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Google Acquires E-mail Genius Sparrow

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Popular third-party email genius client Sparrow has announced 20 minutes ago that it has been acquired by Google.

The company tweeted on its official twitter page about the acquisition. Dom Leca, CEO of Sparrow posted on the Sparrow blog that the company has been acquired by Google, and that they’re joining the Gmail team to “accomplish a bigger vision.”

We’re excited to announce that Sparrow has been acquired by Google!

We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience.
Now we’re joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google.
We’d like to extend a special thanks to all of our users who have supported us, advised us, given us priceless feedback and allowed us to build a better mail application. While we’ll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users.
We had an amazing ride and can’t thank you enough.
Full speed ahead!
Dom Leca
CEO
Sparrow

Update: The Verge is reporting that the current Sparrow apps will receive no new features and this Paris based Sparrow with five person team was acquired for under $25 million.

The only good thing to happen now is to get the official Gmail app for iOS with goodness of Google and UX of Sparrow! Additionally, can we expect Android gets a boost with this acquisition?

What Happens When G-Male And Siri Fall In Love? [Humorous Video]

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Here is a story of intelligent device meets intelligent device! Two individuals named G-Male and Siri meet and fall in love. What happens next? In this hilarious video (after this picture), you will find some guest appearances Blackberry, Yahoo, AOL, and more.

Best part of this video:

Siri: I trusted you!!! 

G-Male (Google): So does everyone.

 

G-Male and Siri: A Love Story [Video]:

And here is a bonus video for you to laugh:

Google To Pay $22.5 Million Fine For Safari Privacy Breach. Boon For Bing?

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If you remember, Google was caught overriding Apple Safari browser privacy settings back in February, 2012. Now, after nine months the tech giant has a preliminary deal in place with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to pay a $22.5 million fine for this whole breach.

This fine could be the largest penalty on a single company by FTC. Even though it won’t be a big blow for Google which draws in this sort of cash in around just five hours, but it does cast an impact over the company in terms of legal arguments and practices.

[Credit]

What happened in the past?

Back in September, 2012, Jonathan Mayer, a grad student at Stanford, found that Google used hidden code to install a cookie for users of Apple’s Safari browser that allowed the search giant to intentionally cheat Safari’s privacy features and track user’s browsing habits for its DoubleClick advertising business. At the time, Google said this was not intentional and that it removed the cookies from affected browsers. At that time, this was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. You can read full investigation in these two hyper links mentioned in this paragraph.

And now..

Later, the issue became a privacy scandal as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said in April that it would investigate on the issue. Now, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the FTC and Google are now close to finalizing a settlement with a whopping $22.5 million fine.

According to the report –

The fine is expected to be the largest penalty ever levied on a single company by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. It offers the latest sign of the FTC’s stepped-up approach to policing online privacy violations, coming just six months after The Wall Street Journal reported on Google’s practices.

Later today, Google has sent out a statement to CNN which essentially has them refusing the idea that they did anything wrong. In its statement, Google emphasized that it considers the Safari episode a minor one.

“We cannot comment on any specifics. However we do set the highest standards of privacy and security for our users.” 

The search habits of users are difficult to break and it is enough to break all with a small broken trust. What do you think on this whole debacle? Is Google step a boon for Bing?  Thoughts?

Apple HR’s Employee Recruiting Video

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This video is definitely a worth watch for any Apple fan which tells a story of what it’s like working for the world’s most valuable company. This HR’s employee recruiting video takes you through Apple’s engineering labs, website team, creation of iPad’s smart cover and more interesting things.

According to 9to5Mac, this Apple produced clip represents –

Earlier this year, Apple uploaded an interesting corporate employee recruiting video. It might just be the most in-depth tour of Apple’s Cupertino headquarters that we have ever seen on a public forum, especially Apple’s own website.

The video is narrated by Joel Podolny, Apple’s Vice President of Human Resources and Dean of Apple University. Watch the below video before Apple pulls it down.

How To Set Chrome Browser As Default On iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch [Jailbreak & Non-Jailbreak Tweaks]

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Yesterday, Google released ‘Chrome for iOS’ and its already in Apple’s top charts downloads. This browser brings all of the awesome features especially the user interface, Google account sync, Incognito mode, etc. Clearly, its much better browser than iOS’s default Safari browser. Unfortunately, there is no option to set Chrome as default in your iOS device. This means by clicking any link will launch Safari by default and there is no such option to change. But, there is already a tweak which allows you to set Google Chrome as default browser on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

This tweak is little bit easy if you have a jailbroken device.

