like Facebook) to share stuff on my Tumblelog

**What I liked less**

* [failing to post a Flickr photo](http://steph.tumblr.com/post/4975)
* ew! no permalink to the post besides through the admin interface!
* yet another space of mine to manage…

If this continues, I won’t just be [blogging about the need for integration of my online presence](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/02/13/please-make-holes-in-my-buckets/), I’ll be screaming. Be warned.

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