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Sparrow update eats bugs, changes default settings
A minor update to Mail.app competitor Sparrow was released today. Sparrow 1.2.1, available through the Mac App Store, provides fixes to a number of crash-related bugs, as well as some changes to default app settings. According to the release notes, the Facebook wall post option is now unchecked by default, and the inbox bar is hidden by default as well. There's also a new way to expand or collapse all messages in a conversation thread by Alt-clicking the top message. Be sure to read TUAW's full review of Sparrow 1.2.
Sparrow 1.2 first look: A lot to like and a few minor gripes
As a convert from Mail.app to Sparrow (US$9.99), I naturally got a bit overexcited when I heard that version 1.2 of the Mac email app was going to be unveiled at TechCrunch Disrupt yesterday. After downloading and installing the latest version from the Mac App Store, I've got to say that I like some of the changes, while a few of the updates aren't making me as ecstatic. The developers of Sparrow refer to Sparrow 1.2 as "the world's first social email client" and proudly display the Facebook icon in their marketing materials, but the integration with Facebook (below) is actually quite limited. First, you can add Facebook friends directly from Sparrow, eliminating the need to make a separate trip to Facebook to do that. The update also provides an option for users to link Sparrow to their Facebook account so that emails from friends display their Facebook avatars. Sparrow 1.2 also grabs images from Address Book and has support for Gravatar, providing a way to quickly identify incoming emails by sight. In his announcement at TechCrunch Disrupt, Sparrow co-founder Dom Leca noted that the company is working on integration with Twitter, LinkedIn and and Tumblr as well. In theory, this is pretty cool. Seeing TUAW Editor-in-chief Victor Agreda, Jr. peering at me from my inbox is enough to get my attention. In practice, some of us get a ton of emails from individuals and corporations that we don't follow on Facebook and don't have Address Book entries for. That means that the inbox is cluttered with the default avatar image, which is a boring gray head on an even more boring light gray background. Fortunately, there's a preference setting for hiding those pictures.
Sparrow announces new features at TechCrunch Disrupt
Update 6:45 PM EST: Version 1.2 of Sparrow is now available in the Mac App Store. Full list of what's new is here. Moments ago, Dom Leca of Sparrow took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York and announced a few new features for Sparrow -- a powerful and elegant email client. They also gave us a few details on the financials for the company. Starting with a team of 4, the company raised $250,000 and as of today have made $500,000 in revenue. Not bad! New features for Sparrow include some Tumblr integration [Coming soon, Ed.], but most interesting to me is the Facebook integration. If you are using your @facebook email, you will be able to access profile images in Sparrow using Facebook Connect. Further, emails from Facebook will show the profile pic for that contact. Very nice. Sparrow promises some future Twitter and LinkedIn integration. Clearly, Sparrow isn't just a Gmail client, it is becoming a powerful messaging and context platform in itself. A Sparrow update should be available tonight or tomorrow on the Mac App Store, Leca said. Check our Facebook page tomorrow for some free copies of Sparrow courtesy of AppSumo. Update: Dom didn't mention it onstage, but told me on Monday that the new Sparrow introduces a Unified Inbox as well as some features detailed on this TechCrunch post. Hurray! Update 2: Corrected a mistake regarding @facebook emails. It does NOT support this, but allows you to use Facebook Connect instead. Sorry for the error. Also, Tumblr support is "coming soon."