If your device is already Jailbroken – 

  1. Open Cydia and add navigate to Manage > Sources
  2. Click ‘Edit’ and ‘Add’ new source URL – rpetri.ch/repo
  3. Once the repo is added, search for ‘BrowserChooser’ and install (its free!)
  4. Once installed, go to Settings > BrowserChooser  and select ‘Chrome’
  5. That’t it! The tweak works pretty much as advertised by its developer Ryan Petrich on his twitter account status.
  6. Now any link opened from Messages, Mail, and third party apps will directly open in Chrome browser.

 

If your device is not Jailbroken – 

For the devices which are not jailbroken, that means if your device has a stock OS, then here is a trick developed by Jon Abram that comes in the form of a bookmarklet you can stick in Safari’s address bar and tap anytime you want to open the URL in Chrome.

  1. Open this page (yes this page you are currently reading!) in your iOS device, obviously in Safari
  2. Copy the following code
    3. javascript:location.href="googlechrome"+location.href.substring(4);
  3. Add the current page to your bookmarks by clicking arrow and ‘Add Bookmark’ in Safari
  4. Name the bookmark something like ‘Open in Chrome’ and click Save
  5. Now, go to your bookmarks by clicking the little book in the Safari browser. Click Edit and edit ‘Open in Chrome’ which is set in the previous step
  6. Delete the URL that’s there in it (obviously, it should be the URL that was added in Step 1) and paste the copied code (from Step 2) 
  7. That’s it! Now, every time when Safari your desired URL by default, just click the bookmarklet ‘Open in Chrome’ which will launch the URL in Chrome directly. Its not the exact workaround, but this tweak eliminates the pain to copy manually the desired URL every time and paste in Chrome multitasking fashion.

Let’s hope Apple will allow to change the defaults which may not happen in near future. Do you plan on setting Chrome as your default browser? Try out above steps and let me know if you face any issues.

By the way, you can download Google Chrome for iOS here.

Google I/O 2012 Day 1 & 2 Highlights: Android 4.1, Nexus 7 Tablet, Google Glasses and more!

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Here is the single post where you can find all the information that Google announced at Google I/O 2012 event for the past two days. We’ve gathered all the biggest highlights of Day 1 & 2 in this single post, including the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, Nexus 7 Tablet, Google Glasses, and more!

 Whether you’re a fan of Android, Google products, or just good tech geek, Google I/O has it all. If you missed the announcements or are just plain curious about what Google showed off at Google I/O 2012, read on.

Day 1:

      1. Android 4.1 Jelly Bean – The next version of Android which is coming to Galaxy Nexus, Xoom, Nexus S in mid-July. This update include new predictive keyboard, Google Voice Search (just like Apple’s Siri), new search experience with powerful voice search and a product called “Google Now”. This 4.1 Android version also include App Encryption to developers to protect against piracy.
      2. Nexus 7 tablet – 7″ device running Android 4.1 and made by Asus and has 1280×800 HD display. The tablet is available directly from Google Play for $199. Amazon is going to lose its Kindle low price market.
      3. Nexus Q – This is Google’s integrated answer to Apple TV but pulls content directly from cloud rather than from connected devices.  Learn more about this device here.
      4. Google Glasses– This one is the real show stopper and a sheer awesomeness. It was a live footage of skydivers making their way with Google Project Glass headsets.The Project Glass hardware contains a processor, display, camera, touch pad, microphone, GPS, and various sensors. It allow users to interact with virtual world without being distracted from real world. Watch the amazing thing through ‘their’ eyes in the following video with a hangout in air!

Other highlights on this day include new YouTube mobile android app, 3D imagery on Google Earth for Android, Google+ Improvements, Offline support for Google Android maps.

Day 2:
  1. Google Chrome for iOS – The browser include some exclusive features like tab syncing, private browsing, Google account sync against native Safari browser in iOS devices. Here is the download link from Apple Store.
  2. Google Drive for iOS – The app lets you save files for offline viewing and many more. And here is the download link.

