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It’s Come To This…

loswhit — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:28:31 PST

Are you caught up in the hype or tired of the hype?
Poor pig…
Los

‘Anamorphism’ : A Stunning Street Project by Ninja182

Lavinia — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:13:54 PST

Even though this is not directly connected to interior design, we consider this to be an art form worthy of you attention here on Freshome. ‘Anamorphism’ is a project initiated by the artists over at the graphic design studio Truly Design. The amazing “paintings” were made using contemporary techniques and a lot of passion. They are only visible from a certain angle of the building, for example the image with the head phones can only be seen if you are standing in front of it and at least one meter away. We definitely would not mind stumbling upon one of these during our daily walks. -via

This is a post from the ‘Anamorphism’ : A Stunning Street Project by Ninja182

iPhone Coming to Verizon in 2010 [RUMOR]

Adam Ostrow — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:21:51 PST

Many signs point to the Apple and AT&T agreement that makes the latter the exclusive carrier of the iPhone within the US coming to an end within the next year.

For starters, non-exclusivity has been profitable for Apple in other parts of the world. Moreover, even AT&T’s CEO acknowledges the deal won’t last forever.

And while Verizon might be all about showing off what Droid does right now, a new report suggests it could become the first carrier other than AT&T to offer iPhone on American soil, starting in the second half of 2010.

According to a report obtained by Apple Insider, “Apple has contracted to produce a UMTS/CDMA hybrid iPhone due in the third quarter of next year that will enable the company to sell a single global handset to all carriers, and specifically to Verizon Wireless in the US” – the significance of CDMA being that it’s the standard that Verizon’s network uses, versus AT&T’s GSM.

As you might suspect, there’s currently no comment from Apple or Verizon, but it’s not the first time the two companies have been linked. Just last month, a report surfaced suggesting that Verizon and Apple were already testing a 4G version of the iPhone. While we await more details, we can’t help but be amused by how we might end up looking back at the current attack ad battle taking place between Verizon, AT&T, and Apple if a Verizon iPhone comes to fruition.

Tags: apple, att, iphone, verizon

Smartphone Showdown: iPhone 3GS vs. Motorola Droid Round 2

Greg Kumparak — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:49:51 PST

My inbox is in pain. Almost immediately after I hit the publish button on last week’s iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid Smartphone Showdown, a torrential blast of comments and questions has been barraging just about every communication inlet I’ve got. Phone calls. Twitter DMs. Lots, and lots, and lots of emails. Across the board, it all seems to indicate one thing: people want more. We hear you. There are a number of worthwhile topics I simply didn’t get a chance to touch on, and a few observations I’ve made since that are worth mentioning. For those, may we present: Round 2.

Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch >>

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Verizon Droid Meta-Review: “A Killer Phone”

Barb Dybwad — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:27:51 PST

November 6 is an important day for both Verizon and Motorola — and to a somewhat lesser extent, Google. The U.S.’s largest carrier is unleashing its first Android device, and from the swath of reviews already in it looks to be a monster of a phone. Thus far it is being hailed as both the best Android phone to date as well as the best phone in Verizon’s current lineup.

The Droid is getting high marks for its speed, audio quality, gorgeous screen, overall build quality, choice of physical or virtual keyboard, multitasking functionality, home and car docking options, and free Google Maps Navigation, among other niceties. Plus, it gets all the benefits of running on Verizon’s extensive 3G network, which means far less dropped calls than certain other popular phones that start with an i.

As with most devices, of course, it’s not without its drawbacks. Several reviewers dinged it for lack of multi-touch support, a lackluster camera, lack of auto-syncing software, and the paltry size of the memory available for storing apps — only 560 MB of the phone’s built-in memory is available since you somewhat inexplicably can’t store apps on the 16GB microSD memory card that comes with the phone. And although the Android Market is gaining ground on the Apple App Store in many ways, it still falls short in terms of sheer selection (12,000 apps to Apple’s 100,000+) and overall quality of the programs available.

We’ve rounded up a number of Droid reviews from trusted sources below for those of you who want to check out various hands-on perspectives and opinions on Verizon’s shiny new smartphone. Do you plan to pick up the Droid? Let us know in the comments.

Engadget: “The DROID is an excellent smartphone with many (if not all) of the features that a modern user would expect, and if you’re a Verizon customer, there probably isn’t a more action packed device on the network.”

Boy Genius Report: “We absolutely love the Motorola DROID. It’s a perfect storm between awesome hardware, great software, and a great network. That’s not to say it’s for everyone. It isn’t the most consumer-friendly device off the bat and it’s going to take some time and a whole bunch of improvements before we think Android can totally compete in the consumer space like others can.”

Gizmodo: “It’s this simple: If you don’t buy an iPhone, buy a Droid. It’s the best phone on Verizon, and with Android 2.0, the second best smartphone you can buy, period. It’s flawed, deeply in some ways. But it’s the second best phone around, on the best network around.”

David Pogue (The New York Times): “Since Verizon seems to want a Droid-iPhone faceoff, here it is: the Droid wins on phone network, customizability, GPS navigation, speaker, physical keyboard, removable battery and openness (free operating system, mostly uncensored app store). The iPhone wins on simplicity, refinement, thinness, design, Web browsing, music/video synching with your computer, accessory ecosystem and quality/quantity of the app store.”

Walt Mossberg (The Wall Street Journal): “The Droid is potentially a big win for Verizon, Motorola and Google, as well as for loyal Verizon customers.”

CNet: “Some minor design issues and multimedia quibbles aside, the Motorola Droid is the most powerful and fastest Google Android device to date. It fully embraces the openness of the Android platform and offers Verizon customers a smartphone that certainly rivals the other touch-screen devices on the market.”

LA Times: “We’re getting this out of the way now: Motorola’s Droid is the best Google phone on the market. Here’s another one: Droid is the best phone on Verizon.”

Disclosure: Motorola and Verizon are Mashable sponsors.

