Best email client for iPhone is now Google

Perhaps Google has found the ideal partner to promote better Gmail within the Apple devices.  Today in the early afternoon (GMT) the site of the Sparrow, a popular email client for Mac OS (also called OS X) and iOS announced that the deal had been accomplished. Google now owns the Sparrow.

This means that Google now owns also one of the most beloved and popular mail clients that compete with the "official" Mail.app in the fields of Tim Cook. The Sparrow arrived as an alternative to Mail.app and even without offering warnings through Push Notifications was very successful. This is an innovative software and beautiful (this week we showed the other pretty well, but to monitor orders). That's what owners of smartphones like.

A few months ago Google launched Gmail application for iOS, both in the iPhone version as in the iPhone version. As far as we know the software not been very successful, both by occasional failures in its operation, as the lack of a differentiated experience to justify the adoption of Google's own solution.

Sparrow's team joins the Google Mail in an attempt to "achieve a greater vision." I do not know exactly what that means, but be assured that Gmail will come in the news for the Apple platforms. Anyway, the bad news is that applications already available will not receive new features, only regular maintenance and bug fixes. In the App Store the software remains in the air for $ 2.99.

We speak of the Sparrow in December 2010 in an article signed by Rodrigo Muniz. By then, he called it "minimal mail client." This is how the software continues, although it has been modified in recent times and won an exclusive version for iOS. It remains unique platforms from Apple, who knows why.

Samsung Galaxy S III: 10 million units sold worldwide till now

A division director of technology at Samsung revealed that the Galaxy S III has sold 10 million units worldwide. This sales pace was above that seen with other champion, the Samsung Galaxy S II.

According to Engadget, Samsung planned to deliver the unit number 10 million in early July. It seems that the thing a little late, but finally came to the Samsung brand had hoped for. The Galaxy product line is the most sold worldwide, including the Galaxy S III and other items.

The Galaxy S III is on sale in Brazil since the beginning of June. It costs R $ 2,099 (official price suggested) is unlocked at some carriers. Of course the price drops if you are in a carrier who lives with expensive plans of subsidized handsets.

Since Apple and Samsung compete through lawful channels in several countries, it is interesting to note that the Galaxy S III took two months to reach the milestone of 10 million units. Meanwhile, there are reports that the iPhone 4S rival apple (in this section the term "rival" is used figuratively) sold 4 million units in only its first weekend.

Google adds scientific calculator to search results

After releasing a small update to the algorithm Panda late on Tuesday, Google has added a scientific calculator to the search results. The calculator will appear whenever the user makes a search involving math and recognizes from simple terms such as "2 2" and "5-7", to more complex sentences such as "what is the square root of 88?". The seeker was doing mathematical calculations, but now the results are displayed in a way way cooler.

In addition to the basic operators such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, the calculator buttons 34 Google may return the factorial of a number, showing the square root of a value, arithmetic with common and natural logarithms, show constant values ​​(Euler number, for example) and manipulating trigonometric expressions.

The news is not yet available for all users - I still can not get the calculator function in Google Brazil. When the calculator can be used from the mobile interface of the finder, including detecting the position of the smartphone: when upright, just basic calculator appears to show the scientific commands, simply rotate the phone.

The calculator will also receive voice commands, both from the Voice Desktop Search, available on Google U.S., as in smartphones, including from Google Now, assistant staff present in the Jelly Bean.

Twitter will launch tool that exports user tweets

A new Twitter tool will allow users to download their old tweets. The announcement was made to The New York Times on Monday (23) by Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter. The feature is already present in services like Google, which releases some of the user account data in a compressed file through the Data Liberation your project, created to facilitate the migration of information from one service to another.

Currently the Twitter timeline released for viewing on the user only a few thousand tweets. Thus, if you're longing of the messages published four years ago on Twitter, you can not view them unless you have previously Favorited tweets or use third party services such as oldtweets, a search engine that finds tweets published on the first year of life than Twitter in 2006.

Even without allowing for easy access to your old tweets, Twitter saves with care all that you have already published. These precious messages can be recalled soon, depending on the CEO. "We are working on a tool that will allow users to export all your tweets," said Costolo. "You can download a file with them," he added.

Access to older tweets by others should continue still a bit difficult, however. Unlike Facebook, which features a timeline with easy access to all content you've published the service, with room for months and years, the Twitter implementation of this feature should not come so soon to be quite complex. "You can not just put three engineers on it," said the CEO.

While confirming the development of export tool tweets, Dick Costolo gave no details of when it will be available to users.

Twitter goes down on Thursday

For half an hour Twitter went offline and never return. Users through Facebook asking what happens in the 140-character microblog?. Meanwhile, the only information have been released on the status page of the service and is not exactly good: all the Twitter APIs are failing.

The APIs are the structures that Twitter works. Applications and meets the official website as well as third-party applications that rely on these structures to access resources to which users expect - for example, sending DMs or access to particulars.

Twitter offline
Seven publicly listed by the Twitter API, five passes for "service interruption": identification of friends, favorites, search, timeline on the home page and what they call "users / show." The API "stream" is to "performance issues" and "userstream" listed as "operating normally".

We did a traceroute test to determine if the server had stopped responding. To our surprise, the machine can connect to the Twitter server. Still, the site does not respond.