3. Offline edit support for Google docs

4.  Compute Engine– Google finally entered into cloud business game competing with Amazon EC2. Google claims supports over 1 million applications providing Linux virtual machines, on ‘Google Scale.’

If you still want to catch all the fun, the whole keynote of Day 1 is available for viewing in the video embedded below:

Keynote video of Day 2 is not available yet. We’ll cover more posts on the product, price, feature comparison of several announcements made by Google in next few days.

If you are curious what happened exactly in last year’s Google I/O 2011 event, head over to this post and have some Android fun!

PressReader: 2100+ Full Content Newspapers & Magazines In A Single App [Review]

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Are you a news junkie who loves to read newspapers and magazines daily? Here is an amazing digital reading app which allows you to read over 2100+ full content from 95 countries in 54 languages – all in just one single app – PressReader.

This digital newspaper kiosk app runs on iOS including the new iPad (with gorgeous Retina Display), iPhone, iPod, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Windows 7 Slate PC. The app conveniently allows technology and mobile enthusiasts to read their favorite newspaper and magazine where ever they are in the world. Some of the exclusive features of this app include landscape and portrait orientation, automatic subscriptions, zooming articles, listening to publications, social media sharing.

A spokesperson from PressReader sent me a free trial account to test the app and I spent some time downloading some newspapers and magazines on my iPhone 4S.

PressReader iPhone App

As you will see in the below screen shots, the newspapers and magazines looks like actual paper reading with gorgeous images. During my one week usage, the app never crashed except some sluggishness while loading heavy images.

Once I’ve downloaded from App Store (the app itself is free but the newspapers require subscriptions to download and read), I found it very intuitive while navigating and tapping across various options. The home screen contains the library of all the subscriptions with a ‘New’ mark with a green ribbon to designate the copy freshness and new edition availability.

 

 Once you tap ‘Sources’, all titles are presented categorized by country and by language. The app could have been better if there are more categories like ‘featured’, ‘new arrivals’, ‘ top sellers’, ‘genre’, etc. in this screen.

Once you select any country or language, again, in the next screen, newspapers or magazines are categorized in various options. You can sort them in alphabetical, trending (I assume?) and published date as shown below:

Once you select desired newspaper or magazine, the app gives list of all publications from that publisher from which you can subscribe and read selected edition.

Once the publication is downloaded, it sits in your library of the app home screen. Notice the beautiful thumbnail view of all pages.

You really feel like you’re holding the magazine or newspaper. However, the audio translation is not that great.

You can zoom in to view any page with stunning clarity.

You can instantly share an article via various available options like Email, Twitter, Facebook.

This ‘Search’ feature is a real life saver. You can instantly search for any news item from all papers.

In the settings screen, there is an option for you to opt out downloads over 3G if you have limited bandwidth.

The app also has unique icon notifications whenever there are new editions available to your subscriptions.

Now, to discuss the downsides of this app –  it could have been better if there are more categories like ‘featured’, ‘new arrivals’, ‘ top sellers’, ‘genre’, or ‘Free’ in the ‘Sources’ screen. Even though the list of collection is huge, I do not find top sellers like ‘Cosmopolitan’ (There is no US edition, even though they have India edition), ‘Elle’, ‘Forbes’, ‘T3’ and others.

Give it a try for free on your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch from App Store link and let me know in the comments section how you feel using this app or if you prefer any other reading app over PressReader.

Head over to PressReader official website for more details, platforms and subscriptions.

How to Downgrade iPhone 3G/3GS 06.15.00 to 05.13.04 For Unlock And Working GPS

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Well, the wait is over and a new fix is now available for the users stuck on 06.15.00 baseband on their iPhone 3G/3GS devices which can restore GPS functionality and as well as to use stock IPSW files again. The iPhone Dev Team announced a baseband downgrade option in Redsn0w for those who are using the iPad’s 06.15 baseband on the iPhone3G or iPhone3GS.