Reviews: Android, Android Market, Google, Mashable

Tags: android, droid, Google, Google Android, metareview, Mobile 2.0, Motorola, motorola droid, phones, review, verizon, verizon droid

A Meaningful Distraction: The Beeper that Wouldn’t Stop

John Dyer — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:00:00 PST

In the course of studying the nature of technology, I am often faced with the negative side of our tools. So, for this blog’s first birthday (happy birthday, blog!), I thought I’d share a story of someone using a technology in novel way to deeply and redemptively enter the lives of those around him.

The Way Life Sometimes Goes

My pastor, Andy McQuitty, has cancer. At first, it seemed like just a minor scare. The doctors thought they had caught it early and everything would be fine. But later Andy found out that the cancer had spread and his condition is much more serious. This summer he was formally diagnosed with stage 3C cancer.

Watching our pastor and his family suffer has deeply affected our church body, but we’ve also been greatly encouraged by his faith, his candor, and his ever present humor.

A Constant Connection

As a way of offering him constant encouragement, someone had the brilliant idea of giving Andy a beeper and giving everyone in the church its number. Whenever we pray for him, we call the number, and the beeper vibrates letting him know that we are petitioning God on his behalf. He has preached a few times since receiving the beeper, and he often speaks of how meaningful it was to have the beeper going off all throughout the day and night. He even puts it on the podium so we can watch it dance around while he preaches.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could all have something like that letting us know that people cared enough to pray for us?

Taking It a Step Further

Of course Andy thought about that and after he had the beeper for a few weeks he asked the entire congregation to do something a little different when they prayed for him. Since he spends a lot of time at the hospital undergoing treatment, he asked us to make sure that when we pray for him, that we also pray for the people he will no doubt be surrounded by at any given moment.

Now, whenever Andy is in a hospital waiting room where patients are gathered, he quietly places his beeper on a nearby table. Normally, putting a phone or page our in plain view is a social faux pas, but the patients politely ignore it and continue talking. As they alternate between talking, laughing, and crying about their various conditions, the beeper constantly buzzes across the table.

Eventaully, someone will speak up and ask Andy, “What’s the deal with the beeper?”

He then explains, “People in my church call this beeper whenever they pray for me. But not only that, they also to pray for anyone around me too. That buzzing means you just got prayed for.”

Powerful, huh?

If you want to hear how the patients and those around them react, check out the audio clip below. I don’t think the story needs much commentary, other than to say that it only takes a little creativity to use technology in a way that doesn’t pull people apart but actually brings them closer to each other and maybe even God himself.

Andy McQuitty’s Personal Pager

Check What Google Knows About You With Google Dashboard

Philipp Lenssen — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:44:02 PST

When you’re at Google and switch to Settings → Google account settings you may now (if it’s already rolled out for you, that is) see a link to Google Dashboard reading “View data stored with this account”. After logging in with your credentials, Dashboard presents you with a detailed list of Google services and the associated data you’re storing with it. Each item, like Blogger, Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Health and so on contains a couple of lines of sample data, as well as links to edit your profile for that service, view the service’s privacy policy and more.

I think it’s excellent that Google makes available all this privacy relevant data in a single place. You might be surprised how much Google knows in case you’ve already forgotten a service or two you’ve signed up with. One thing to watch out for on the page is a little blue icon meaning “this bit is public”. At the bottom of the page, Google disclaims that 32 more products haven’t yet been made part of Dashboard (and it’s probably worth noting that Google may also not intend to list every single bit, like log files containing your IP or so.)

[Thanks BizAbh!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Check What Google Knows About You With Google ... | Comments]

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Firefox Passes IE6 In Browser Share

kdawson — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:52:00 PST

Jared sends word of Ars Technica coverage of Net Applications' monthly browser share numbers. What's significant this time is that Firefox has finally passed IE6 in worldwide share. "Internet Explorer remains ahead of the rest of the competition, but since month after month it continues to lose ground to all other browsers, Firefox has now finally surpassed IE6, which is easily the most hated version of Microsoft's browser. ... In October, all browsers except for IE and Opera showed positive growth. Between October and September, Internet Explorer dropped a significant 1.07 percentage points (from 65.71 percent to 64.64 percent) and Firefox moved up a sizeable 0.32 percentage points (from 23.75 percent to 24.07 percent). ... Although IE's decline seems to be unceasing, the real shame is that the old versions have more share than the newer ones (we can only hope that as Windows 7 gains popularity, this trend will reverse)." Ars presents a graph with their own site's browser share picture, and as you might expect it's very different from the general population's.

BUG: Gmail Messages Being Marked as Read

Josh Catone — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:57:29 PST

If you found when you checked your email this morning that you had new messages already marked read, you’re not alone. A bug appears to affecting at least a subset of Gmail users and causing unread emails to be erroneously marked as read.

There are multiple threads on the Gmail support forums, as well as a good deal of Twitter chatter, but so far no response from Google.

Every indication is that this appears to be a bug and not an exploit, as many people initially feared (so your Gmail account was likely not compromised, and no one is reading your emails). Speculation is that the bug is a result of a change in the way Gmail handles IMAP support. The issue is also reportedly affecting Gmail on Android and iPhone phones.

This has been a rough couple of months for Gmail’s reliability, as it experienced a couple of major bouts of downtime in early and late September.

Reviews: Android, Gmail, Google

Tags: bug, gmail

Watching the wrong movies.

Jon — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:00:37 PST

A few weeks ago, I bumped into a problem that’s plagued me for years, if not decades.

Was it deodorant related? No, but thank you for asking. I am well aware of that issue. I’m Old Spice Red Zone all the way but fear I might have beaten it. Is that possible? Is it possible that my body has bested that deodorant and I need to move on to something else? I can’t wear Axe body spray in large part due to the countless semi-clothed ladies who uncontrollably throw themselves at you the minute you drench your skin in something named “Swagger.” I’m running out of deodorant options, and I’m not kidding. I was probably one of the only people who packed deodorant in the backpack they wore around the Catalyst Conference. Bible? Sure everybody had that. Notebook? Without a doubt. Deodorant? I had it. But that wasn’t the issue that came up …

Here’s what happened, I was sitting in my seat during the last session of the Catalyst Conference. It had been an amazing three days of just the craziest proportions. But sitting there, listening to Andy Stanley, I suddenly heard a familiar sound … rewind.

