Robby on Rails: Putting Tumblr to work for youthoughts.sort_by{|t| t[:topic]}.collect tag:www.robbyonrails.com,2005:TypoTypo2007-12-23T12:57:11-05:00Robby Russellurn:uuid:ed388dbf-9202-4b11-9bb3-f5b41f1ff6f12007-12-19T14:27:00-05:002007-12-23T12:57:11-05:00Putting Tumblr to work for you<p>I’ve been using <a href="http://tumblr.com">Tumblr</a> off and on since early April. I tend to neglect it because I’ve found the interface a bit clumsy. The recent redesign hasn’t improved on the things that I consider obstacles in getting things quickly added to my tumblr. Since the concept behind the tumblr is to quickly share things with people, the interface doesn’t facilitate this workflow as quickly as I think it could.</p>
<p>In any event, I tend to not login to my dashboard very often (few times a week?), which means that I don’t post as often as I’d like.</p>
<p>A few months ago, I finally started to use the Feeds feature in tumblr, which will automatically add things to your tumblr from an <span class="caps">RSS</span> feed.</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/tumblr-20071219-120651/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/tumblr-20071219-120651.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="Tumblr" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>The first feed that I started to use was <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/robbyrussell">my Flickr account</a>.</p>
<h2>Flickr to Tumblr</h2>
<p>This solution for this was to tag photos that I want Tumblr to automatically with <strong>‘to:tumblr’</strong>.</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/flickr_to_tumblr-20071219-123647/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/flickr_to_tumblr-20071219-123647.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="flickr to tumblr" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>Next, you just need to grab the <span class="caps">URL</span> for the Flickr <span class="caps">RSS</span> feed for photos tagged with to:tumblr.</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/totumblr-20071219-121021/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/totumblr-20071219-121021.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="totumblr" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>Next, you’ll want to add this feed to Tumblr.</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/tumblr-20071219-121210/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/tumblr-20071219-121210.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="Tumblr" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>Voila… in a little while, your photos tagged with to:tumblr will start to show up on your Tumblr.</p>
<h2>Del.icio.us to Tumblr</h2>
<p>Links to blog articles, web sites, etc… are things that I generally use Deli.cio.us for… so doing it once for each was taking too much. So, I’m now using the same tagging formula with Del.icio.us to get Tumblr to automatically add links to my Tumblr.</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/add_bookmark-20071219-121603/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/add_bookmark-20071219-121603.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="Add Bookmark" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>Now, I can use the <span class="caps">RSS</span> feed for items tagged with <strong>to:tumblr</strong> on my del.icio.us account with Tumblr.</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/tumblr-20071219-121859/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/tumblr-20071219-121859.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="Tumblr" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>Pretty simple. :-)</p>
<h2>Google Reader to Tumblr</h2>
<p>Another place that I find myself wanting to post to Tumblr is from within <a href="http://google.com/reader">Google Reader</a>. Well, it’s actually really easy to do this by taking advantage of the <span class="caps">RSS</span> feed that Google Reader provides for your Shared Items.</p>
<p><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/google_reader_shared-20071219-122208.jpg" alt="google reader shared"/></p>
<p>Just grab the <span class="caps">RSS</span> feed from here…</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/shared_rss_link-20071219-122432/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/shared_rss_link-20071219-122432.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="shared rss link" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>Then add this <span class="caps">RSS</span> feed to Tumblr like the examples above.</p>
<h2>Putting Tumblr to work for You!</h2>
<p>I’m hoping to continue using this pattern with other sites as well. I’d be interested in hearing how other people are using Tumblr to aggregate focused content in an easy to browse way.</p>
<h3>Update</h3>
<p>It appears that Tumblr currently only allows you to use five feeds to import. Until they upgrade this limit, you can use <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com">Yahoo! Pipes</a> to do some of the heavy lifting.</p><p>I’ve been using <a href="http://tumblr.com">Tumblr</a> off and on since early April. I tend to neglect it because I’ve found the interface a bit clumsy. The recent redesign hasn’t improved on the things that I consider obstacles in getting things quickly added to my tumblr. Since the concept behind the tumblr is to quickly share things with people, the interface doesn’t facilitate this workflow as quickly as I think it could.</p>
<p>In any event, I tend to not login to my dashboard very often (few times a week?), which means that I don’t post as often as I’d like.</p>
<p>A few months ago, I finally started to use the Feeds feature in tumblr, which will automatically add things to your tumblr from an <span class="caps">RSS</span> feed.</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/tumblr-20071219-120651/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/tumblr-20071219-120651.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="Tumblr" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>The first feed that I started to use was <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/robbyrussell">my Flickr account</a>.</p>
<h2>Flickr to Tumblr</h2>
<p>This solution for this was to tag photos that I want Tumblr to automatically with <strong>‘to:tumblr’</strong>.</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/flickr_to_tumblr-20071219-123647/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/flickr_to_tumblr-20071219-123647.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="flickr to tumblr" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>Next, you just need to grab the <span class="caps">URL</span> for the Flickr <span class="caps">RSS</span> feed for photos tagged with to:tumblr.</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/totumblr-20071219-121021/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/totumblr-20071219-121021.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="totumblr" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>Next, you’ll want to add this feed to Tumblr.</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/tumblr-20071219-121210/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/tumblr-20071219-121210.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="Tumblr" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>Voila… in a little while, your photos tagged with to:tumblr will start to show up on your Tumblr.</p>
<h2>Del.icio.us to Tumblr</h2>
<p>Links to blog articles, web sites, etc… are things that I generally use Deli.cio.us for… so doing it once for each was taking too much. So, I’m now using the same tagging formula with Del.icio.us to get Tumblr to automatically add links to my Tumblr.</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/add_bookmark-20071219-121603/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/add_bookmark-20071219-121603.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="Add Bookmark" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>Now, I can use the <span class="caps">RSS</span> feed for items tagged with <strong>to:tumblr</strong> on my del.icio.us account with Tumblr.</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/tumblr-20071219-121859/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/tumblr-20071219-121859.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="Tumblr" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>Pretty simple. :-)</p>
<h2>Google Reader to Tumblr</h2>
<p>Another place that I find myself wanting to post to Tumblr is from within <a href="http://google.com/reader">Google Reader</a>. Well, it’s actually really easy to do this by taking advantage of the <span class="caps">RSS</span> feed that Google Reader provides for your Shared Items.</p>
<p><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/google_reader_shared-20071219-122208.jpg" alt="google reader shared"/></p>
<p>Just grab the <span class="caps">RSS</span> feed from here…</p>
<div class="thumbnail"><a href="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/shared_rss_link-20071219-122432/"><img src="http://myskitch.com/robbyrussell/shared_rss_link-20071219-122432.jpg/preview.jpg" alt="shared rss link" /></a><br /><a style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Trebuchet, sans-serif, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; color: #808080" href="http://plasq.com/skitch">Uploaded with Skitch!</a></div>
<p>Then add this <span class="caps">RSS</span> feed to Tumblr like the examples above.</p>
<h2>Putting Tumblr to work for You!</h2>
<p>I’m hoping to continue using this pattern with other sites as well. I’d be interested in hearing how other people are using Tumblr to aggregate focused content in an easy to browse way.</p>
<h3>Update</h3>
<p>It appears that Tumblr currently only allows you to use five feeds to import. Until they upgrade this limit, you can use <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com">Yahoo! Pipes</a> to do some of the heavy lifting.</p>