[Credit]

Before you begin, I assume you have some knowledge about jailbreaking iPhone and this method works only on iPhone 3G/3GS running 06.15.00 baseband and will not apply to iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S users. Here are the steps from the Dev Team,

Typically you’d have the 06.15 baseband if you unlock with ultrasn0w but updated your iPhone baseband past 05.13.04. With this new capability, you can now downgrade specifically from 06.15 to 05.13.04 (even if you never had 05.13.04 on that device before). This gives you the best of both worlds: ultrasn0w compatibility and a normal iPhone baseband with full GPS and the ability to use stock IPSWs again.

Here are the steps:

  1. Use the “Extras->Select IPSW” button in redsn0w to tell it which firmware version you have installed (new-bootrom 3GS users can usually skip this step but it doesn’t hurt for them to do it too).
  2. Do a controlled shutdown of your iPhone (“slide to power off”). This step is very important to avoid mount problems when the ramdisk is running!
  3. Go back to the first screen and click “Jailbreak”. Enable the “Downgrade from iPad baseband” checkbox, disable Cydia if you already have it installed, and click Next to proceed through the normal DFU ramdisk steps.
  4. After the ramdisk gets launched and you see the Pwnapple running on your iPhone, you’ll eventually get to the “Flashing Baseband” step. THIS STEP TAKES A VERY LONG TIME to complete and there won’t be any feedback while its running. Please just let it be for the next 3-8 minutes! When the ramdisk has done its job it will reboot the phone on its own.

For those who are wondering if you can update your 3G or 3GS to 06.15 solely for the purposes of downgrading to 05.13.04, the answer is “yes” for 3G owners, and “maybe” for 3GS owners. The iPad baseband is not compatible with 3GS units manufactured week 34 of 2011 or later. If you have an iPhone3GS and if digits 3-5 of its Serial Number are 134 or later (xx134…), then you should NOT try to install the 06.15 baseband on your 3GS! It will brick your radio, preventing both the downgrade from working and normal iPhone software from using it as a phone! Be warned!

In simple steps –

1. Download the latest redsn0w from the iPhone Dev Team’s website.

2. Launch redsn0w.

3. Plugin iPhone. Put into DFU mode.

4. Go back to the first screen and click “Jailbreak”. Check “Downgrade from iPad baseband”, uncheck Cydia if you already installed it, and click Next. Just wait until you see the “Flashing Baseband” screen.

That’s it! You should have a working GPS now. Let us know in the comments section if you face any issues.

What’s New in iOS 6: All Best Features In One Single Post

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The new feature brain, iOS 6 of iPhone and iPad is about to release in this Fall and is lovelier with full of new features. It comes with over 200 features and is compatible  with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch 4, iPad 2 and the new iPad. There is no support for first generation iPhone and first iPad.

With the availability of iOS 6 beta to developers, I am expecting to see lot more surface in the coming months. I managed to put all the best features in this one single post. Come back and check again for more updates.

Maps

Apple ditched Google Maps in iOS 6. In yesterday’s keynote announcement, Apple kicked off with a Siri gimmick, she made fun of Google’s Android code names, and also compared Samsung’s new phone to a refrigerator.

The new Maps is vector based with visual and spoken turn by turn navigation, real time traffic updates.

Siri – Siri now understands more languages and is available on the new iPad. She can now open apps and you can also post updates to Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook Integration – You can now post directly to Facebook just like current Twitter integration. You can share photos from Camera app, location from Maps, links from Safari. Facebook contacts and birthdays are also stored directly into your OS.

Shared Photo Streams

Passbook – No more hunting through your wallet searching for gift cards, coupons, passes, or tickets. Passbook keeps everything organized and handy.

FaceTime now works over Cellular

Phone – You can now instantly reply with a message or use a preset message during an incoming call. There is also a new option ‘Do Not Disturb’ to forcibly put an end to all incoming calls at your desired time.

App Store doesn’t close anymore when downloading an app.

Custom dictionary in the cloud.

Status bar color changes to the app you are running.

Wake up to a song – You can now select any song as alarm sound. No special app required for this.

New skin for Music App just like OS X appearance.

New look for iTunes and App Store.

‘New’ mark for newly installed apps – New apps are marked with a blue ribbon to designate their freshness.

New Clock app in iPad.

Update Twitter and Facebook from Notification Center.

New VIP Inbox in Mail App.

Enhancements in Safari – iCloud tabs, full screen browsing

If you have a developer account, get started by downloading iOS 6 beta from here and let me know if you find anything new other than mentioned in this post.