Like an old school VCR, the last three days rewound in my head and started to play through the worst moments of the conference.

Oh, there I am impatiently interrupting a conversation with someone just because I want to meet them.

Oh, there I am telling someone what the web traffic stats are for Stuff Christians Like.

Oh, there I am being not funny or not gracious or not a million things.

There I am failing and falling and stumbling and missing the mark in countless ways.

That’s what I tend to do after an experience. I sit down and my head immediately starts to obsess on the things that could have gone better, the small moments or big moments in which I could have done things differently. The cracks in my thin little façade of perfection. I watch a failure movie over and over until I feel really insecure and useless.

Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever seen a regret movie in your head? Something you said at work or a ball you dropped or a relationship you messed up? Have you ever watched the memory of your worst moments?

Maybe not, maybe regret cinema is something you never buy a ticket to, but I do, and I’ve done it for years, until that afternoon at Catalyst.

Out of nowhere, I felt like God interrupted the film with a question.

“Jon, when you go to Disney World with your kids, what do you talk about when you get back? Do you sit down at the dinner table and review the worst moments of the trip? Do you talk through and obsess over the ways L.E. and McRae could have been better? Do you focus on the tantrums and the meltdowns and all the ways your kids weren’t perfect waiting in line for the rides? Or do you laugh? Do you celebrate the happy moments? Do look at the pictures and the smiles and the joy that abounded? Which thing do you do as a father?”

That was an easy question for me to answer. I rewind the joy. I celebrate and remember the happiness. I would never sit my kids down and hand pick out their worst moments from an experience and make them watch them as I played those over and over again at the dinner table.

“Right, and you’re a human.” I felt like God said. “You’re a human father and you don’t do that. If that’s the case, think then how much more loving and perfect I am in my relationship with you. If you don’t do that, why would you ever think I would? The failure movie is not my film. That is not of me.”

I pushed pause. In that moment I stopped the film and I remembered a verse, Romans 8:1:

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, …”

If I’m being honest, sometimes I rewrite that verse in my head. I write it, “There is now some condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Or “There is now at least a little condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” But that’s not what it says.

There is no condemnation.

Will the Holy Spirit convict you? Certainly. Will God reveal areas of your heart He wants to shine His light into? Without a doubt. Will God condemn you? Will God press play on the failure film of your life? Will He make you mentally relive your worst moments over and over again? No. That’s not God, that’s an attack.

And I think it’s time for all of us to stop watching the wrong movies.

50 Clever, Creative Logos

Steven Snell — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:37:33 PST

If you’ve browsed through any logo design galleries, you’ve probably noticed some that take a very creative approach. In this post we’ll feature 50 clever logos for your design inspiration.

Uptown

Cowbra

Typeface

Shy Child

Mary and Andy

Strategical Office Solutions

Natuur 2000

Shocked

Broken Goggles

Steers Restaurant

American Culinary Foundation

Egg

Eco-Cities

Families

Fenz-it

Plated

Rentzilla

Miskeeto

Doghouse Brewing Company

Exitive

Forkwire

Mind Over Math

Catalyst Construction

Umbrellar

Modani

Wiesinger Music

Playground

Elephant Talk

African Film Club

For more logo inspiration please see:

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Replacing Google Reader with Twitter is Nuts

(author unknown) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:44:25 PST

Shared by wvpv
I agree!!

Recently, Mr. Robert Scoble had posted on his blog about how he was giving up Google Reader in favor of Twitter for getting his news. Many people applauded his decision, some disagreed. Personally, I think he's positively nuts on this particular point and I'll tell you why.

Google Reader and Twitter are fundamentally different products that serve fundamentally different purposes, regardless of how many different uniforms people try to squeeze Twitter into -- but we'll disregard all that for now and focus on why Twitter, in it's current iteration and feature set, simply cannot function as a legitimate newsreading tool. I will do this by providing you with a dumb analogy I came up with while loading some towels in the dryer.

AT&T to Verizon: “There’s a Lawsuit for That”

Barb Dybwad — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:08:13 PST

Uh oh — looks like the legal gauntlets have come off over Verizon’s “There’s a map for that” ads that directly attacked AT&T’s level of 3G coverage in the U.S.

AT&T is now reportedly suing Verizon over the ads, claiming that they mislead customers into believing AT&T doesn’t offer any wireless service to large swaths of the country.

Although Verizon clearly labels the two maps it shows in the ads as representing 3G coverage, they’ve already attempted to mollify AT&T with a few changes including adding a “Voice and data services available outside of 3G areas” disclaimer in small print. This apparently hasn’t been enough to satisfy AT&T, who continues to press on with the suit alleging the ads are confusing especially to non-technical consumers.

It sounds like the company is gunning for the ads to be pulled from the air. And to AT&T’s credit, their 2G network does cover a much larger area of the country that isn’t being represented on the map in the ad.

What do you think: are the comparison maps misleading? Should Verizon pull the ads, or perhaps overlay AT&T’s (significant, if slower) 2G coverage area map? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Tags: 2G, 3g, att, iphone, Mobile 2.0, trending, verizon

Pizza Hut’s iPhone App Has Generated $1 Million in Sales

Christina Warren — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:34:03 PST

More and more companies are creating iPhone applications as a way to reinforce branding and to gain new customers. Some companies are even seeing increased sales thanks to iPhone apps.

One of those is the Pizza Hut app [iTunes link] for the iPhone and iPod touch, which has now generated more than $1 million in sales according to MobileMarketer. The US-only iPhone app was first introduced three months ago.

Although Pizza Hut had a WAP enabled mobile site before launching the iPhone app, the iPhone app has far exceeded expectations. Bernard Acoca, senior director of digital marketing for Pizza Hut told MobileMarketer:

“We always saw a steady level of growth with our mobile business via our WAP site, but to be candid it wasn’t the explosive level of growth we’ve seen with the iPhone app.

IPhone applications capture consumers’ imagination in a way that WAP sites simply can’t do, so the decision to expand to the iPhone was as good one for us.”

Pizza Hut’s mobile app has been featured in iPhone ads for Apple and has consistently ranked highly in the Lifestyle section in the App Store. It probably doesn’t hurt that customers get 20% off on orders made using the app.