Sparrow 1.1 lands in the Mac App Store
The eagerly-awaited 1.1 update to the Sparrow email app (US$9.99) has landed in the Mac App Store, adding the promised features and bug fixes. The app now supports general IMAP, so for those of you who were waiting to add Yahoo!, AOL or MobileMe accounts to Sparrow and totally ditch Mail.app, you can now do so. For the many Mac users who use the app to access your Gmail accounts, Priority Inbox is now integrated into the app. My personal favorite new feature is a dedicated view for browsing your unread email. Simply choosing "unread" from a tiny pop-up at the top of the inbox displays only your unread messages. There's also an unobtrusive formatting bar for messages, so you're free to change the font, style, size, color, alignment and indention, or even add a bullet list in the compose window. One thing that made me surprisingly happy was the new three finger swipe multi-touch gesture for showing or hiding the preview pane. On an 11.6" MacBook Air, it's nice to be able to minimize the real estate taken up by the Sparrow window. If you've created contact groups in the Mac OS X Address Book, Sparrow 1.1 now supports using those groups for doing mass mailings to a team. The Sparrow team also fixed a long list of bugs in the initial versions, improved sync with Address Book, and added improvements to the mail database, scroll performance and memory use. The update takes little or no time to install through the Mac App Store, and for existing Sparrow users, it's a solid and welcome update.
Sparrow chirps out feature list for version 1.1
Several of the bloggers here at TUAW, including myself, are big fans of Sparrow. It's a very Twitter-like Mac email app that is fast, feature filled and has a clean user interface -- and it doesn't have a Quick Bar. Today the Sparrow team announced that Sparrow 1.1 will be submitted to the Mac App Store within a few days, and that the app should be available by the end of March. The big change for Sparrow is that the new version will support most IMAP accounts, not just Gmail IMAP accounts. Any MobileMe, Yahoo or AOL account can now be added to Sparrow, and custom IMAP providers like Rackspace, Fastmail, Zimbra and Dreamhost are also supported. At the present time, signatures are customizable by account. Version 1.1 adds "per alias" signatures, so that if you have multiple aliases for a single account, each alias can have a custom signature. There's a new formatting bar for helping you compose more beautiful emails. It provides flexibility in selecting fonts, font size, text color, quote levels, links and list formatting. To retain the clean inbox that Sparrow is well known for, busy users will have a new "minimal mode" to hide the message preview in the list of messages. That'll be helpful when we do giveaways here at TUAW and get tons of comment emails. Sparrow will also gain a bunch of multi-touch gestures, including a pinch to open or close a message and three-finger swipes to open and close the panel, navigate the message list or switch accounts. Contact groups will be supported as well. All in all, Sparrow 1.1 looks like it will be a winner. Goodbye, Mail.app!
Sparrow gets AppleScript support, immediately put to use with OmniFocus
Sparrow, the sleek new email client for Mac OS X, was updated yesterday to improve speed, fix some minor bugs and add some limited AppleScript support. While the changes might not be apparent to many Sparrow users, they were apparently an inspiration to Don Southard, who immediately figured out a way to use the AppleScript support with OmniFocus. Southard's quick work allows him to delegate an OmniFocus task by sending an email with details about the task to another person via Sparrow. The script is saved and placed into the ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/OmniFocus folder, and then a script icon named "Send to Sparrow" is placed on the OmniFocus toolbar at a place of your choosing. To delegate a task, you select a task, then click the icon to send it to Sparrow. The task's name, context and note fields are included in the email, with Delegated Task as the subject line. As Southard notes, you can easily rearrange the order of the task fields within the script. It's a simple but effective AppleScript, and demonstrates the power of Apple's venerable scripting language in integration of different apps. As Sparrow evolves from the current 1.0.1 version, it would be nice to see additional AppleScript support built in so that people like Don Southard can do even more fun and useful things with the app. [via MacStories, image from Tech Blog /via Dirt Don]
Enter to win a copy of the Sparrow email client for Mac
Sparrow's popular email application made its official debut in the Mac App Store this week and hit the store with a bang. Within a few hours of its launch, the application climbed to the top of the application charts and has received very favorable reviews. Sparrow is an email client that dazzles with its simple interface and back-to-the-basics functionality, including drop dead easy navigation and time-saving shortcuts. Currently, the application supports Gmail with IMAP support expected in the next update. It's an excellent email client for an OS X user looking for something different. To help you get startled with Sparrow, we have five free promo codes to giveaway to five lucky TUAW readers. The rules for the giveaway are located below. Best of luck to all who enter!
