Month: September 2010

Tumblr or Posterous or WordPress


Recently, I haven’t been blogging much over on my technology/photography/coffee/life self hosted WordPress blog, Island in the Net.  I’m not quite sure but I think it has something to do with the amount of effort involved.  It seems like every week I’m updating a plugin, tweaking a setting, or some other lengthy maintenance task.

A year ago, I bought MarsEdit from Red Sweater Software, a blog editor, to make posting much easier but in the end I feel like I’m doing the same amount of work.  The workflow - edit text, capture and crop image/photo, upload, rinse, repeat - is just too time consuming.  I feel myself wishing I could just snap a photo with my iPhone, type out a few words, and post straight to my blog. For those post that involve many images, it would be nice if WordPress auto-cropped them to the right size.

I know, there is a most likely a plug-in for that. In fact, I know there is - PhotoQ.  But as I mentioned about, plug-in bring work of their own.  First, I have to be sure they are compatible with the current version of WordPress.  Sometimes, they are not.  Then I have to configure said plug-in which sometimes requires changes to my blog postings.


I’ve had a Tumblr blog for some time.  This blog, Khürt Williams is a blog of quotes from articles I found interesting.  Mostly Seth Godin and other high level thinker.  I love the simplicity of it.  There is a format for each kind of posting. Image, Video, Quote, Text etc.  Images are uploaded and resized automatically to fit the site theme or template.


I’ve also had a Posterous account where I started three photoblogs.  Posterous makes it easy to upload a batch of photos to create a slide show.  There is even a little bit of JavaScript magic that does a light-box zoom on images.  The other blog entry types are similar to the ones on Tumblr.

Where I think Tumblr beats Posterous in with theme selection.  Tumblr has been around a bit longer and a community of designer has developed hundreds of free and premium quality themes.  There are some excellent photoblog themes, one of which I am using for my 365 day photography project, iPhone 4tography.  The themes on Posterous remind me of sort of simplistic themes that ship with WordPress.  Functional but not attractive.

I’m torn. I’m not sure what to do.  For now, I am duplication my posting across the two platforms until I make a final decision.

Compare the two platform by taking a look at my blogs on each:

The Apple Ping Thing

Initially I spent quite a bit of time in Ping looking for my friends. I then tried searching for my favourite bands and musicians to follow. Eventually I got bored and went back to Twitter and my news feeds. The lack of Twitter or Facebook or Google address book connect will limit Ping’s reach. In any case, Ping seems to be designed to keep people in the iTunes store buying music and movies. If Apple can work out a deal with one of the large social networks this might be successful.

2018-12-08 10.41.45

ongoing by Tim Bray · Galaxy Tab by Tim Bray

Which leads to a general theory, reinforced by informal observation of hipsters with iPads in coffee shops: a tablet is, crucially, a more shareable computer. A laptop, with its fragile hinge-ware and space-gobbling keyboard, is just not comfy to share. A tablet is easier to bring to the café easier to hand across the table or along the sofa, easier to seize in the heat of the moment, easier to hold up in triumph, easier to set aside when you need to meet someone's eyes.