Pizza Hut isn’t the only pizza chain aggressively targeting mobile devices. Rival Dominos has a very nice iPhone optimized website (though no stand-alone app) as well as a mobile-implementation of its downright addictive real-time order status updater.

Do you order pizza (or other food) from a mobile app? What do you think about mobile applications fueling sales? Let us know!

Reviews: App Store, iPhone

Tags: iphone, mobile applications, Pizza Hut, trending

Twitter Lists Explained

Martin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:39:33 PST

Twitter recently introduced a new feature called Twitter Lists. Before Twitter Lists Twitter users could only look at the messages that one Twitter user send and received. This could include messages from friends, colleagues but also from mums and dads. If you for instance wanted to find the most influential Twitter users in politics or technology you would have to do a lot of research off-site to find the names that you were looking for.

Twitter Lists introduces a new feature that third party websites have been offering for a while. A comprehensive option to build a list of Twitter users on any subject. This can be a list of all students in business 101, a list of local politicians who use Twitter or a list of the world’s most popular thinkers.

The main benefit of this approach is that someone can access the public messages of all the Twitter users in that list from the Twitter Lists page. It is possible to subscribe to a Twitter list to receive the usual updates when someone on the list posts a new message.

To sum it up: Twitter Lists makes it easier to combine the messages of various Twitter users under one roof without having to filter through additional noise that is created by messages that they receive in their standard Twitter Account.

There is still one question to be answered: How can someone find the best lists without having to manually look at the pages of Twitter users? The answer, at least for lists of prominent Twitter users, is Listorious. The service maintains a list of (currently) 140 Twitter lists sorted in categories like media, news, marketing, health or finance.

This is a good starting point to find lists of prominent Twitter users like all verified NFL players who use Twitter, journalists who cover finance and business or thought leaders of this world. On the other hand; You won’t find your high-school’s teachers there.

Tags: listorious, messaging, twitter, twitter lists

Yahoo Meme Opens Registrations For Anyone (1)
Yahoo Meme Invites (47)
Webmasters: Search For Links Posted On Twitter (3)
VoxOx Unified Messaging (3)
Use Twitter As a Reminder Service (4)

A Guided Tour Of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

d0od — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:59:09 PDT

It's set to be the biggest and best release of Ubuntu so far and it impresses right from the get-go with an impressive installer, fast boot times, new artwork and a whole lot more.

Meet quite possibly the best operating system on the planet - Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala!

The default Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop

So what's new in Ubuntu 9.10? Let's take a quick visual over-view of what you'll find inside...

6 Step Installation
The install process has been refined for 9.10 and now requires less confused stares, less clicks and less time to get it installed and up and running.

Encryption
New options are also presented during install – such as creating an encrypted home partition.

File Transfer
The migration assistant – allowing you to transfer files from Windows or other operating system on your system – has been removed from the install process. An odd choice perhaps, but you can still access it from the main menu on the desktop.

New User Slideshow
During the installation of Ubuntu, your eye will be caught by a shiny new slideshow highlighting applications and features in Ubuntu.

One of the slides playing during an Karmic install

EX4, Grub2 and other “boring” bits
Karmic Koala sees Ubuntu move to the EXT4 file system as default.

This may not sound very interesting but Ext4 gibes you a performance – as well as security – boost. It'll even support that spare 1 Exbibyte drive you may have lying around...

Grub 2 is now used for your boot menu. This is a total rewrite of GRUB bringing with it better performance, features and even a auto-cleaner for dead entries.

Please note that existing systems will not be upgraded to GRUB 2 at this time as automatically reinstalling the boot loader is an inherently risky operation.

Other “boring” additions include:-

* AppArmor for Firefox, guest sessions, libvirt virtual machines and Evince.
* UpStart now manages the boot process ensuring an improved start-up time.

Artwork: New Bootscreen, Themes, Wallpapers and Icons & Heaps More

On your first boot up you will surely notice the new Ubuntu splash screen. A visually stunning success, it helps set the entire mood for the Koala.

XSplash; Your new boot screen

The login screen (GDM) has received an entire re-write and ties in with the theme of the splash screen: -

The Login Screen

Karmic comes with 19 of new photo wallpapers: -

New Wallpapers

As well as a bright new default one: -

The Human Theme has swapped it's colours from Orange to Brown: -

New icon set 'Humanity' becomes the default, replacing the somewhat stale Human Icon theme previously and adds very stylish notification area icons to the panel: -

User-Session-Applet
The "logout menu", as a lot of people seem to call it, gets some swish new icons for setting your IM status.

one of the new status icons; away

Shutdown Screen
Logging out shows you this gorgeous little screen, but be quick because shutting down now happens in the blink of an eye!

Software Centre Ubuntu

One of the biggest new features of 9.10, Software Centre is designed as your “one stop shop” for finding, installing and managing new applications. Choose a category, find an app, click install. Done!

In later releases the Software Store will become -the- literal one stop shop as it replaces Synaptic, Update Manager and allows developers to sell applications.

Empathy

Pidgin has been replaced as the default IM client by Gnome application 'Empathy'. Looks wise there isn't much different, but Empathy isn't quite as mature as Pidgin when it comes to themes, protocol support or other.

It does boast second-to-none integration with your Ubuntu desktop and can even support video & voice calls over MSN!

Empathy using an Adium Chat Style

Theme your chats using Adium chat skins, drag-to-arrange your contacts and even share your desktop with people using the newly integrated vino.

Geo-location support is also available for XMPP contacts.

Palimpsest Disk Utility

A little mentioned new feature in Karmic is the addition of the Gnome-Disk-Utility, also known as Palimpsest Disk Utility

Akin to Apple's Disk Utility it allows monitoring, management, creation, deletion, etc of your partitions/hardrives. If it detects an error with an installed HDD it will launch a pop up and let you know how to correct it.

UbuntuOne

How does 2GB of free cloud storage sound? It comes free with Ubuntu thanks to the installation of UbuntuOne – Canonicals' “Dropbox” competitor. Drop some files into your UbuntuOne folder, sync and then access them from any other computer - anywhere anytime!

