I’m sorry, I can’t help it - I’m a sucker for mashups. Which is why I have to bring the latest one to your attention: Tumbltape.

It’s exactly how it sounds: a Muxtape for Tumblr. Just when you thought Muxtape was gone for good, it has inspired John Zanussi and Adam Gotterer to catch on the music sharing wave and create Tumbltape, which takes the latest songs (aka - audio files) from each user’s tumblelog and creates a playlist.

When new songs are added, your Tumbltape playlist is automatically updated. Plus, you can choose to let Tumbltape figure out the artist and track names based on the text from your post, or you can type in the artists and track titles yourself. Simple as that.

Secretly I am wondering how long this will last, but if the Tumblr community loves it and Muxtape users pick up on the service it will certainly be hard to shut down, at least until the RIAA finds out about it.

Amtrak is excited to announce the launch of a new train service - the 2107 Microblogging Express. Please view the video below to experience a trip on the new 2107 Microblogging Express. We make a variety of station stops and connect to all local service.

This service even includes new services Posterous and Identi.ca.

People referenced in the video: Sarah Perez, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Steven Hodson, Corvida and Steve Rubel. Our special tickettaker is Tamar Weinberg.

Partner Links
– Free Online Budgeting Software

NY-based Next New Networks is announcing today that Yahoo!, Hulu, and Metacafe have become part of Next New Networks "superdistribution network". Earlier this year, Next New Networks partnered with MySpace TV.

Here are the specifics from the announcement. Yahoo! and Metacafe will each gain access to all Next New Networks programming. Hulu will begin distributing content from six popular networks including: BarelyPolitical, home of Obama Girl; Threadbanger, for DIY fashion tips and advice; and Fast Lane Daily, daily car news, which is also creating, for Hulu viewers to see first, a weekly round-up of Fast Lane Daily episodes.

TubeMogul also named Next New Networks the number one online video syndicator garnering more views than giants such as HBO, Fox and Warner Brothers from videos deployed by TubeMogul. It’s important to note that this announcement from TubeMogul only counts videos that are deployed using TubeMogul - so other publishers won’t be counted.

The puppet in the videos we posted yesterday is part of the Next New Networks family.

Partner Links
– Free Online Budgeting Software

Source:CenterNetworks

Web-top publishing platform Wix is announcing that they are opening their beta today to the public. Previously they were running under a private beta. I spoke with Wix Co-CEO Allon Bloch who shared some stats about usage. He said there are “tens of thousands” of Wix users and many become power users. He also noted that the beta has helped the team to see that Wix could become a publishing platform.

Musicians like Kanye West and artists are using Wix as a way of promoting specific artists and events. Wix is also SEO-friendly unlike many of the current publishing platforms and add-ons.

Check out our interview with Allon to learn more about Wix.

Flash Widgets - Wix.com

Source:CenterNetworks

In the video below, NY-based Tumblr founder David Karp provides an update on the micro-blog business. He explains that Tumblr is the easiest way to share anything online. He also describes how important the "reblog" concept is for Tumblr. Reblogging is where you share what someone else has posted on Tumblr to help it gain viral growth.

For some stats, David noted that Tumblr has 310,000 users (no word on active), 120,000 posts per day and they host 15,000 custom domains. The user number is up from 75,000 last October.

Semantic search provider Evri is moving into public beta today. Evri debuted at the D6 conference last month and I’ve embedded the presentation below. Founder Neil Roseman explains the Evri mission as, "(to) help users make more sense of the content on the Web." In the launch blog post tonight, Roeman continues, "Evri is building a data graph of the web, using our technology to understand the People, Places and Things in the web content read every day-and the actions that connect them to each other."

Dan Farber was on location at D6 and has a good overview of the service. Evri seems like it’s in the same sector as NY-based Hakia.

Update: Frederic over at RWW has more details on the semantic side of Evri.

Partner Links
– Free Online Budgeting Software

Source:CenterNetworks

I spent this morning at an event hosted by The Media Kitchen. A variety of NY-based VC firms along with their portfolio companies presented general business updates. I captured a ton of video and will post my thoughts and the videos over the next few days. The Media Kitchen put together an absolutely hilarious opening video. I cut two snippets that I thought would be beneficial for anyone trying to grow their startup.

The first video has the puppet (Gary) interviewing Tumblr founder David Karp about what makes Tumblr so popular. Rather than give away the reason, just watch the very short video.

In this video, the puppet asks MobLogic host Lindsay Campbell and Wallstrip host Julie Alexandria how to keep viewers engaged. This could be the first time that Julie and Lindsay have appeared together!

Amateur attention seeker and entrepreneur Jakob Lodwick may be releasing a new project soon with Scott Karp, the creator of blogging tool Tumblr. Lodwick recently cut ties with both his beau, Julia Allison, and Connected Ventures, the startup he founded, now controlled by IAC and best known for Vimeo and College Humor. Without Barry Diller’s backing or Allison’s cleavage, how will the pasty, shirtless hipster generate the buzz he’s grown to expect but rarely deserves? By mocking the homeless.

CenterNetworks observed that norbum.org, a domain recently purchased by Lodwick, briefly went live with the message:

Norbum.org is an open, crowd-sourced, web 2.0 application powered by Tumblr. Why the name “Norbum”? Simply put, Norbum is like Nordstrom for the homeless. We bring to you the latest in urban street fashion from the people who live it. Rather than relying on an elitist group of professional editors, we invite our readers to submit photos of the most stylish street people from around the world. If you spot one of these edgy trendsetters, just snap a photo and email it to 2tvazf87@tumblr.com. We’ll post the best ones to Norbum.org.

Lodwick’s fashion sense has its own affinity with the homeless. But Norbum is clearly an attempt at attention-grabbing humor. I’ll concede the attention-grabbing part — I’m writing about it, aren’t I? — but the humor, after one weak chuckle, escaped me. Without Allison, without his partners at Connected Ventures, Lodwick’s limits are becoming more easily glimpsed. And less watchable every day.

Yesterday, after a bit of investigative journalism, we posted some of the domain names that Jakob Lodwick noted in a blog post on his Tumblr site. We tried to figure out what the name meant but came up dry. Today we know what the name Norbum means. I can only hope they are fooling with us.

Norbum.org went live today with the following message, "Norbum.org is an open, crowd-sourced, web 2.0 application powered by Tumblr. Why the name “Norbum”? Simply put, Norbum is like Nordstrom for the homeless. We bring to you the latest in urban street fashion from the people who live it. Rather than relying on an elitist group of professional editors, we invite our readers to submit photos of the most stylish street people from around the world. If you spot one of these edgy trendsetters, just snap a photo and email it to 2tvazf87@tumblr.com.  We’ll post the best ones to Norbum.org."

Can I get a WTF from the congregation? They show about 10 photos of what appear to be homeless people from photos on Flickr. I guess they wanted to start with something on the site upon launch but the message notes that you should email the photos to a tumblr account.

So if this is real, you are supposed to take photos of homeless people around the world, send them to Norbum and then Karp and Lodwick will decide which ones they should publish to the site. Since the photos are being sent mostly via mobile I imagine, there will be no attribution (the Flickr photos have non-commercial licenses from what I can tell). 

Do you all believe this is real? I can’t believe that two intelligent people and successful entrepreneurs would use their creative juice to just post photos of homeless people unless of course there is more to the site that we can’t see yet.