Simple blogging platform Tumblr has finally added the ability to add static pages to your Tumblelog.

Tumblr has grown a great deal without this feature — its simplicity has always been its selling point. However, many companies need static pages — it’s often the best way to provide contact info, company data and more to provide customers with the information they need. Regular users can use them to describe who they are or what they are working on.

Now tumblrs have the option to build pages. While simple overall (it’s just like building a blog post), you do get three choices for layouts: standard (title and body with your tumblelogs’s layout), custom (create a page with a completely custom theme), and redirect (forward a page to another domain).

The new pages feature seems to keep Tumblr’s simplicity intact while providing a very necessary feature to many bloggers. From the looks of commenters though, the feature still has a few bugs. So Tumblr users, let us know what you think of the addition in the comments!

Tags: Blogigng, tumblr

Consumer electronics juggernaut Sony is apparently stepping up to the plate to tackle Apple’s iPhone (and soon iPad) pantheon with a PlayStation Portable Phone, sources tell The Wall Street Journal.

If you haven’t been following the vicissitudes of the mobile rumor mill for as long as we have, you might want to know that a PSP phone has historically been a mythical device about equally as hot and sought-after as the likewise completely mythical and often-rumored Microsoft Zune phone — the latter of which is also reportedly about to materialize.

According to the WSJ’s sources, the PSP Phone is part of a larger initiative to get some synergy going between Sony’s various existing platforms: the PlayStation Network, which offers both gaming and media content, the PlayStation Portable handheld gaming device, and its Sony Ericsson phone division.

Until now those realms didn’t quite completely gel beyond PSP-PSN integration, and the overall pipeline for the consumer hasn’t been nearly as streamlined as in Apple’s iTunes ecosystem. There have also been inside reports that Sony didn’t want to let Sony Ericsson run with the PlayStation brand even though it has expressed interest in the past. Today’s news seems to indicate the parent company has had a change of heart in that regard.

The idea with a PSP Phone would be to tie all those heretofore loose ends together and create a more seamless mobile content delivery service. We may even see another device enter the fray that would compete with the iPad and other emerging tablets of the world: something that “blurs distinctions among a netbook, an e-reader and a PlayStation Portable.” In other words, Sony is preparing a concerted push to go after Apple’s popular digital delivery ecosystem.

Would you be excited about a PSP Phone? Let us know in the comments.

[img credit: Engadget]
[via Engadget]

Tags: apple, ipad, iphone, itunes, playstation, playstation portable, PSN, PSP, psp phone, sony, sony ericcson, video games

Google Wave has finally turned on email notifications as a feature for users who want to see immediate, hourly, or daily email notifications for new and updated waves.

Email updates can be turned on via the Inbox dropdown menu. Once on, Google Wave will notify you with a summary of updates to your waves and email you when you’re added to a new wave. Thankfully you’ll only receive one update for each individual wave — instead of receiving an email for each update to a wave — until you log into that wave again.

As notifications are still in the testing phase you can definitely expect the experience to be somewhat buggy. Google warns that you could get notifications for updated waves even if you’re the one that made the update, you can’t turn off notifications via the email link, and information in the notification may not show all the participants in a wave.

Still, the option of email notifications is far better than no option at all. We have a sneaking suspicion that Google may have rushed the feature out to get inactive wavers absent in the past few months back into the wave experience. To that same purpose, Google recently released a smarter API in an effort to spur more developer interest in their preview product.

Tags: Google, Google Wave

In Fortune Magazine’s annual ranking of “most admired companies”, Apple has once again walked away with the top spot. Apple was voted #1 for the third year in a row in a poll of executives, industry analysts and company directors. This year, Apple actually took pole position by its widest margin ever.

Other companies that ranked high on Fortune’s list include Google at #2 and Amazon.com at #5.

Check out this video from Fortune that explains a little more about the process and provides some insights into why certain companies are so admired:

Consumer and business trust, strong customer loyalty and the ability to transform new markets are all reasons that Apple was voted “most admired.” Apple easily topped the survey by scoring 51% of the vote.

Because this survey was taken before Apple filed suit against HTC, its recent legal actions obviously weren’t taken into consideration.

Apple, Google and Amazon.com all represent strong brands and strong feelings of loyalty amongst customers — plus good business decisions and balances sheets that appeal to investors.

Tags: amazon.com, apple, branding, Google, most admired companies

In a blog post today, Google essentially reminds its enterprise customers that Google Apps provides an alternative to expensive, complex solutions as far as data disaster recovery goes.

Synchronous replication is a system that Google Apps uses to store customer’s info in two data centers at once, so that if one data center fails, Google says it nearly instantly transfers data over to the other one that’s also been reflecting the actions taken by the customer all along.

On the practical side this means that thanks to the cloud-based storage solution, Google customers won’t lose any data in a data center failure. Just as crucially, they are theoretically back up and running straight away — although the online giant does acknowledge that no backup solution is perfect.

This synchronous replication is applied to the entire Apps suite as well as Gmail (Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites), with the sales angle being enterprise-class back-up for all at a much lower cost than if companies were to provide or contract separately for their own data redundancy systems.

Google, ever keen to push its Apps suite to new corporate clients of all sizes, estimates that this kind of backup could cost up to $500 for 25GB of data from other providers, but says it can bundle it in because it’s already running large, fast data centers.

This is essentially Google reminding enterprise customers (and potential customers) about one of the significant benefits of cloud computing over traditional in-house server farm data storage. How does your business handle data backup and redundancy issues? Do you think cloud computing is the ideal solution to hardware failure?

Tags: cloud computing, Google, google apps

Twitter may be valued at $1.4 billion, but it’s definitely not a smart buy in Suze Orman’s opinion. Well, that is if you’re Mark Z., a 25-year-old degreeless professional with $300 million in liquid assets, $4 billion in Facebook stock, $2,500 in monthly expenses and no debt.

In her latest “Can I Afford It” segment, Orman strongly advises Mark Z. — an obvious reference to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — against buying Twitter. She exclaims, “You want to spend $1.5 billion on Twitter, do I have that right? … Why do you need to buy it … you know Twitter, you can get it for free.”

Of course, the video is all in jest and first aired at last night’s Shorty Awards in New York. Orman, who happened to be nominated for a Shorty Award in the finance category, agreed to film the spoof video when approached by producers. The end result is a slice of comedic genius at the expense of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and even Chatroulette.

Check out the clever and entertaining mock segment below:

Tags: celebrities, facebook, twitter, video, viral videos