You can pay $10/M for an increased amount of space (currently 50GB). It has a cute little icon, too!

Gnome 2.28.1

I hate reading reviews of Gnome releases because very little ever changes on the surface.

This is somewhat true of the latest Gnome version (bar the vastly improved Bluetooth module and the slightly controversial removal of icons on window buttons and certain menu's. You can re-enable them if you so wish, see my quick how-to here.)

Everything else you think/expect is still there. (Except Ekiga. Ubuntu removed that by default. Mwhaha.)

Fast start-ups & Faster shutdowns

You've heard the hype but see for yourself: Ubuntu starts up faster than ever on most systems. Shutting down takes even less time – typically just a second or two!

Network Manager

Network manager has undergone some major cosmetic surgery and now boast a cleaner and more usable interface.

Adding of new WIFI spots and security-key's has been greatly simplified, and you can even ad-hoc to your heart's content with this latest version!

Indicator Applet
Like ir or loathe it you'll be pleased to hear that the Indicator-Applet has gained some direction and now works with a greater range of applications in a much more straight forward way.

It currently supports Pidgin, Empathy, Gwibber, Evolution, Xmail, Kmail and Konversation.

Future plans will extend support from applications as diverse as Liferea, Claws Mail and Kmess to Kopete, Sylpheed and Yarsssr.

Easy Installation Of Fonts
It now takes just one click to install a font in Ubuntu.

Up until now it's been a bit more drawn out involving copying fonts to a user created directory and then manually rebuilding the font cache.

font information window with install button

Firefox 3.5.3

Karmic ships with Firefox 3.5.3 as the default browser.

Rhythmbox 12.5
Rhythmbox remains the default music management/player in Ubuntu - and rightly so! It's cleanly designed, lightweight (compared to the competition) and actually works with my iPod!

3 "main" new features over previous versions: -

Cover Art Search now uses discogs.com and MusicBrainz – replacing Amazon, which stopped working.
Clicking on the status icon summons Rhythmbox to the current workspace
Updated Coherence UPnP plugin (Acts as a Mediaserver)

Why not install some cool extra plug-ins for it like desktop art, lastfm recommendations and an equalizer? See my post here.

Computer Janitor (AKA The Duster of Doom)
Computer Janitor has received a make over in time for Karmic, but still remains one of the most dangerous applications available to end users.

Computer Janitor will happily uninstall/obliterate/cheerfully declare war any manually installed application (those from .debs) seeing them as "unused" or un-needed.

See: "Computer Janitor too enthusiastic", "Computer Janitor is evil and must be stopped", "Yikes! Clean Up did too good a job! :("‎.

My tip is to edit this from your menu ASAP so you're not tempted to use it.

In the hands of the extra vigilant it's a great tool, but Ubuntu Tweak provides a far superior cleaner that doesn't trash your system.

Software Sources Changes
A great new user-friendly change in Karmic is the support for add-apt-ppa.

Not following?

It simply means you can add a PPA and no longer worry about fetching a key as this is done automatically.

add-apt-repository ppa:

Or add a PPA to software sources using the new PPA "url's". Note that this method doesn't fetch the GPG Key, but you can use my script to solve that.

ppa:/ppa

Just The Beginning

Of course this over-view is merely scratching the surface of all of the improvements, refinements and changes present in Ubuntu 9.10; a hell of a lot of work has gone on under the hood, too.

Smartphone Showdown: iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid

Greg Kumparak — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:48:36 PDT

If hype were to be believed, the Motorola DROID is the pièce de résistance of the mobile world; the conclusive creation sent down by the Great Smartphone in the sky to rid us of our woes. It would prepare your breakfast promptly each morning, tuck you in at night, and, maybe -- just maybe -- knock the iPhone down a notch or two. Beginning about a week before its launch (largely due to Verizon's incredibly intense marketing campaign) I began getting calls and tweets from friends and colleagues asking about the Droid. They always had two questions: the first would be something like "What do you think of the Droid?", followed by "Would you recommend it over the iPhone?" Same questions, each.. and.. every.. time. I've been using the Droid as my primary phone for a few days now, and I think I'm finally ready to answer them.

Danny Piccirillo: Top things to do after installing Ubuntu Linux 9.10 Karmic Koala

Danny Piccirillo (danny.piccirillo@gmail.com) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:03:34 PDT

So you've just installed Ubuntu 9.10, the cute and cuddly Karmic Koala, but now you're confronted with a most pertinent question, "What do i do now?" Ubuntu is a very complete and full-featured Linux distribution, but no operating system can come with everything you want. There's much more fun to be had in what comes after installing the OS on your machine: now you get to set it up with all the best software it didn't already come with! This list of the top things to do immediately after installing your newly acquired copy of Ubuntu doubles as a general list of great software to try out and use, complete with links to any special instructions on how to set them up, Terminal commands for those who prefer a command-line interface (CLI), and when available, personal package archives (PPA), repositories to keep the applications at their newest version, not just the security updates provided for you by default. Repositories can be added easily by clicking the "Add..." button in the "Other Software" tab of Software Sources and entering the provided APT Line. Feel free to pick and choose; enjoy!

Basic Stuff

Download Mirror & Updates

After every major Ubuntu release (beta, release candidate, and especially the final), the official servers will be unbearably sluggish. To select an alternative server, just launch Software Sources (System ⟶ Administration ⟶ Software Sources) and click the drop-down menu next to "Download from:" and select "Other..." at which point the Choose a Download Server window should pop up. If you know of a fast local server you may select it from the list, or you can try clicking the "Select Best Server" button to launch a tool that will test all the servers for the fastest connection and choose the best result.

Optionally, jump to the "Updates" tab. If you'll always be running the newest version of Ubuntu and are using third-party repos, which we will be, then leaving the defaults should be fine. "Unsupported Updates (karmic-backports)" gives you, as the name implies, unsupported versions of future packages which are still in development which you probably don't need or even want except in certain situations like having a newer-model Apple machine that requires bleeding edge updates. Packages may contain new features, introduce new interfaces, and not be sufficiently tested for inclusion in the 'proposed' repository. "Pre-released Updates (karmic-proposed)" is just the testing area for updates, recommended only to those interested in helping to test updates and provide feedback. Check that Ubuntu is scheduled to automatically find availably updates daily and to download all updates in the background to save yourself some time when it comes time to install them.

