Shortly after I blogged about the shortcomings of Tumblr’s API, Marco Arment of Tumblr commented on the post and expressed his sincere desire to set things right.

We got to chatting almost immediately, and the results were stunning. Marco made a round of changes in Tumblr as I experimented with the new features via MarsEdit. In the end, Marco was able to fix all of the critical shortcomings in the blog service’s interface, and added some additional goodies to boot.

Today, Marco made the revisions public, as announced on the Tumblr staff blog. I’m sure I’ll find suggestions and requests to pass along in the future, but the Tumblr API is now capable of providing a great user experience from desktop applications such as MarsEdit.

Which begs the question, when will MarsEdit be taking advantage of these new frills? I am making it a priority to release an update to MarsEdit as soon as possible with basic text entry support for Tumblr. I adjusted my feature planning a bit because I know how excited Tumblr users are to get their hands on something soon.

I expect MarsEdit 2.3 to feature this initial Tumblr support, and I’ll be working to get that released as soon as possible.

Apple is celebrating the benchmark of 10,000 shipping “apps” for the iPhone. If my scare quotes convey some negative connotation, then they’ve done their job. The vast majority of applications I’ve tried on the iPhone hardly deserve to celebrated.

I definitely do not think that sheer numbers are the story of the iPhone’s future, but if it makes some suits feel better about the device, then I’ll join in the cheers. 10,000 individual products for sale or free download definitely indicates a high degree of interest.

The guys at Tap Tap Tap have taken the opportunity to put together a remarkable poster-sized graphic of the icons from these 10,000 apps, arranged so as to look like a photo of an iPhone:

I think this was a really cool idea, even with a dubious point of celebration. For many of these apps, their presence in this poster is the most attractive they’ll ever be.

I made an offhand quip on the latest Core Intuition podcast, that in light of the recent stock market plunge, I should have invested money into my own company instead of the likes of Yahoo and Apple.

I was (mostly) joking, but there’s a philosophical truth in there. All of us have lately learned, or been reminded, that there are no guarantees when it comes to investing money. At the core of most investments is the expectation that one day down the road, we’ll take back more dollars than we put in today. We’re disappointed at best and devastated at worst if we are forced to cash out with less money than we started with.

But many of life’s investments are risk free precisely because we don’t expect anything tangible in return. So be sure to spend at least some of your dollars and time on something more valuable and permanent than money. Education, artistic expression, good health, time with family & friends, travel, or pursuing your own particular favorite pastime.

All of these investments yield immediate, intangible returns that can’t be diminished at the whim of bankers, stockholders, or public policy makers. People who invest only for financial return wind up going mad with money lust. Losing their investments spells catastrophe. A pity they never took the time to write a novel or learn to play guitar.

In short, invest in yourself and you’ll always have plenty of you to value.

Peter Verkhovensky recently wished out loud on Twitter for a feature in MarsEdit. He wanted the application to play a sound when a post has been sent successfully to a blog, similar to how Mail can play a noise when sending a message.

Although MarsEdit doesn’t have built-in support for this, it turns out to be relatively easy to achieve if you take advantage of the built-in Growl support. Growl is best known for its ability to display small, floating notification windows when certain actions are performed in applications, but it also supports the ability to play a sound.

Peter describes the process of adding a successful post sound in this manner. Nice work, Peter, and thanks for sharing the details on how it was done.