[rmccue]

> You made me think, "If only there were a host where you could install the software with one click, and it would automatically update itself..." Follow that thread far enough and the line between a blogging service and a hosting service begins to blur.

This is one of the things the large hosts (Bluehost, GoDaddy, Dreamhost, etc.) are very keen on, and they've been doing lots of work to try and get this to a good level. It's one driving factor behind the push in the WordPress community to get automatic upgrades built in.

> Edit: icebraining pointed out downthread that you can mostly export a Tumblr blog by adding '/rss' to the URL of each page, a process that is easily automated.

In fact, WordPress has a Tumblr importer: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tumblr-importer/

Notably though, it's built on their JSON API, not on the RSS, so it's not really an open standard.