Brazil

[tweet https://twitter.com/xiaomi/status/616414920855257089/]

Xiaomi has announced sales of 34.7M smartphones in the first half of 2015, up 33% year-on-year. While the number is a substantial one, it’s a long way short of the 227% growth it experienced last year, and the company told Re/code that it has reduced its target for the year from 100M to 80M units … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

According to the Moto G page on the Brazilian Motorola website, there appears to be another model of the company’s affordable Moto X alternative in the works, sporting LTE and a variety of other minor changes (via Android Police). It was only a matter of time before this device popped up consider its predecessor had 4G capable model, and now it’s (almost) here.

Expand
Expanding
Close

When Motorola was originally acquired by Google back in 2011, Punit Soni left his post at the Mountain View company and joined Motorola as the Vice President of Product Development. Today, however, in a post on Google+, Soni announced that he is departing position at Motorola Mobility.

Expand
Expanding
Close

A judge in Brazil has had it with the anonymous bullying carried out on social networking apps like Secret  and has stepped in to put a stop to it, according to a report from  Estadao [translation]. Judge Paulo Cesar de Carvalho has ruled that Google must delete the application from its Play Store, but the ruling doesn’t stop there.

According to the report, the judge has demanded that Google remotely delete the application from every device that has installed it in the country. While that might sound like a hilarious case of a judge not understanding how technology works, you may be surprised to learn that it’s actually a capability that Google has, sort of.

Expand
Expanding
Close

A group of about 20 men armed with submachine guns raided a factory in the Brazilian city of Campinas on Monday, escaping with approximately $36 million in stolen Samsung products. Among the items looted included smartphones, tablets and notebooks, although no specific models were identified. It is unknown if Samsung owned the factory, or simply stored product there. 
Expand
Expanding
Close

The 2014 World Cup is set to kick off next week in Brazil, and Google seems to be excited about the event. Earlier this week the company updated the Chromecast with support for WatchESPN streaming, meaning that all 64 World Cup games will be able to be streamed to the device. Now, in a post on the Lat Long blog, Google has announced some new features for Maps exclusively for the World Cup.
Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVp34KQbAqk]

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, the company which specialises in imitating Apple’s marketing for its Android handsets, has launched its first tablet, reports Reuters – and it’s an iPad mini clone. The company has even named it the Mi Pad …

Expand
Expanding
Close

When the clock strikes November 13th, all eyes will be on Motorola and the announcement of their upcoming Moto G. We’ve just learned via Motorola’s Twitter and G+ pages that the device will be launched from Sao Paulo, Brazil. What that might indicate is that it is a mid-range smartphone meant for global emerging markets. Sao Paulo is an unusual venue for a high-profile smartphone launch and we’re hypothesizing that means the specs won’t be blowing anyone away. The tweet from Motorola this morning informed the world of the new launch details and provided a link to a Google+ page where it’s likely more information will be released as the announcement goes down.
Expand
Expanding
Close

According to a report from ReporterBrasil, an organization and news agency reporting on labor rights issues in Brazil, prosecutors in the country have filed a lawsuit against Samsung related to poor working conditions in one of the company’s factories. According to the report, the lawsuit was filed after the Ministry of Labor (MPT) found labor rights violations in a Samsung plant located in Zona Franca de Manaus that’s used to assemble some of the company’s smartphones supplied to Latin America:

The lawsuit filed by prosecutors is based on the assessment notices by registered auditors of the Ministry of Labour and Employment (MTE) after two inspections made at the factory in Manaus – one in May 2011 and another in May this year. Through technical analysis, they found that the employees of South Korean company come to hold three times more strokes per minute than the limit considered safe for ergonomic studies.

Some of the infractions mentioned in the translated report include workers spending in excess of 10-15 hours a day on foot without a break for up to 27 workdays in a row, and around 2,018 requests by employees to be removed due to health problems. The plant is said to employ around 5,600 employees total:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Google has provided these incredible animated GIFs illustrating the Earth’s landscape changes over the decades for Time‘s Timelapse project.

The images show deforestation in the Amazon of Brazil, glaciers retreating in Alaska, and lakes drying up in Las Vegas sprawls as well as other landscapes.

Check out more illustrations below…

Expand
Expanding
Close

The Association of Newspapers in Brazil is not happy with Google News, as it recently opted out of the free news aggregator, over complaints that Google crops news headlines and lede paragraphs for the decade-old service without permission nor monetary reimbursement.

The 154-member ANJ roughly equals 90 percent of Brazil’s newspaper circulation. The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas reported on a dispute that occurred earlier this week between an ANJ member’s lawyer and a Google executive at the American Press Association General Assembly in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The contention apparently “fueled one of the most intense debates during the Inter American Press Association’s 68th General Assembly.”

According to the Knight Center:

On one side of the debate were defenders of news companies’ authoring rights like German attorney Felix Stang, who said, “platforms like Google’s compete directly with newspapers and magazines because they work like home pages and use content from them.”

On the other, Google representatives said their platform provides a way to make journalistic content available to more people. According to Marcel Leonardi, the company’s public policies director, Google News channels a billion clicks to news sites around the world.

ANJ president Carlos Fernando Lindenberg Neto specifically told the Knight Center that providing the “first few lines of our stories to internet users, (Google) reduces the chances that they will look at the entire story in our websites.”

Google Public Policy Director Marcel Leonardi refuted Neto’s comment during the IAPA debate, claiming if the reader is “satisfied with the small blurb (we offer), that means the story did not call his attention that much.”

Expand
Expanding
Close

Google announced today on the Lat Long Blog that it added even more Street View imagery to Google Maps; this time for Brazil and pre-hispanic Mexican cities. While there was already Street View imagery available for the locations, the latest additions include panoramic imagery for 70+ cities throughout Brazil including “colonial cities like Fortaleza, architecturally compelling cities like Brasilia and coastal landmarks like Recife, Natal and Salvador.”

You can even virtually travel to the west side of Brazil and visit Foz de Iguaçu, or if you’re planning an upcoming trip, preview the the area around your hotel as well as nearby shopping malls, historic monuments, restaurants and more. With so many upcoming events, like the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, we’re excited to share the riches of Brazil’s cities not only with tourists from around the world, but also with locals who might want to visit a city, neighborhood or landmark they’ve not yet experienced.

Also included in today’s update is 30 Mesoamerican archaeological areas in Mexico, including the 1,100-year-old Kukulkan’s Temple pyramid, and other sites such as Teotihuacan, Chichen Itza, and Tulum.

Google is using witty animation to enlighten folks in Brazil about the conditions of online advertising and how its service helps streamline those operations.

The Internet giant recently hosted five animated videos on YouTube as part of a Brazil-based campaign for Google Ads products. According to TheNextWeb (via Brainstorm9), agencies Pepper Melon and Ño Empire co-created the farcical advertisements that focus on brand awareness, audience engagement, efficient technology use, target selection, and new product launches.

The commercials are in Brazilian Portuguese with English subtitles, check ’em out:

Expand
Expanding
Close