This morning Google Talk, Google's IM service, had flaws and remained unusable for a few hours. Currently the service operates normally.

Google launches broadband of 1000 Mbps in the U.S

While we celebrate with the plans Velox fiber, the United States took on a new broadband service and cable TV. Google launched a fiber-optic network in Kansas City. The speed is 1 Gbps for both upload and download.

There are three types of plans: the cheapest internet 5 Mbps, the tuition is free. Yes, even for free. You only need to pay the application fee of $ 300 (can divide this value by up to 12 months), but you are entitled to broadband Google with Wi-Fi router and free technical assistance for the next seven years. In this plan, the speed is not symmetric: only 1 Mbps upload.

Then comes the plan of 1 Gbps internet. The fee is relatively salt: they are $ 70, but face it, is a 1 Gbps symmetric Internet. Access is no deductible, but she is so high that you can download the entire family through this connection. Furthermore, the person signing the plan is entitled to 1 TB Drive on Google, cloud storage service. Do not charge setup fee and minimum contract lasts 12 months.

The more expensive plan Fiber Google costs $ 120 per month. Includes 1 Gbps broadband and cable TV in high definition (IPTV). Who signed the tablet takes to toast Nexus 7. The box decoder (set-top box) to the TV service is able to extend the Wi-Fi signal from the router and also has an Ethernet port. Other equipment included for the one who signs the plan is the Storage Box, a 2 TB disk used to store media content, while also acting as a digital recorder to the TV - to record eight programs simultaneously. Has no setup fee, but they are two years minimum stay.



(YouTube Video)

According to Google hotsite Fiber, you can watch TV in the Nexus 7, although not all channels are available on the tablet. Those who subscribe to any of the plans will have a discount on the Samsung Chromebook, which comes out to $ 299 per subscriber.

The service coverage varies with the needs of each region. The district with the highest number of service requests will have coverage before others with fewer stakeholders. It is a democratic (and, why not profit) on how to plan the expansion of fiber-optic network.

It is sad that this kind of service should take to arrive in Brazil. But, you know, we are left to dream and hope that someday it will become reality. Who wants to be drooling a little more service, you can visit the Google Fiber.

Co-founder of Valve says that Windows 8 will be a disaster

The co-founder of Valve, Gabe Newell, gave some statements about the future of gaming at an event in Seattle, USA, late on Tuesday (24). In the speech, Newell commented on the launch of Steam for Linux and said that Windows 8 will be a "catastrophe" that developers would abandon the system of Microsoft.

Windows 8 has the main new interface Metro, adapted for touch screens. The executive, however, believes that touchscreen technology is just a fad, and in the future, we will use computerized wristbands to interact with computers using hand gestures, which are "very significant". For now, the solution is to use mouse and keyboard.

Newell believes that Windows 8 hinder the gaming market. "I think the profit margins will be destroyed in several companies. If this really happens, then it will be great to have an alternative to not suffer from it. " The salvation for these companies would be in Linux operating system that will receive the Steam soon.

Windows 8: catastrophe?
According to Gabe Newell, Linux just does not emplaca time because of missing games for the system. "The major problem that is delaying the Linux games are. People have no idea how the games are important to influence the buying behavior of consumers, "he said. "We want to make the 2500 games in Steam to run easily on Linux as well," said Newell to the delight of users Penguin.

The statements by the boss of Valve are strong, but the question is whether he really believes that Windows 8 will be a problem for the entire gaming industry or are just to "fear" of what is to come. As we know, Windows 8 will include an application store that also sell their own games, which can cause damage in a nice profit from Steam. In addition, Microsoft is working to integrate their products and allow the recently announced purchase of Xbox 360 games directly from Windows 8. It looks like a disaster for Steam, not for games.

Lots of tablets with Windows 8 RT coming this year

Well the Microsoft said that other manufacturers would have Windows 8 tablets available to RT. At least four major OEMs already preparing devices with the future version of Windows designed specifically to interact via touch screens. Asus, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba plan to release tablets with the system by the end of the year, according to information from a Chinese website.

Economic Times, a Chinese newspaper that brought the details of this story, says that every chip manufacturer ARM architecture was entitled to choose two manufacturing partners for the launch of Windows on tablets. Nvidia would have entered into an agreement with Asus and Lenovo, HP and Qualcomm to Samsung, Texas Instruments and Toshiba only. It seems that in the end HP decided to ignore the ARM architecture, making Qualcomm also negotiate with Dell.

My understanding of Mandarin still disappointed (in fact I know nothing about the language), but given to understand from what the Google translator exhibited to the Economic Times the news that Acer is one of the manufacturers deprecated at this moment. The Taiwanese should wait until January of next year to present RT tablets with Windows, in what would be a second phase in the unfolding of Windows for tablets.

Microsoft announced that Windows 8 have two versions beyond that intended for tablets, standard and Pro Consumers can buy them in stores. However, called RT Windows 8 will come factory on the devices. In June it was the turn of the MS present to the world line of Surface tablets, which follows a pre-established visual identity and has some manufacturing partners.

For me it is evident that the company led by Steve Ballmer following a method used by Intel with ultrabooks (we did a special podcast on the subject): trying to bring order to the house from the determination of standards that must be followed by all manufacturers decide to release something worthy to participate in the online Surface.