microblog

Are We Afraid To Do What We Want With Our Blogs?

By Jeffro on August 19, 2009

Over on the WooThemes blog, they have an interesting discussion taking place in the comments of their most recent post discussing Tumblr. They basically want to know if their customers would pay for Tumblr specific themes. Adii prefaces the entire post though with his impressions of Tumblr.

I say the comments are interesting because I keep hearing repeated statements. “I want to use WordPress like Tumblr“, “I just want to post video or a quote“, etc. I’ll admit that one of the best things I remember about Tumblr is its bookmarklet for quickly and easily publishing content. That bookmarklet was awesome and was supposed to be the inspiration behind the new “Press This” bookmarklet but for whatever reason, it’s just not the same. The point I wanted to make though was that can’t people post videos, quotes, etc to their blogs already? Why is it that WordPress needs to be setup like Tumblr for people to publish in these ways? I mean, look at Ma.tt. Usually all he does is post a link and gets away with it on his WordPress site. I don’t see him needing Tumblr to do that.

People argue the fact that Tumblr is about microblogging and quickly posting various content types. Why can’t WordPress be used to do lengthy pieces of content while also doing short pieces of content? Is there some sort of virtual barrier on the fact that WordPress should only be used to write lengthy pieces of content?

Should I really go back to Tumblr and give it a shot for a week to get a glimpse of what all the fuss is about?

Prologue 2 Sees The Light Of Day

By Jeffro on March 14, 2009

During WordCamp Germany, Matt Mullenweg mentioned something called Prologue 2. This new version of the Prologue theme introduces Ajax like real-time commenting meaning, if I place a comment on the blog and someone else is staring at the site, they will see that comment appear before them as it happens.

Heather over at the WordPress.com blog sheds some light on the project, including a video showcasing the new theme.

Overall, I’m digging the new look and functionality of the Prologue theme. In some ways, I wonder if Prologue 2 could really be used as a forum. Hmm. What do you think of that idea?

By the way, Heather mentions that P2 is already available for WordPress.com users but to look for it on the WordPress.org theme repository in the coming days. BUT. If you know how to package the theme files together, you can visit http://svn.automattic.com/wpcom-themes/p2/ and download the trunk version of the theme. I don’t know how to package the files together so if anyone can let me know, give me a shout.