Gelato is an open source tumblelog “content management system” (CMS) from a group of Mexican developers. Tublelogs are the ADHD version of blogging, meant for easily throwing up mixed media posts made up of photos, videos, chat logs, links, quotes, and short paragraphs.
Similar to full blown blogs, you can host a tumblelog on a site like Tumblr, but Gelato lets you own the code. There have been a couple other open source tumblelogs out there, such as Bazooka and Tumble but Gelato is a little more ambitious. They’re following WordPress’ lead, incorporating themes with plugin support TBA.
Installation is simple and similar to WordPress’ 5 minute install, requiring only a MySQL database and setting a config.php file. Once installed you can post up short paragraphs, pictures, video, links, quotes, and chat logs. Pictures can be uploaded from your computer or through a URL. For URLs, it doesn’t hotlink, it downloads the photo to your server. Videos (YouTube or Vimeo) and mp3s can only be added through URLs. To make playback simple, Gelato also comes with its own built in mp3 player.
Tumblelogs are rather short on conversation, because they don’t support comments. It’s a deficit trying to be corrected by other thought casting services like Twitter and especially Pownce, with its multimedia focus.