Sparrow

Sparrows are a family of small passerine birds, Passeridae. They are also known as true sparrows, or Old World sparrows, names also used for a particular genus of the family, Passer. They are distinct from both the American sparrows, in the family Emberizidae, and from a few other birds sharing their name, such as the Java sparrow of the family Estrildidae. Many species nest on buildings, and the house and Eurasian tree sparrows in particular inhabit cities in large numbers, so sparrows are among the most familiar of all wild birds. They are primarily seed-eaters, though they also consume small insects. Some species scavenge for food around cities and, like gulls or rock doves, will happily eat virtually anything in small quantities.

Description

Generally, sparrows are small, plump, brown-grey birds with short tails and stubby, powerful beaks. The differences between sparrow species can be subtle. Members of this family range in size from the chestnut sparrow (Passer eminibey), at 11.4 centimetres (4.5 in) and 13.4 grams (0.47 oz), to the parrot-billed sparrow (Passer gongonensis), at 18 centimetres (7.1 in) and 42 grams (1.5 oz). Sparrows are physically similar to other seed-eating birds, such as finches, but have a vestigial dorsal outer primary feather and an extra bone in the tongue. This bone, the preglossale, helps stiffen the tongue when holding seeds. Other adaptations towards eating seeds are specialised bills and elongated and specialised alimentary canals.

Sparrow (2008 film)

Sparrow (Chinese: 文雀; pinyin: Wen que; Cantonese Yale: Man jeuk) is a 2008 Hong Kong caper film produced and directed by Johnnie To. The film stars veteran Milkyway Image cast and crew alumni Simon Yam, Gordon Lam, Law Wing-cheung and Kenneth Cheung as a small gang of pickpockets, with each member being mysteriously approached by a beautiful Taiwanese woman (Kelly Lin) with a hidden agenda.

Sparrow remained in pre-production for three years from 2005 to 2008, with To shooting the film in between other projects. The film was selected in competition at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival, premiering during the festival in February 2008. It was released in Hong Kong on 19 June 2008.

Plot

Kei (Simon Yam) is the experienced leader of a team of pickpockets.(Pickpockets are also known as "Sparrows" in Hong Kong slang). He enjoys a carefree lifestyle taking photos with his vintage Rolleiflex. One day a dashing beauty, Chun-Lei (Kelly Lin), suddenly appears in Kei's viewfinder. Kei is mesmerized. Every member of his team has an encounter with her.... But behind Chun-lei's attractive facade lies a mysterious past and a mission to set herself free.

Sparrow (email client)

Sparrow was an email client for OS X and iOS. After a 4-month beta period, Sparrow went on sale in the Mac App Store on February 9, 2011 and became the top paid and top grossing app in less than one day. On July 20, 2012, the company announced that it had been acquired by Google and was ceasing continued development of the application save critical bug fixes.

Versions

Desktop

Sparrow uses a simplified user interface reminiscent of Twitter clients such as Tweetie or iOS apps, as opposed to a more traditional email style such as Apple's Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird. Sparrow currently works with Gmail and Google Apps accounts, along with other IMAP email accounts. It also includes features such as drag-and-drop attachments, Dropbox or Box.net support for uploading attachments, Growl support, Gmail labels and keyboard shortcuts, as well as quick replies, threaded replies and easy switching between accounts.

iPhone version

In March 2012, Sparrow for iOS was released in the App Store.

Nifty

Nifty may refer to:

Twitter

Twitter (/ˈtwɪtər/) is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called "tweets".

Registered users can read and post tweets, but those who are unregistered can only read them. Users access Twitter through the website interface, SMS or mobile device app. Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco and has more than 25 offices around the world.

Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass and launched in July 2006. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with more than 100 million users posting 340 million tweets a day in 2012. The service also handled 1.6 billion search queries per day. In 2013, Twitter was one of the ten most-visited websites and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet". As of May 2015, Twitter has more than 500 million users, out of which more than 332 million are active.

History

Creation and initial reaction

Twitter's origins lie in a "daylong brainstorming session" held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, then an undergraduate student at New York University, introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group. The original project code name for the service was twttr, an idea that Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass, inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS short codes. The decision was also partly due to the fact that domain twitter.com was already in use, and it was six months after the launch of twttr that the crew purchased the domain and changed the name of the service to Twitter. The developers initially considered "10958" as a short code, but later changed it to "40404" for "ease of use and memorability". Work on the project started on March 21, 2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9:50 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST): "just setting up my twttr". Dorsey has explained the origin of the "Twitter" title:

Nifty Fifty

Nifty Fifty refers to the 50 popular large-cap stocks on the New York Stock Exchange in the 1960s and 1970s that were widely regarded as solid buy and hold growth stocks.

The fifty are credited with propelling the bull market of the early 1970s. Most are still solid performers, although a few are now defunct or otherwise worthless.

The long bear market of the 1970s that lasted until 1982 caused valuations of the nifty fifty to fall to low levels along with the rest of the market, with most of these stocks under-performing the broader market averages. A notable exception was Wal-Mart, the best performing stock on the list, with a 29.65% compounded annualized return over a 29-year period.

Because of the under-performance of most of the nifty fifty list, it is often cited as an example of unrealistic investor expectations for growth stocks. However, those who held on until the late 1990s bull market saw many of the stocks return to correct valuations.

Characteristics

The stocks were often described as "one-decision", as they were viewed as extremely stable, even over long periods of time.