I've been using two new tools lately that are helping me quite a bit. One is a website/blog/service called Tumblr. The other is a Firefox plugin called Power Twitter.

Tumblr can be a blog or a way to share. It's free and it's easy. The Curvature is using her Tumblr site as a true blog. On her regular blog, also called The Curvature, she explains

In fact, I’ve become a little bit of a social network junkie. I’ve started actually using my twitter. And today I started a tumblr blog, which I think just kicks twitter’s ass as a platform.

PHAT Mommy's Do You Lifestream asked readers if they used any type of lifestreaming help.

Do you use an aggregator to collect all of your online activity into one place, aka a lifestream (definition here)? Maybe it’s Tumblr or MyBlogLog, SuprGlu or Profilactic (I know, awesome name, huh?). Or the recently-released and much talked about FriendFeed.

One of PHAT Mommy's commenters Suburban Oblivion answered that she did. Here's her Tumblr blog: Suburban Oblivion. She's using it in a way very similiar to the way I am. A sort of temporary bookmarking service. I save things there that I may want in the near future but don't have time to deal with immediately. I don't really want to bookmark the things I save to Tumblr, because once I've done whatever it is I need to do with the information, I will move on to the next thing.

I want to mention one more way a BlogHer is using Tumblr and then show you the reason why I really like it. Wasabi Mom's New Food Porn Tumblr Blog! explains that she is using her Tumblr account MegaNom to save tantalizing food photos.

Let me show you why I like Tumblr so much. Suppose I decide to save MegaNom to my Tumblr blog. I click a Share on Tumblr button in my browser's toolbar and this window opens.

You can see that there are tabs where I can enter any text I want, select photos from the page, select a quote from the page, keep the link with a description, and there are even chat and video options. You notice the cursor pointing at a very hard to see Advanced link? If you click that, you can add tags.

I love the tagging option, because you can develop a system of tags, and search your own Tumblr blog by tag to instantly find the exact information you are looking for.

The second great new toy I have is the Firefox add-on Power Twitter. Of course, you need to be a Twitter user to love this one. OK, it's a Firefox add-on, so you have to look at your Twitter page in the browser. Won't work in Twhirl or Tweetdeck or whatever else you use.

When you have Power Twitter going in Firefox, you see full URLs instead of mystery link tinyurls. Any photo from Flickr or several other places, any video from YouTube, and even maps that are linked to in Tweets show up in full on your Power Twitter page. No need to click away.

When you hover with the mouse over the icons of the people you follow, you see their latest few tweets.

Unlike Tumblr, I haven't seen any other BlogHers talking about Power Twitter. Is it possible that I'm a trend setter? Naw, probably not.

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Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
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