If you want a program to develop and change starters (like:   .desktop files) for application and locations(URLs) here’s a app “Arronax” which can be purposed as a standalone application or as a plugin for Nautilus, Unity desktop environments and the  default file manager of the Gnome too.

Arronax as Nautilus extension

Arronax adds a menu item  “Create starter for this file/program” to the framework (right-click a file in the file manager). “Modify this starter” appears instead if the file is an application starter.

Arronax as standalone application

Arronax as standalone application can be initiated like any else application using  application menu or search function of desktop environment

Arronax supports Drag&Drop

Drag and Drop has never been this easy for example you can drag an icon from the Unity Dash or the Gnome application menu and drop it into an open Arronax window. Drop it on the free space beneath the icon rather than droping it on one of the input fields in the Arronax window.

To add the corresponding “MIME” types to the list, drag files from file manager and other apps and drop them into a input space in the “MIME types”.

To use that image as icon for the starter, drag the image files from file manager or other apps and drop them on the icon selector which is located at the left-hand side of  the Arronax window.

To use the corresponding file path, drag a file or folder from file manager or a URL from any particular website and drop it into “Start in Folder”, “Command”or “file or URL”.

Step to Install Arronax in ubuntu

Open the terminal and run the commands given below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:diesch/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install arronax

Launchpad: Arronax

Currently, Ubatar supports Twitter , Launchpad , Gravatar web services only. In further development, it is expected to add support for other web services too.

With Ubatar, you can add ribbons such as the logos of Ubuntu , Android , etc to the avatar images and customize them.  You can automatically upload the customized avatar images to supported web services at once and even download them from those supported web services.

You can install Ubatar in Ubuntu 12.04 via its official ppa  by running the following commands in the terminal.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubatar/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ubatar

Once installed, you have to authorize your accounts for Twitter, Launchpad and Gravatar web services with Ubatar.  Your Ubuntu system account is already authorized once it is installed.

Then, you can keep your Twitter , Launchpad , Gravatar and Ubuntu system’s Avatars in sync using Ubatar. Once the synchronization is complete , you get notification in the form of bubble message as shown below.

If you have created your own customized images to add as ribbon to the avatar images , you can copy and paste them to ~/.local/share/ubatar/ribbons/. Then, they will be made available for use as ribbons in Ubatar.

Launchpad: Ubatar 

EKD is an easy to use tool to batch process pictures, audios and videos files for post production. You can use EKD to transcode various video formats such as AVI Raw i420 , DV, Ogg Theora (.Ogg) ,3GP, WMV2, AMV and many more.  You can also transcode videos for the web, encode HD (High Definition), add filters, simple video editing, separate audio track from the video , convert video into the batch of images, create slidehshow , tag videos and so on.

With EKD, you can edit images, resize them, convert them into other formats, create animated gifs from the images, batch rename images, view and save data in .txt files in one or more images , add filters to the images , multiply images , insert transitions in the image sequences and so on.

In the case of audio files, you can use EKD to transcode audio files to and from audio files such as WAV, MP3, MP2, OGG, FLAC, WMA , M4A , AC3 and AAC. You can cut these audio files and even join them using KED. You can also normalize and convert an audio file.

You can download DEB package of EKD for Ubuntu from the download link given at the end of the post. Then, you can install it using Ubuntu Software Center. You can also download its packages for Debian, Fedora, Mandriva and openSUSE from the same download link.

Download EKD

To quickly cd into the new directory using pushd, you have to run pushd command in the following format in the Ubuntu terminal.

pushd /path/to/new directory

Now, to quickly return back to the previously visited directory , just run the popd command in the terminal.

popd

In this way, you can quickly switch between the directories in Ubuntu terminal using pusd and popd.

Wallpaper Finer is cross platform tool and is available for Ubuntu , Linux and Windows. You can simply drag and drop the images and crop them to set them as desktop wallpaper by clicking To Desktop button at the top right. The cropping changes made in the image are saved in the temporary location and lets you save the cropped images permanently into the formats JPEG, BMP and PNG.

You can download its DEB package for Ubuntu from the download link given at the end of the post.Then, you can use Ubuntu software center to install Wallpaper Finer.

