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New York, minute
Puppet video reveals all you need to know about Silicon Alley
Gary the Puppet — who in the clip embedded below tours the offices of Tumblr, Next New Networks, Gawker, CollegeHumor, and Wallstrip — might be the perfect metaphor for the New York tech scene. It makes a big show of itself, but it's kind of flimsy and despite how it may look, somebody much larger and more powerful is actually running things. For New York tech, the puppeteer's hand is old media companies. IAC and CBS own College Humor and Wallstrip, respectively. Tumblr has its roots in Hanna-Barbera cartoons. So does Next New Networks, which just agreed to distribute its videos over Hulu, a News Corp. and NBC joint venture. And what's Gawker but a tape worm in Old Media's belly? Still, New York tech has this over the Valley: perhaps because of those old media connections, it knows how to present itself with a hokey smirk instead of new media's typical sassback. More »
superficial
What would Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's love child look like?
One in a while a Web application comes along that's so damn useful, even we'd invest in it. Facebook? Meh. MakeMeBabies, the site that lets you create ruddy-cheeked mashups from any two photos? Its diapers will be filled with nothing but spun gold. Here's what the site came up with from photos of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and girlfriend Priscilla Chan. After the jump, we give a few other notable couples the same treatment. Please do add your own in the comments with our image-upload feature — best and worst fake babies will win an as-yet-undetermined prize of nominal value! More »
bloggers
Tumblr: the documentary
Who uses David Karp's microblogging site Tumblr? To us, they are trustafarians and their hangers-on — men with beards and thick glasses, girls with rainbow leggings and bangs. They are Sanfrooklyn's creative types and those who dress like them. Or — according to David Seger's Tumblr: the documentary, embedded below — they are "the dumbest babies of them all." We take exception to this as a Tumblista ourself, though we can't deny a sad correlation between our self-worth and the number of those who follow us. More »
caption contest
Tumblr? I just met her!
IAC subsidiary CollegeHumor's Hottest College Girl in America Party, held Thursday night at New York club Room Service, was not an official Internet Week party. Yet above, we have Tumblr's David Karp, said college girl and a piece of tape in photographic proof that such a minor detail didn't stop New York digerati attending. The photo needs a caption. Make your suggestions in the comments and we'll rename the post with the best one. Friday's winner is Vulture with: "Serge Faguet cameos in a John Hughes movie VH1 special."
things we actually like
Instapaper helps you push your Web vegetables to the side
Tumblr developer Marco Arment has, in his spare time, created two very useful Web services on his own. The first is Instapaper; it's for saving links to Web articles that you want to read at some point, but don't have time read right this moment. It's like Del.icio.us or other bookmarking tools, but without all the features you'll never use. You click a "Read Later" button in your browser's bookmark toolbar and a window pops up to tell you that — phew — the article has been "Saved!" Later, you can go to Instapaper.com, login, and find all your articles piled up. I've discovered Instapaper is best used as a way of pretending that you're actually going to read a very long article on Chinese politics or Emily Gould's essay on oversharing. More »
Plurk, yet another microblogging platform, hailed by The 250
Not happy with updating your friends publicly via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pownce and Jaiku (and feeding all those updates into FriendFeed)? Then, um, try Plurk, a startup which declares, "We've taken the time, the complexity, and the deep introspection required out of blogging." Also, too, the irony. [The Inquisitr]
caption contest
Master Lodwick has trained his young padawan well in the ways of the fameball
Spotted at the MashBash in New York City on Saturday, CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy with Tumblr founder David Karp and Michelle DeForest of NextNewNetorks. Karp and McCarthy are officially an item we understand, which warms our geeky hearts. Can you suggest a better caption? Do so in the comments, and the winning one will become the new headline on this post. Friday's winner, in a close one: rwe112, for "Now it's time on Sprockets when we dance." (Photo by Leora Zellman)
tumblr
Would you pay $999 for a customized Tumblr? Trustafarian bloggers will!