Sparrow mail application now available in the Mac App Store
Sparrow announced today that version 1.0 of its popular email application is now available in the Mac App Store. The developers listened to customer feedback and dropped the price from US$25 to a much lower $9.99. The paid version is free of advertisements and lets you add multiple email accounts. A free, ad-supported version, Sparrow Lite, is also completed and awaiting App Store approval. A quick note for those that installed the beta version. You will notice the Mac App Store detects this beta version and prevents you from purchasing the full 1.0 version. To purchase version 1.0 from the App Store, you must uninstall the beta app using the instructions here. Once the beta version is removed, purchasing and installing the paid version will be as easy as pie. Thus far, the customer response to Sparrow has been incredibly favorable. After a mere few hours on the Mac App Store, the mail application has already climbed to the #1 spot on the top paid applications chart. It is also #2 in top grossing applications and is bested only by Apple's Aperture. We have been following the application since its debut late last year and have been impressed with its elegant simplicity and clean interface. We recommend you give Sparrow a try.
Sparrow for Mac coming to Mac App Store
The developers behind the up and coming Sparrow email client confirmed that version 1.0 is almost completed. A successful private beta trial is almost over, and the last reported bugs are being fixed. Sparrow is on track to be submitted to the Mac App Store by the end of the week. Along with a new version of the application, the developers also unveiled the new logo for Sparrow, which is shown above. Released in October as a beta, the recent beta 7 version of Sparrow included support for advertisements that could be switched off in the preferences. When this version debuted, the developers confirmed that future versions of the email client would be available as a free or paid version. Now that Sparrow's appearance in the Mac App Store is imminent, pricing for this premium version has been announced. According to Sparrow's blog post, the pricing will be as follows: Paid: Sparrow will cost $24,99 but early birds will benefit from the $19,99 introductory price. The premium version of Sparrow will not include ads and will let you add multiple accounts, while Sparrow Lite, the free version, will include Carbon Ads and will be limited to one account only. [Via Macstories]
Sparrow for Mac beta hands-on review
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Helvetica} Sparrow is essentially what happens when Gmail and Tweetie for Mac hook up and have a baby. It's very much what Gmail should be on the Mac -- minimalist and classy. I tried out Mailplane a few months ago, but couldn't quite bring myself to pull the trigger on the purchase. I won't with Sparrow. It's just that good -- especially for a beta. We had a couple of recent pieces announcing the plethora of updates to the program, but now we're getting beyond the pretty icon and we like what we're seeing.
Sparrow for Mac beta 7 adds Gmail shortcuts, quick labeling, more
Sparrow, a minimalist email program for Mac OS X, has been updated to beta version 7. This latest version includes several bug fixes including one that addresses the crashing problem plaguing Leopard users. Sparrow has also added several new features such as a progress bar, quick labels, Gmail shortcuts and support for plain text emails. The UI has been refreshed and now features an updated mail composition window and a new conversation view for your threaded messages. Also included is a download-on-demand feature that lets users with a large volume of email limit synchronization between a Gmail account and the Sparrow client. When toggled on, this feature lets you clean out your mailbox online and then download only the most important messages on demand. As we reported earlier, Sparrow supports multiple Gmail accounts and support for other IMAP-based email accounts is expected in a future version. The developers behind Sparrow intend to bring the app to the Mac App Store when it opens on January 6 and are working on two versions of this email client -- a free, ad-supported version and a paid version without ads. The current beta 7 version already includes advertisements but these ads can be switched off in the Advanced panel of the preferences. Performance of the app is solid and the design in simple, yet pleasing. It is so refreshing to use a client that is dedicated solely to email and does not try to be the hub for all your online personas. The beta is available for free from Sparrow's website, so you can check it out for yourself.
Nokia following Booklet 3G with ARM-based smartbook in mid-2010?