Before you go, head over to the "Statistics" tab and check it if it isn't already. This anonymously sends the list of software you have installed and how often you use them to help collect statistics on which apps are the most popular.

When you click close, you will likely be prompted to reload the list of available software. Click reload. If you're prompted with available updates when it finished reloading, follow the instructions to install them. If not, you can always manually check for and install updates via Update Manager (System ⟶ Administration ⟶ Update Manager). You should always keep your computer up-to-date.

Folder and Printer Sharing

If you want to be able to share files, folders, and printers with Windows machines, you'll need the samba package. You can set this up graphically by right clicking on any folder and selecting "Properties" and going straight to the "Share" tab. Check off "Share this folder" and you should be prompted to install the Windows networks sharing service. After that's installed, you'll need to restart and you can click "Create Share" to be able to view the folder and it's contents from other machines through the network.

Like any package, you may also install samba via Synaptic Package Manager (System ⟶ Administration ⟶ Synaptic Package Manager) or command-line (Applications ⟶ Accessories ⟶ Terminal).

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install samba

Time Synchronization

Ubuntu can keep your computer's time accurate by syncing up with atomic clocks through tiers of servers while factoring out communication delays, and adjusting the time in a way that does not upset all the other processes that are running. The protocol for this is called Network Time Protocol (NTP). To set up NTP time synchronization graphically, launch Time & Date, also available through (System ⟶ Administration ⟶ Time & Date). Click the keys to unlock settings. Now, you can select your time zone, and configure it to "Keep synchronized with Internet servers", at which point it will prompt you to Install NTP support. After that, click "Select Servers" and check off the server closest to you.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install ntp

Restricted Essentials

DVD Playback

Most commercial DVDs are encrypted with Content Scrambling System (CSS), which attempts to restrict the software that can play a DVD. You'll need to install libdvdcss if you want to play them. You can do so by first installing the libdvdread4 package via Synaptic Package Manager or Terminal.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4

Then, within a Terminal window, enter:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Restricted Extras

The ubuntu-restricted-extras package includes a bunch of things Ubuntu isn't legally allowed to ship with, namely unrar for unarchiving .rar files, Microsoft TrueType core fonts, Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE), restricted codecs, and finally Adobe Flash Player. Like the rest of the packages and applications in this list unless noted otherwise, it's available in the new Ubuntu Software Center (Applications ⟶ Ubuntu Software Center).

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

I also recommend you at least give a fair chance to Gnash, an open source flash player on the list of high priority Free software projects. To install, you'll first have to make sure you don't have Adobe's flash player installed via Synaptic or Terminal.

Command:

sudo apt-get purge flashplugin-installer nspluginwrapper

Finally, you can install the Gnash plugin via Synaptic of Terminal.

APT Line: ppa:gnash/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install mozilla-plugin-gnash

Eye Candy

GNOME Shell

The upcoming version 3.0 of the GNOME desktop environment which i can't describe concisely other than that it is a new interface for interacting with your desktop. Some people think it looks pretty slick, but i won't weigh in on the issue. If you'd like to try it, there is a version in the Ubuntu repos, but you'll probably want something more up to date. You can build it yourself without too much difficulty, but hopefully there will be a PPA available soon.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

Advanced Desktop Effects Settings

If you want a Custom option in Visual Effects settings in Appearance (System ⟶ Preferences ⟶ Appearance) for some fancier features to play around with and show off, you'll need Simple CompizConfig Settings Manager, or if you're feeling more ambitious, Advanced Desktop Effects Settings.

APT Line: ppa:compiz/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install simple-ccsm

Replace "simple-ccsm" with "compizconfig-settings-manager" for the Advanced Desktop Effects Settings Manager.

Basic Compositing

Some of you may not need or want such superfluous visual effects; perhaps you lack the hardware or restricted drivers for accelerated graphics necessary for Compiz; maybe you just don't want to use something that isn't standards compliant, but still want basic compositing which some applications depend on. In that case, Metacity, the default window manager for GNOME, works great! You can enable it graphically, or with a simple command, but make sure to disable Compiz effects in Appearance.

For GUI lovers, hit Alt+F2 to open the Run Applicatoin dialog and enter gconf-editor to launch the GNOME Configuration Editor. In the left-hand sidebar, navigate to Apps ⟶ metacity ⟶ general and back in the main box check off compositing_manager, and Metacity will immediately start compositing, a much smoother transition than to Compiz. If you're a CLI guy (relax ladies, i did it for the rhyme), you can run a quick command in Terminal.

Command: gconftool-2 -s '/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager' --type bool true

Extra Themes

There aren't a whole lot of themes that come with Ubuntu, so if you crave more, there are several packages containing additional themes. Hopefully many of these packages can be merged in the future and have a more refined selection. They all must be installed via Synaptic or the terminal but only the themes from the Bisigi Project provided by the zgegblob-themes package requires the PPA. You can download individual themes from various websites like GNOME-Look.

APT Line: ppa:bisigi/ppa

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install arc-colors community-themes gdm-themes gnome-backgrounds gnome-colors gnome-themes gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more metacity-themes shiki-colors zgegblog-themes

Electric Sheep Screensaver

Fractal frames can look pretty sweet. Electric Sheep does a number of cool things with them. Primarily, it displays them as a screensaver, but on top of that and arguably just as cool, it downloads new popular ones through a distributed computing network so that the "gene pool" of animations, or "sheep" as they're called, is constantly evolving. You can download a starter pack from http://www.archive.org/details/electricsheep-packs-244 and just extract them into ~/.electricsheep

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install electricsheep

Desktop Functionality

Application Launcher

For a beautiful application launcher, complete with plugins and a dock, you can try GNOME + Do.

APT Line: ppa:do-core/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gnome-do

Universal Applets

After the death of Screenlets and gDesklets, a new widget framework called Universal Applets is being developed with the goal of producing applets that can be dynamically "plugged" into any application. While GNOME Do is definitely superior at the moment, Universal Applets is a promising concept for the future. It's only available in a third party repository since it isn't yet included in the Ubuntu repos and as such isn't listed in the Software Center. It hasn't even been packaged for karmic, but the Jaunty packages, though bug-ridden, work for me.

