staff:

The Tumblr Backup app is ready for beta testing!

• Download (Mac OS X, requires 10.5 or higher)

Unlike other publishing sites’ approach to backups, our goal was to create a useful copy of your blog’s content that can be viewed on any computer, burned to a CD, or hosted as an archive of static HTML files.

Wherever possible, we use simple file formats. Our backup structure is optimized for Mac OS X’s Spotlight for searching and Quick Look for browsing, and we’ll try to use the same structure and achieve the same benefits on other platforms.

Release notes:

• Sorry, there’s no Windows version yet.
• The output is minimally styled in a plain theme to ensure complete backups, zero external requirements, and a consistent data structure. Custom theme code is included in the backup as a separate file.
• To view the backup in a browser, open the index.html file.
• Photosets are not yet fully downloaded.
• The following are not backed up:
  • Private tumblelogs
  • Submissions
  • Notes
  • Feed-imported posts
  • Audio files from reblogged posts
• You can launch the app every few days and re-run the backup in the same place, and it effectively performs an incremental media backup: image and audio files are only re-downloaded if they don’t already exist in the target folder. Text content and post data are re-downloaded in full every time.
• If you have private posts, be careful if you make the backup publicly available. Private posts are included in a private folder, and their images or audio files are included in the standard images and audio folders.
• Are you a programmer? Each post’s XML data, as specified by our API, is embedded inside an easily-parsed-out HTML comment in each post’s HTML file, in case you want to do anything cool with it.

(via marco)

staff:

Tumblr iPhone 2.0: Now available on the App Store

We’re excited about this one! The app has been recoded, rewired, and rethought from the ground up to offer you the very best Tumblr experience:

• Brand new interface: Browsing your dashboard, creating a post, managing multiple blogs — the most important features are within reach so you can interact with Tumblr effortlessly while you’re on-the-go.
• Creating a post: Now easier than ever! Sharing photos, videos, links, chats, text, quotes and audio is front and center. Advanced options like saving drafts and queuing posts are one swipe away.
• Messages: View and reply to messages for each of your blogs.
• Address book: Find people to follow from your phone’s address book.
• New users: Signing up is now native inside the app. 

There are tons more features and details that are awesomely crafted.

Check it out on the App Store!

staff:

Now testing: Ask Me

The new Ask feature lets your friends or readers ask questions that you can choose to answer on your blog.

You can enable it from the Community tab in your blog’s Customize area.

They even come with a bunch of new theme variables for designers to format them:

{block:AskEnabled}
    <a href="/ask">{AskLabel}</a>
{/block:AskEnabled}

{block:Answer}
    <div class="answer">
        <div class="question">{Question}</div>

        <span class="asker">
            <img src="{AskerPortraitURL-24}"/>
            {Asker}
        </span>

        <div class="answer">{Answer}</div>
    </div>
{/block:Answer}

Enjoy!

staff:

Tweet from Tumblr

We’re testing Twitter integration on Tumblr. You can set it up by going to the special address: http://www.tumblr.com/settings?twitter

This will automatically send your Tumblr posts to Twitter (you can toggle this when posting). If you have people following you in both places, it’s an easy way to stay active on Twitter, or just to let your Twitter followers know about your Tumblr posts.

If you’re like us, and only follow a few people on Twitter, you should try enabling “Show Twitter updates in my Dashboard” to get all of your friends’ updates in one place.

dashperiod:

‘Fuck off Harrods’ done by a disgruntled employee, fired by Harrods from his job as the toy department’s Father Christmas, took revenge last night in spectacular style.

Gaining access to a maintenance control room, Lloyd Hudson, 35, from Ilford, Essex, was able to locate the chart and corresponding switches for Harrods’ 10,000 external lights.

Barracading himself in, Hudson disabled the correct lights until he could spell out his feelings to Harrods bosses and Christmas shoppers alike. He was removed by security guards after an hour-long stand-off, then handed over to police.

“He had drunk the best part of two bottles of whisky,” said a spokesperson for the iconic London store, “and it’s that kind of behaviour that got him the sack in the first place.” Hudson has since been released on police bail.

