So Tumblr users: Let's just take a moment out of our busy days to do that, OK? You know, to avoid the ventricle-constricting feeling we all experienced yesterday at the prospect of never seeing all those kittens, hipsters or sprawling personal essays ever again.
Yes, all content has been restored following Tumblr's epic outage, and, yes, Tumblr President John Maloney told Twitterers that it was "ridiculous" to think everything was kaput. Heck, founder David Karp even offered this bit of assurance to users last night via Tumblr's Staff Blog: "We know how impossibly frustrating it is to see your work offline. But please always know that we truly care about your work as much as you do, and we have an incredibly capable team working incredibly hard to take good care of it."
Still, when you're leaving your work up to the whims of a company's database, it's really best to take those extra steps required to make sure it doesn't all get lost.
Last year, Tumblr launched a backup app that allows users to save their blogs so that they can be viewed on any computer, burned to a CD or hosted as an archive of static HTML files. The app is super easy to use: Simply download, enter your Tumblr sign-in info and save your blog to your desktop (it looks like the below screenshot). You can launch the app and backup more info every time you post as well.
Note, this app is only for Mac OS X (10.5 or higher), but there are other options for those who use different operating systems.