APT line: deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/some-guy:/screenlets/xUbuntu_9.04/ ./
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install universal-applets

Clipboard Manager

There is an annoying bug from 2004 in which copy/paste doesn't work if the source is closed before the paste. Parcellite is a clipboard manager that works around that problem along with providing some other useful features.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install parcellite

Audio/Video Creation & Editing

Video Editing

PiTiVi is an intuitive and featureful movie editor that was actually designed with the user interface in mind instead of just slopping on one feature after another. It is able to import and export video files in any format supported by the powerful GStreamer framework.

APT Line: ppa:gstreamer-developers/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install pitivi

Video Screen Capture

If you want to make screencasts to show off your awesome desktop, Instanbul is a great desktop recording tool which, unlike gtk-recordMyDesktop, uses GStreamer. You can install it through Synaptic or Terminal.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install istanbul

Audio Recording & Editing

Jokosher is a simple yet powerful non-linear, multi-track audio editor. The interface, which was designed from the ground up, provides an integrated environment to create and record music, podcasts and more.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install jokosher

Webcam

If you have a webcam, you need Cheese. It's a Photobooth-inspired application for taking pictures and videos from a webcam also based on the GStreamer back-end.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install cheese

Multimedia Playback

Media Center

Moovida, formerly Elisa, is a beautiful media center which is perfect for setting up a Home Theater PC (HTPC) or TVPC like the Neuros Link and it uses the GStreamer multimedia framework to support playing almost any kind of file.

APT Line: ppa:moovida-packagers/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install moovida

Video Feeds

Miro, previously known as Democracy Player, is an Internet television application developed by a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization called the Participatory Culture Foundation whose mission is to "enable and support independent, non-corporate creativity and political engagement."

APT Line: deb http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/pculture.org/miro/linux/repositories/ubuntu karmic/
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install miro

Media Player

I don't feel strongly about this, but for those of you who are unsatisfied by Rythmbox, the default music manager for Ubuntu, you may want to try Banshee. It's a media player and library for music and videos which has a number of cool features.

APT Line: ppa:banshee-team/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install banshee

Web Browsing

Google Chrome

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 brings some major improvements like HTML 5 support, but we all hate how bloated it is. If you want something faster and more standards-compliant, WebKit browsers are the way to go. Webkit is the layout engine that Epiphany and Google Chrome use to render pages faster than Gecko which is used by Firefox. Chromium is only available through the a PPA and must be installed through Synaptic or Terminal.

APT Line: ppa:chromium-daily/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

Epiphany

If you prefer something that integrates more with GNOME, and is in fact the default web browser for it, try Epiphany. You may also add the Epiphany and WebKit PPAs to keep them up-to-date.

APT Line: ppa:webkit-team/epiphany
APT Line: ppa:webkit-team/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install epiphany-browser

Learning

Flash Cards

Digital flash cards are even more effective because they can accurately use spaced repetition to help you more efficiently retain information. There are actually two great programs i recommend you try and choose for yourself, Mnemosyne and Anki.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install mnemosyne anki

Brainwave Entrainment

You read that correctly. You can synchronize your brainwaves to that of an external stimulus like sound, light, and even electromagnetic radiation in order to easily induce brain states like sleep for example. Think of it as assisted meditation which is effective at treating conditions like ADD, insomnia, and much more. Gnaural is brainwave entrainment software which generates binaural beats. It is no longer in the repositories and it doesn't have a PPA, but 32-bit users can download and install the .deb from the website while 64-bit users like myself are forced to compile.

http://gnaural.sourceforge.net/download/

Brain Training

If you like puzzles, logic, and brain teasers, you'll enjoy keeping your mind in shape with gbrainy.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gbrainy

Games

PlayDeb

What good are games when you're stuck with the same versions for 6 months? PlayDeb is a repository of games which provides you with the latest and greatest that are either not at their newest version in the Ubuntu repos, or not included at all! Installing games is extremely convenient by searching through the PlayDeb.net website and installing games with just a click. You can add it to your sources automatically by installing the playdeb package, or manually.

APT Line: deb http://archive.getdeb.net/ubuntu karmic-getdeb games

wget -O- http://archive.getdeb.net/getdeb-archive.key | sudo apt-key add -

Yo Frankie!

This is a beautiful and important Free game— that is, Free software and Free content— which was created to show off what can be produced using Free software. It was made using Blender, mentioned above, as part of the Blender Institute's first Open Game Project, and based off of the film, Big Buck Bunny, which was the foundation's second Open Movie Project. Sadly, it isn't included in the Ubuntu repos, but you can get it with PlayDeb.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install yofrankie

Nexuiz

For those of you who prefer fast-paced first-person shooters, Nexuiz is a very decent Free game every Linux gamer should try at least once. GameStop even held a Nexuiz "PC gaming challenge" in which interactive kiosks were set up in 10 different stores in 8 US cities and users were given 2 minutes to earn the high score for a $100 gift card by doing the most damage possible to their AI opponents.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install nexuiz

Donating CPU Power

Distributed Computing

You can volunteer to participate in grid computing to donate your computer's spare CPU power to charitable projects like protein folding. Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is a great way to use your computer to give.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install boinc-manager

Images and Publishing

Photo Management

Although Ubuntu does come with F-Spot, it does leave many users unsatisfied. If you find yourself among them, you may want to try a young competitor named Solang, which gained popularity during the mono wars (hopefully mostly over?) as being a mono-free alternative.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install solang

Vector Graphics

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X. It's an excellent tool for publishing materials in the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

APT Line: ppa:inkscape.testers/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install inkscape

3D Graphics

Not exclusive to still imagery, Blender is an amazing 3D imagery creation suite that has already been used to create films as part of the Open Movie Project.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install blender

Desktop Publishing

Scribus is a desktop publishing (DTP) application designed for flexible layout and typesetting and the ability to prepare files for professional quality image setting equipment like writing small newspapers, brochures, newsletters, posters and books.