Once installed, you can launch it by pressing ALT + F2 and running the wallpaperfiner command. OR, you can simply run the same command in the terminal.

Download Wallpaper Finer

trash-cli trashes files by recording the original path, deletion dated, and permissions. You can install trash-cli in Ubuntu 12.04, 11.10 , 11.04, and 10.10 by running following commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get install trash-cli

Once installed, you have to run trash-cli from the terminal. trash-cli makes use of following four commands to perform the corresponding tasks as described below.

• restore-trash:  restores deleted items from the trash
• trash-empty: deletes files from the trash
• trash-list: shows the lists of files
• trash-put: deletes the files and directories into the trash

So, in order to delete a file and directory into the trash , you have to run following commands in the terminal.

trash-put <filename>

where <filename> is the name of the file or directory.

In order to empty the trash completely , you have to run the following commands in the terminal.

trash-empty

In order to delete only the files that have deleted some days ago , you have to run the following commands in the terminal.

trash-empty <days>

where <days> is the number of the day at which the files were deleted into the trash.

In order to list all the files deleted into the trash, you have to run the following commands in the terminal.

trash-list

In order to search for a particular file deleted into the trash, you have to run the following commands in the terminal.

trash-list | grep <filename>

where , <filename> is the name of the file to be searched.

Download trash-cli

DeVeDe depends on Mplayer , Mencoder, DVDAuthor, VCDImager and MKisofs . Similarly, it also requires Python, PyGTK and PyGlade. With DeVeDe, you can create DVDs and CDs (VCD, SVCD or CVD) suitable home DVD players from any set of video files. The video formats supported by DeVeDe are mpeg, mpeg4, avi, asf, wmv, ogg, flash videos and so on.

You can download .DEB package of DeVeDe from the download link given below and install it in Ubuntu using Ubuntu Software Center.

Download DeVeDe

In order to install Anmnesis in Ubuntu , download its .tar.gz package from the download link given at the end of the post. Then, extract it to the Home folder.

Then, run the following commands in the terminal specifying path to anamnesis.py file in your Home folder.

sudo ln -s /path/to/anamnesis.py /usr/bin/anamnesis

Then, configure the following command to be exectued on the session start-up (System — > Preferences –> Session Apps).

anamnesis –start

Configure a shortcut to its graphic interface (System –> Preferences –> Keyboard Shortcuts)

anamnesis –browse

Then, use the following commands in the terminal to run it .

 anamnesis <options>

where <options> is the list options that you can use to run anmnesis. The list of options can be viewed from the link to the Homepage given at the end of the post.

Homepage: Anamnesis

IPTraf is an IP traffic montior and it displays information about IP traffic paassing over your network . Usually the information  shown by IPTraf are about connection packets and byte counts, interface statistics and activity indicators , TCP/UDP traffic breakdowns , and LAN station packet and byte counts.It also displays ICMP details and OSPF packet types.

IPTraf supports various interface types such as Ethernet , FDDI, ISDN, SLIP , PPP and local loopback.  You can get more detailed information about its features from the link to its homepage given at the end of the post.

IPTraf is distributed as part of Ubuntu , Debian, S.u.S.E,  TurboLinux, Conectiva and Trinux. You can install IPTraf in Ubuntu from the Ubuntu Software Center or by running the following commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get install iptraf

Once installed , you can run IPTraf by running following commands in the terminal.

sudo iptraf

The interface of iptraf appears in the terminal with menu driven operations. You can select one from the menu and hit Enter to execute the selected operation.

Homepage: IPtraf

Some of the main features of GWoffice has bee described below.

1. GWoffice has HUD support for any keyboard bound command.
2. You can use shortcuts for quickly creating the new documents.
3. Theming according to the current GTK+ theme.
4. You can drag and drop files onto the Unity Launcher icon of GWoffice to upload them to Google Drive. The document types that are supported for this feature are odt, ods , xls and doc .
5. You can set GWoffice to download all documents automatically and resync them on every system startup as shown below by clicking on Menu –> Preferences .

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tombeckmann/ppa