Those semiconductor semi-gossipers at DigiTimes want you to know that Nokia's not stopping with the Booklet 3G and in fact has an ARM-based smartbook set for mass consumption in the middle of 2010. According to its sources, Espoo's in the process of settling with ODMs now, and the speculation is that it'll go to either Compal or Foxconn (a.k.a. Hon Hai Precision Industry). If all of this sounds familiar, that's because it is: we've heard multiple reports this year that suggested a smartbook / MID with either a multicore ARM Cortex A9 Sparrow chip or Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor. We're not discounting it, especially considering that netbook bit panned out, but mid-2010 is quite a ways off -- no telling when we'll be hearing anything else on the matter.
Nokia working on laptops, ARM-powered MID?
If you were looking for proof that the line between smartphones and laptops is rapidly starting to blur, look no further -- Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasuvo told Reuters today that the Finnish company is "looking very actively" at making a laptop, since "what we we know as a cellphone and what we know as a PC are in many ways converging." Sounds about right to us -- but even more interestingly, we're also getting word from the generally-reliable Mobile-Review that Espoo's working on a MID powered by the new multicore ARM Cortex A9 Sparrow chip. If M-R is to be believed, the new device will only somewhat resemble the current N-series Internet Tablets, instead featuring a slide-out keyboard with diamond-shaped keys and a new widget-based interface. That's a mockup from Unwired View above, and we think it looks pretty nice -- although we're hoping Nokia's moved well beyond this hybrid N97 / Internet Tablet design language by the time this thing launches in 2011. This sort of convergence is definitely the next big trend, so we've got to ask: smartphone, MID, netbook or laptop -- what's in your (potentially giant) pocket?[Via Electronic Pulp]Read - Unwired View on ARM-powered MIDRead - Reuters on Nokia laptops
Video: Girl builds game with Kodu, beats Robbie Bach at it
During Microsoft's CES keynote presentation, Robbie Bach showed off Kodu, Microsoft's new game building ... game. Actually, to be more precise, it was shown off by Sparrow, an "actual 12 year old girl" who demonstrated her own gaming creation in which she and Bach raced each other to place rocks into a house. We don't really understand it either, but the point is she made the game herself and was even able to make quick changes to it right on stage. Don't take our word for it though, because you can watch it happen yourself. Check out a video of Sparrow's creation after the break.
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 screens exist
We don't want to make any value judgments, so we'll stick to the facts. A Wii game based on Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End exists in some unreleased stage, and Jeux-France posted two screenshots of it, which we have posted here for you. The screens depict characters from the movie in what appear to be situations from the whole series. Sometimes the characters engage in combat against enemy characters. There is a display on the screen of the appropriate Wii controller motions for the situation.We don't want to speculate too much, but we're guessing that this game will be pressed onto discs and released to retailers near the time of the movie's release (late May). Should people want one of these discs containing the game, they will be able to obtain one in exchange for currency.[Via NeoGAF]
"Audio telescope" could help mitigate bird strikes
Bird strike has always struck us (har) as a bit of a misnomer. As British comedian Eddie Izzard once pointed out, birds don't exactly fly around looking for planes to go after -- the act of a bird hitting a plane's body or engine should be more adequately described as "engine suck." Either way, it's caused $2 billion worth of damage to US-based aircraft since 1990, according to the FAA. So, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology is currently working on a solution that involves a terrestrial setup of 192 microphones (an "audio telescope," if you will) that aims to pick up on bird sounds and detect what type of bird is approaching oncoming aircraft. The idea is that while a smaller sparrow isn't usually much concern, a larger hawk or Canada goose would be a problem when colliding with planes. One big problem though: currently the audio telescope can only detect birds at distances of a few hundred meters; Vincent Stanford of the NIST says that to really be effective, the telescope would "need to be up to around 2.5 kilometers." So get crackin' fellas, looks like your work is cut out for you.
Another Dead Man's Chest trailer and new screens
For those of you who love the antics of one Captain Jack Sparrow (and if you don't, why?), the 2nd official trailer for the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest game has been posted at Gamespot. Head on over and check it out as it has lots of action, showing Jack take down some natives, navigating environmental puzzles, and battling a gigantic squid. Along with the new trailer, there are also a plethora of new screens available centering around the naval combat that will be in the game.