A couple weeks ago, when we showed you how to redesign your Tumblr for free, we mentioned that a company called Tumblize plan to charge $499 for the very same service. We were wrong. Andrew Wilkinson's Tumblize, launched today, will design you a customized Tumblr for "just $999." Startled by that kind of nonironic usage of the word just? Don't be. If Tumblr's blogging hordes have taught us anything, it's that earnest is the new ironic. Besides, Tumblize already has customers offering testimonials. Simon Frankson extols:Tumblize actualized my crazy vision in ways I didn't think the internet even allowed for. They're poet/designers making haiku websites out of dreams.Below, view a screenshot of Frankson's Tumblr and $3,996 more worth of goods. More »
silicon alley users guide
How to upgrade your Tumblr theme so people will think you're cool
David Karp's blogging platform Tumblr, popular with creative types and those who dress like them in Sanfrooklyn, allows its users to modify their themes. And, just like the kids on MySpace, the users show them off to each other. Custom Tumblr themes have real social currency. Much like collecting pogs in sixth grade. And, as with pogs, you can be the rich kid and just buy yourself social superiority — Digg founder Kevin Rose and Connected Ventures cofounder Ricky Van Veen bought themes from Tumblize.com for $499. But for those of you on a college student or barista budget, click through for our step-by-step guide on how upgrading your Tumblr theme with no CSS, HTML or any other nerdy acronyms required. More »
freemium
How hipster trustafarians will pay Tumblr's bills
If scenesters from Brooklyn to San Francisco's Mission District want to have Tumblr cool-kid bragging rights, they'll have to pay, founder David Karp has decided. Why has Karp finally set his unflinching blue eyes on Tumblr's bottom line? His hosting bills must be starting to pinch. He'll begin peddling paid Tumblr Pro accounts later this year. Flickr, which just added video for its pro members only, charges $25 a year for extra storage, but Karp tell us he hasn't figure out how much to charge his users just yet. What will Tumblr "Pros" get for their money? Karp says he's got "more than 10 features in the queue" including a tool that allows readers to submit content, more customizable themes and special page layouts. Check out screenshots of the new features below, and then wonder with us: Are they enough for ego-tumbling millennials to agree to pay Karp's fee? More »
your privacy is an illusion
Tumblr security breakdown leaves scenesters exposed for 40 minutes
While editing administrator code today, Tumblr founder David Karp and developer Marco Arment inadvertently published private user data for 40 minutes. Karp reports on his blog that 27 email addresses were exposed. He told us that four accounts — including popular Tumblr blogs by Julia Allison and Pete Nidzgorski — had their passwords changed. Karp told Valleywag he knows who changed the passwords. "He was a registered user, so we were actually able to look up his info," Karp said. The suspected hacker won't lose his Tumblr account. "I don't think we'll be taking this out on him," Karp said.We have a lot of info on what happened and we were able to recover quickly. We're very comfortable with our infrastructure, and will put some more practices in place to deal with any future human errors. We also feel extremely fortunate that our users have been so forgiving.
caption contest
Charles Forman desperately wants you to see him holding hands with David Karp
Iminlikewithyou founder Charles Forman is a shameless self-promoter. And it disgusts us. The photo below of Forman and Tumblr founder David Karp, however, does not. More »
You're not an outed call girl 'til you get a Tumblr
Ashley Alexandra Dupre now has an outpost on the drama-blog platform of choice. It's complete with Nick Denton, Julia Allison, and Jakob Lodwick references to make it seem extra authentic.
Ashley Alexandra Dupre now has an outpost on the drama-blog platform of choice. It's complete with Nick Denton, Julia Allison, and Jakob Lodwick references to make it seem extra authentic.
exclusive
Leaked screenshots of Tumblr's new front page
Tumblr founder David Karp plans to make money off his microblogging platform — the one used by Julia Allison as well as dirtier, more creative types mostly found in San Francisco's Mission District and Brooklyn's Williamsburg — by creating a front page kind of like Digg's. Except on Tumblr Radar, a video, post or image's popularity will be determined by how many times its "reblogged." The idea is to help users discover other Tumblr blogs while serving them brand ads. Karp was overheard talking to former DoubleClick founder Kevin Ryan about the prospect last week. Karp has told us this front page will end up looking like a cross between Apple's iTunes store and Ffffound.com. Thanks to a rule-breaking beta tester, we won't have to wait to find out if that's true. Here's a leaked screenshot of Tumblr Radar: More »
breakdowns
Amazon S3 goes down, taking twitterati with it
Amazon's S3 Web-storage service, favored by startups too poor to afford their own hard drives or too technically inept to set them up, went down for about two hours earlier today, slowing down graphics on services like Twitter and Tumblr, SAI reports. "Not a big deal," Tumblr founder David Karp told us. "A reminder for a lot of services that redundancy beyond Amazon is still necessary," he said. Maybe not for you, David. But I'm lost without my morning dose of Nevver.
breakdowns
Pleading, price cuts can't halt Rackspace exodus
Rackspace management called Tumblr's David Karp yesterday and pleaded for mercy. The Web-hosting service even offered to cut bandwidth chargeds from $2 a gigabyte down to 40 cents. (Other Rackspace customers, take note.) Didn't work. Karp, who runs today's favorite blogging tool for emo hipsters, dropped the hammer anyway. In the end, he tells us, it wasn't even Rackspace's winter and fall full of fail that led him to quit the service. More »
explainer
Tumblr differs from most blog software: It doesn't just let you post entries; it also provides an interface for reading the blogs of other Tumblr users. In that regard, it's duplicating a feature available on LiveJournal for a decade — and yet its users still manage to find it befuddling. "Right now I'm following 35 people," Connected Ventures cofounder Rickvy Van Veen writes on his personal blog.
How to stop reading Tumblr blogs
Tumblr differs from most blog software: It doesn't just let you post entries; it also provides an interface for reading the blogs of other Tumblr users. In that regard, it's duplicating a feature available on LiveJournal for a decade — and yet its users still manage to find it befuddling. "Right now I'm following 35 people," Connected Ventures cofounder Rickvy Van Veen writes on his personal blog. Most of those people know how to use Tumblr responsibly and only post when they have something worthwhile to say. Others don't. First execution: Julia Allison. 40 posts a day? Are you f—-ing kidding?Executing friends is a great idea, Ricky! But what if you're like the New York Observer's Doree Shafrir — yes, the writer who recently profiled Tumblr CEO David Karp — and you don't know how to stop following someone on the site? Never fear, Valleywag's here to help you knock off your most annoying friends. More »
