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The CEO of laptop maker Lenovo gave away part of his annual bonus – $3 million – to his employees.

Sparrow, which develops an eponymous e-mail client app for OS X and iOS, announced on their Web site Friday that they’ve been acquired by Google and are becoming part of the Gmail team.

The statement from Sparrow CEO Dom Leca said, “Now we’re joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google.”

He said that the Sparrow development team will be “working on new things at Google,” but Sparrow will remain available and the team will continue to provide support for users.

Terms of the acquisition were not revealed.

Roger Ebert:

Wednesday, July 18, is the 20th anniversary of our marriage. How can I begin to tell you about Chaz?She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed to be heading. If my cancer had come, and it would have, and Chaz had not been there with me, I can imagine a descent into lonely decrepitude. I was very sick. I might have vegetated in hopelessness.This woman never lost her love, and when it was necessary she forced me to want to live. She was always there believing I could do it, and her love was like a wind forcing me back from the grave.

Film citric Roger Ebert’s touching love letter to his wife. Excuse me – I’ve got something in my eye.

Hell Yeah!

There’s also no better way to gain a view into the most interesting startups than to start acquiring some, notes economist Paul Kedrosky. “[Mayer] needs to take that fire hose of startups that used to be directed at Google and redirect it at Yahoo. And the way you redirect it is to show that you’re a frequent, active acquirer.”

Agreed.

Centives:

We all think about it several times a day (it’s not just us, right?…right?) How much would it cost to become Batman? In anticipation of the impending release of The Dark Knight Rises, Centives decided to find out.The total bill? $2.8 million to show the criminal scum that the city doesn’t belong to them.

I laugh every time I see it. […]

CNET:

With AT&T officially announcing its “Mobile Share” plans and joining Verizon Wireless, there will soon be two options for customers who want to get into a family plan for data services.While these plans aren’t the best deals for individuals, large families or even groups of really, really close friends may want to consider them. That’s because the more people who sign on, the lower the price per gigabyte and user. Of course, if someone is a heavy data user, that person may want to stick with an individual plan, or risk hogging up the total available data for everyone.By and large, the plans are fairly similar.

In this week’s jam packed episode, Jim and Dan discuss Yahoo’s new CEO, Office 2013, Apple’s Austin campus expansion, iPhone rumors, guitars, and much more!Sponsored by Rackspace, Squarespace (coupon code DANSENTME7 for 10% off), and Hover (coupon code DANSENTME or 10% off).

So smitten were they with this kitten, in fact, that they wrote him in for mayor instead of deciding on one of the two lesser candidates. Mayor Stubbs has held his position ever since.

The cat has been mayor for 15 years. He’s probably better than most politicians.

Fiat will offer Italian buyers of its 500L coupe a built-in espresso maker, saving them from having to stop at roadside cafés to get a caffeine boost.

AT&T will add shared data plans in August, following Verizon’s lead.

This was just posted to Fender’s Web site.

7-Eleven convenience stores have begun rolling out a Slurpee-style mashed potato dispenser. End of civilization, folks.

I’ve mentioned this one before, but it’s classic, so here you go. […]

That’s one angry Canadian.

Fred Wilson:

The Yahoo! board went out and got Marissa to join the company. And they kept their mouths shut in the process and the news surprised everyone. That’s how you run a company, a board, and a process. Well done.

Agreed, Yahoo did a good job with that one. Now let’s see what Marissa can do.

Former Apple VP Bertrand Serlet has joined the board of directors of Parallels, the company that makes virtualization software for the Mac.

A look at 28 Olympic stadiums.

Marissa Mayer, Google’s first female engineer and one of its highest-profile executives, has been tapped by Yahoo for its CEO spot, vacant since Scott Thompson resigned in May.

Well, the kid didn’t pass the test, but he got an A+ for creativity.

You never saw Woody like this in Toy Story.

Mother nature can be scary.

Dan and Jim talk about Apple’s departure and quick return to EPEAT certification, the Tweetbot for Mac alpha release, Android vs. iOS market share, business models for blogs, and much more!

Sponsored by Freshbooks, Hover (use coupon DANSENTME for 10% off), and Squarespace (use coupon DANSENTME7 for 10% off).

Time to be a meeting rockstar! Meshin Recall’s calendar for Evernote helps you prepare, organize and succeed!

Meshin Recall unifies all your calendars in one place. You can easily create or link Evernote entries (text, audio or photos) with specific meetings, share notes with fellow meeting attendees and use tags to categorize and search your entries.

Meshin Recall is available for both iOS and Android. Stay tuned for more exciting apps from Meshin, a PARC company.

Digg, the once-powerful social news site, was sold today for $500K – a pittance compared to some other recent social network transactions.

Americans’ confidence in television news is at a new low by one percentage point, with 21% of adults expressing a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in it. This marks a decline from 27% last year and from 46% when Gallup started tracking confidence in television news in 1993.

Can’t say I blame them.