icons, and FB's hidden agenda?

1. Give your two cents on how many icons you would want in an ideal world.

Actually, my honest answer would be "around ten or so, but I can even make do with one," so my use case is so far from what's being discussed there that it's not even funny. XD I suck so hard at making icons (I was trying to make some Ravages of Time ones, but the art really doesn't shrink down well) that I was all like "bleh, might as well just stick with this wol." For me, as a paid feature, polls are more important than having multiple icons. (And I don't really use those that much either... I must say, honestly for me, the paid features of an LJ/fork/clone don't really impact my daily usage of the site.)

I use Tumblr and Posterous (and Disqus to comment on Tumblr) and honestly, I don't really care that on those sites I can have only one icon. Heck, right now on my default layout on Tumblr, you can't even see my icon in the posts there.

2. A blogger remarks, re: FB's enhanced granular privacy features that they aren't really about privacy, but about publishing and competing with Twitter, which is an interesting hypothesis. Seems a bit far fetched, though, to claim it's also with Wordpress.

I wonder if this means that other platforms will begin to incorporate granula privacy in a manner similar to FB's implementaton of it?

Tumblr backup app in works, Posterous creates better group blogs

In the microblogging world, Tumblr has put out a beta Mac version of a back-up app. I can't use it yet, because I use Windows (a LOT of Tumblr's users use Macs, apparently, though), but other versions will be forthcoming. The lead developer of Tumblr, Marco Arment, was inspired to create this app because of the T-mobile data failure.

What's nice about this app is that it's very simple, in keeping with the rest of Tumblr's design philosophy: you get HTML files in folders, not archive file. But there is also the data there for developers within those files, should they need it.

In other microblogging news, Posterous has updated their group blog capabilities, to allow for group profiles and for autoblogging to each member's accounts on other services.

Anyway, for those of you who came in recently and have well, never heard of Tumblr or Posterous, both are "micro-blogging" sites, where you can blog much easily (though less powerfully) than from Wordpress. Tumblr seems more beloved of the artistic hipster crowd, and is NY-based, whereas Posterous is a Silicon Valley startup, especially popular in the tech community. Both impress me with how they seem to come out with new features on a regular basis, although it still remains to be seen how successfully they'll monetize. Right now I'm using Tumblr more often, but Posterous's features often seem more radical and intriguing (and their autopost (which is the ability to crosspost to huge amounts of sites) is impressive).