Tumblr now has pw-protected blogs, and other things

[charmian]

http://staff.tumblr.com/post/267925870/now-testing-password-protected-blogs-it-just-got

Sweet. Tumblr is now allowing you to have password protected blogs (along with the private blogging feature). Since you can control multiple blogs under the same account, this in a way does give you granular privacy, since you can create separate pw-protected blogs for different groups.

Speaking of privacy, thinking more on the cross-site authenticated flist reading issue, until Dreamwidth somehow resolves the problem (which from reports, it seems they still have quite a ways to go) probably if you have a small friendslist on LJ, the easiest way to read LJ without touching the LJ site is to set an emailed notification every time a person on your flist posts. That means that all the posts will go to your email account, IIRC. However, I suppose this is only convenient if the number of people who you follow on LJ is small.

Also, wow, LJ ads have gotten quite uh, advanced. I have a Plus account and suddenly my window went gray and a Best Buy movie-ish ad (the sort where you have to close it to make it stop) popped up. Obviously I use Plus, so ads are what I will see, but this was the first one like that I've seen. (Or this could be a trojan or something, not sure what it is, but since there was a Best Buy ad in the inbox page, I suspect it really was related.)

Comments

[inkstone]

It's not a Trojan. I got that ad today (I have a free account) and two other people in my circle report having gotten it too.

[charmian]

Yeah, usually I use Adblock so I don't see ads (and I also have flashblock), so I saw this on a computer which didn't belong to me and wondered if it was infected.

[azurelunatic]

I got it and yelled in Ad Feedback. (My normal account is permanent but I was testing something with my alternate account.) I didn't know if I'd clicked or what. I have a tiny screen on my netbook so I had to F11 to actually make the caterwauling stop. Boy was I pissed.

[charmian]

I wonder if it's a remnant ad or whether Best Buy simply paid them enough money.

[troisroyaumes]

Just reverted to a free account, and now I am more reluctant to use LJ than ever. Too bad most of my friends are still on the service instead of on DW.

[charmian]

Well, I was using a Plus, so if you revert to a basic probably you won't have those problems. Maybe you could use the method where you have everything emailed to you? Then at least you won't have to visit the site as much.

[troisroyaumes]

Oh right, I forgot that paid accounts usually revert to basic rather than plus.

The email notifications is a good idea. Is there a limit on the number of people you can track?

[charmian]

It depends on whether the account was Basic before or not.

It depends on your account level. Each person counts as one subscription, and the differing accounts have different levels.

[sofiaviolet]

My method of reading my (still quite large) LJ flist is to have everyone's posts sent to my LJ inbox. This is more or less like reading my flist as usual, except that there are no cut tags and there are comment notifications (I track a lot of posts because of interesting comment activity).

[charmian]

Yeah, I guess the only problem with that is what if you go on vacation and your inbox fills up. But in some ways it does seem a better method, because you only see new posts and you get notified when there's new ones and know how many there are.

[sofiaviolet]

I tend not to vacation away from the internet. :]

And it's not that much worse than having to backread one's flist, in my opinion.

I like my method because I only have to visit the LJ inbox - and then individual entries if I want to comment or read all the existing comments.

[pne]

Would you like some paid LJ time? I've got a voucher that I'm not sure what to do with.

[charmian]

Oh, I don't really need it. I hardly use it and at home I have adblock. Thanks anyway though!