Knightsbridge visitors were stunned.

“Honestly, I am disgusted, ” said Irene Rider, 59, from Gary, Indiana. “I was with my grandchildren. We had just gotten off the bus. I said ‘look everybody’ and pointed up to the lights – but you know what the lights said? They said f**k off. And that is not an appropriate message for a child.  At least not at Christmas time.”

Source www.thepoke.co.uk

tpdsaa:

Submitted by Chris.

staff:

It’s now super easy to add a “Share on Tumblr” button to any site.

Adding the basic Tumblr Button couldn’t be simpler. Just cut and paste the code and you’ll be off running. But the advanced options are where it gets interesting…

The Tumblr Button can give you complete control over how your content appears when shared on Tumblr. Not only does this mean specifying an excerpt or summary, but also deciding whether it appears as a Link, Quote, Photo, or Video Embed.

Even better: This can be deeply integrated with just about any publishing platform to add contextual buttons next to things like paragraphs or photos. Check out these examples.

The appearance of the button is also completely customizable.

Click here to get started!

shortformblog:

Why you might get tons of Tumblr likespam (and what to do about it)

A suggestion for Tumblr: Try to figure out a way so spammers can’t use this black-hat SEO (search engine optimization) technique. It’s dead simple to take advantage of, and as a result, some sites (such as our own) often drown in it. Today, for example, we got a ton of fake traffic from bots doing an obscure search on Google (see screenshots). Here’s a quick explanation as to what’s happening, as far as we can see:

• first Black hat SEO types hit Google and type in this specific phrase — “site:tumblr.com ‘liked this’” — a common phrase on Tumblr due to the way it handles likes. 
• then Then, sketchy bot types will create hundreds or thousands of fake Tumblr accounts whose URLs forward to a sketchy-looking site not on Tumblr.
• result These sites end up getting hundreds or thousands of backlinks to their sketchy sites on Google — and all they had to do was like tons of people.

» But we have a temporary solution: Are you, like us, getting a lot of spam on your Tumblr? This is a likely reason. We’d like to offer a suggestion to solve the problem. If you know how to edit your theme in HTML, do a search for the phrase “{PostNotes}” and replace it with this: ”<!—googleoff: all—>{PostNotes}<!—googleon: all—>”. This prevents the notes from getting crawled by Google, which is good because it focuses your content, but bad, because any relevant content in reblogs won’t account for what shows up in search engines. This is really a problem Tumblr needs to look at — if they take out common phrases or make them invisible to search engines, everyone wins. But we hope this at least helps your sanity. It’ll help ours.

shortformblog:

Why you might get tons of Tumblr likespam (and what to do about it)

A suggestion for Tumblr: Try to figure out a way so spammers can’t use this black-hat SEO (search engine optimization) technique. It’s dead simple to take advantage of, and as a result, some sites (such as our own) often drown in it. Today, for example, we got a ton of fake traffic from bots doing an obscure search on Google (see screenshots). Here’s a quick explanation as to what’s happening, as far as we can see:

• first Black hat SEO types hit Google and type in this specific phrase — “site:tumblr.com ‘liked this’” — a common phrase on Tumblr due to the way it handles likes. 
• then Then, sketchy bot types will create hundreds or thousands of fake Tumblr accounts whose URLs forward to a sketchy-looking site not on Tumblr.
• result These sites end up getting hundreds or thousands of backlinks to their sketchy sites on Google — and all they had to do was like tons of people.

» But we have a temporary solution: Are you, like us, getting a lot of spam on your Tumblr? This is a likely reason. We’d like to offer a suggestion to solve the problem. If you know how to edit your theme in HTML, do a search for the phrase “{PostNotes}” and replace it with this: ”<!—googleoff: all—>{PostNotes}<!—googleon: all—>”. This prevents the notes from getting crawled by Google, which is good because it focuses your content, but bad, because any relevant content in reblogs won’t account for what shows up in search engines. This is really a problem Tumblr needs to look at — if they take out common phrases or make them invisible to search engines, everyone wins. But we hope this at least helps your sanity. It’ll help ours.

michielveenstra:

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