The folks from Tumblr left a post on Social Media Today about an overhaul to the Tumblr platform.

In their own words - We’re getting ready to push some major updates over the next few weeks, and we wanted to give you a heads-up on changes to our custom theme engine. We’ve tried to make Tumblr themes as open and customizable as possible, and the things you’ve created have blown our minds. But there are still things we’ve wanted to do that haven’t been easy enough.

So next Monday we’ll be scrapping our old code for a completely overhauled template engine. We’re seriously excited about this, and we can’t wait to see what you’re able to do with it.

The most noticeable improvements:

* The new engine is scoped, so you’ll be able to nest and repeat blocks and variables.
* The engine uses a new token parser that will support special syntax for API hooks.

This will let your theme call back for content, like:

{​block:Posts type=”photo” tagged=”spotlight” count=”5″}
” />
{/block:Posts}

We’ve been systematically testing the new engine to make sure it’s backwards compatible. You can test it yourself by adding ?beta=1 to any tumblelog URL [e.g. http://www.davidslog.com/?beta=1]. If it’s working correctly, you shouldn’t see a difference.

Please let us know if you see anything funny.

Incidentally I have tested the clunky old Social Space Station theme and it seems to be identical so that’s good. Still waiting on a banner to take the design to a new universe. The Social Space Station is a tumblelog dedicated to presenting, discussing, and discovering interesting things out there in the social media sphere.

For decades now the dream of media types and ad firms has been to convert the humble remote control from a mere volume and channel changer to a spangly ‘product buying module.’ Tivo and Amazon are announcing a partnership today that introduces a “product purchase” feature via Tivo’s DVR service.

The idea is simple - turn the Tivo remote into a tool for buying the products being advertised and promoted on commercials and talk shows. If a talk show host talks up a book, Blu-Ray disc or CD, Tivo viewers will see onscreen menus with links to buy those products.

The NYT reports that - In the months ahead, TiVo plans to begin offering this feature to advertisers and programmers, so that the chance to buy products and have them delivered will be presented to viewers during commercials and even alongside product placements during live shows.

“Just a few years ago, we were viewed with great paranoia as the disruptor,” said Thomas S. Rogers, chief executive of TiVo. “Our goal now is to work with the media industry to come up with ways to resist the downward pressure of less advertising viewing and create a way for advertising on TV to become more effective, more engaging and closer to the sale.”

Tivo is now positioning itself away from media industry disruptor - offering its customers ways to skip ads, to media industry saviour, but not without Mr Rogers sowing the seeds of paranoia - “As DVRs get more popular, “the majority of commercials in home will be fast-forwarded through,” he said. “It is critical that there be a form of advertising and a transactional solution that underpins the DVR, or the economics of television are going to be substantially undermined.”

The people in the video who see this glass elevator dunk an Oreo cookie into a glass of milk are paying attention. I wonder how many of them grab a bag of Oreo’s on the way home. A cool, alternative way to push advertising.

Well, either Gary Busey has or GotVMail has. Gary appears to be “tired and emotional” as Private Eye would say, so it’s sure to be viral.

In an article in the Wall Street Journal today [subscription req.] a report says that YouTube will will fall short of revenue expectations. The twist to this chatter is that Google has found that 80% to 90% of video watchers hate to watch pre-roll advertising and they leave the video the minute they see any hint of a pre-roll. The story goes that Google intends to ignore its own research and go ahead with pre-roll anyway.

And the reason that most pages on YouTube are ad free? Because Google is fearful of showing that it is profiting from copyright infringement. They already in the middle of a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Viacom. That apparently leaves Google with only 4% of the videos being legally a-ok to advertise around as they have been approved by the copyright owners.

Bottom line for Google and the lawsuit they face, is that it is very unlikely they will receive a ruling in their favor to make money from copyright-violating content. It also will be a barrier to entry for anyone trying to launch a social media advertising program around these big content sites. Even Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation doesn’t own the copyright to hundreds of thousands of songs on its MySpace site.

It’s not often I come across a major musical artists’ web site and find that I can say to myself - “these guys got it right.” Today I visited John Mayers site and although I’m not a fan of his music the site is a great example of how to get the message across simply and elegantly while giving his fans the ability to interact on many levels. The tie-in with Blackberry is genius too. The Blackberry micro-site just spreads the Meyer messaging and interactivity far and wide by offering exclusive Meyer content - audio, video, pictures and more.

John says “hi.”

John Meyer has a blog and he seems to use it, at least I hope it’s him because the most egregious offense is having someone else blog for you. I’m going to keep checking back on this one. In fact there are multiple blog links on the home page. This one is written by “Scotty” who may be in the band or may be the T-shirt vendor, it’s hard to tell. The blog focuses on the new T-shirts - “A collaboration with Loomstate - a completely organic, sustainable tee. Very limited… We only made 587 of the shirts, each hangtag is hand-numbered.”

And there’s even a place to send in your encore requests for the shows you’ll attend. Customer happy time I reckon. And client happy too, Blackberry made a wise choice sponsoring this musician.

Credit: Mayer web link found on the Mediapost blogs.