APT Line: ppa:scribus/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install scribus

Filesharing

Secured P2P

Gnunet framework for decentralized, secure, peer-to-peer networking for anonymous, censorship-resistant file-sharing. You may have heard of Freenet, but you probably haven't seen how they compare.

APT Line: ppa:teamgnunet/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gnunet-gtk

Direct Connect

A great way to share files for students in college networks is using direct connect; sadly, there is no DC client designed for GNOME, nor is there an available port of Shakespeer from Mac, so it seems like the best option is DC++

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install linuxdcpp

Usenet

Although it isn't free, Usenet downloads are crazy-fast and files show up there first. Possibly even more noteworthy, however, is that for whatever reason it remains unregulated by pirate hunters. Read this guide for more info, but install LottaNZB for your client instead— they're working to replace HellaNZB with SABnzbd for their back-end.

APT Line: ppa:lottanzb/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install lottanzb

BitTorrent

Although Miro can already handle torrent files, you probably want a dedicated BitTorrent client, and although Transmission can do the job, you might want something a little more comprehensive. I'm sure you'll find that Deluge is a feature complete yet lightweight application.

APT Line: ppa:deluge-team/ppa

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install deluge

Time Managment

Alarm Clock

If you keep your computer on at all times and want to toss out your boring alarm clock, or even if not, Alarm Clock provides a lot of nifty scheduling and alert options.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install alarm-clock

Time Tracking

The Hamster Time Tracker applet helps you track and analyze how much time you spend on different tasks and activities with a graphical overview to make you feel bad for all that time you waste. It can only be installed through Synaptic or Terminal.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install hamster-applet

Communication

Empathy Instant Messenger

Horray! Empathy is now included with Ubuntu, but if you want the latest version with additional features like geolocation and audio/video chat for MSN, you'll need to add the Telepathy PPA to your software sources.

APT Line: ppa:telepathy/ppa

Microblogging

Gwibber is a cute little microblogging client for those of you who frequently use sites like Twitter, Identi.ca, Jaiku, Facebook, Digg, and more.

APT Line: ppa:gwibber-team/ppa
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gwibber

Security & Privacy

On-The-Fly Encryption

Many people use TrueCrypt believing that it's FOSS, but although the source code is available, it's development is kept secret and it isn't considered Free Software by the FSF nor Open Source by the OSI. ScramDisk for Linux (SD4L) is a great OTFE alternative that also supports TrueCrypt containers. Unfortunately, it is not yet included in the default repos, and there isn't a PPA either, but you can download a .deb to install from their website.

http://sd4l.sourceforge.net/

VPN Access

If you'd like to make sure all of your internet traffic is encrypted and anonymous, you can pass it through a proxy by using a Virtual Private Network service like IPREDator. We can't kill the music and movie industries if they can make money just by suing all of us!

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install network-manager-pptp

Onion Routing

If you don't wan't to pay $5 a month for a VPN like IPREDator but still want to be able to use the web anonymously, you can try The Onion Router, more commonly referred to as TOR, but it is significantly slower and requires additional setup. Although it was in the Ubuntu repos, the version in there was dangerously out-of-date it's just been removed, so you need to use their repository.

APT Line: deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org karmic main
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install tor tor-geoipdb

Firewall

If you feel the need to have a firewall, Firewall configuration is a graphical front-end for Uncomplicated firewall (ufw).

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gufw

Antivirus

You generally don't need antivirus with Linux, but if you'd like to play it safe, you can install the ClamTK Virus Scanner, a graphical front-end to ClamAV.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install clamtk

System Utilities

LiveUSB Creator

Optical storage disks like CD's are inconvenient and get scratched up, so why put your installer on a USB instead? UNetbootin allows you to do just that, using any Linux or BSD distribution.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install unetbootin

Backup

I don't have any strong feelings as to which backup utility you should use, but i have learned the hard way that you should always have a backup. Back In Time should do everything you need.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install backintime-gnome

Partition Editor

You can partition you other storage drives, your external hard drive, you USB drive, your iPod, and basically any other writable storage drive you can plug into your computer using the GNOME Partition Editor. It does the trick on Ubuntu installation disks, and it can sure do the trick elsewhere.

Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gparted

Virtual Machine

If you want to be a good user and get testing on the next version of Ubuntu, that's 10.04 LTS, the Lucid Lynx, but you want to do it safely, get VirtualBox. There's version that is fully open source (vboxgtk), but you'll likely want the proprietary features too. It's installable via Synaptic or Terminal.

APT Line: deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian karmic non-free
Click here to install or use the following command:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-3.0

64-bit Specific

Flash Player

The 32-bit flash player runs terribly on 64-bit systems, and if you don't want to use Gnash, Adobe has released the only 64-bit version of Flash Player 10 for Linux! It currently isn't in the repositories because it's still in alpha, but it's so much more stable than even the final 32-bit version. To install it, download the .tar.gz file at the bottom of this page:

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

Next, extract the file to your home folder; then just enter this into a terminal window:

sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

Windows Media Audio 9

I've looked and looked, and without the Fluendo GStreamer plugin there is no way for 64-bit Ubuntu to play WMA 9 files, and video files that use it will have no sound. You can purchase a copy from the Canonical Store, or download it illegally from The Pirate Bay:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4900791

Explore, Customize, Personalize!

Now it's time to play around with all the new apps you have and make your desktop, well, yours. You can try experimenting with a cool panel-less desktop; you can experiment with all your new apps; you can try different themes and modify them in Appearance; you can set your preferred applications and explore all your system preferences. My desktop background comes is by David Revoy of Durian, now called Sintel, the Blender Foundation's latest Open Movie Project.

Don't for get to show off your shiny new Ubuntu installation to your friends, spread Ubuntu, and donate to your favorite projects!

Firefox Release Schedule

Martin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:47:24 PST

Most Firefox users could probably care less about the date the next release of the web browser gets published publicly. But there are some users who like to know. This can be extension developers who want to make sure that their Firefox add-on is compatible with the next releases of the web browser, system administrators who want to make sure they can update the web browsers of their clients in time or advanced users who just like to be up to date with all technology news.

The Firefox web browser, like Google Chrome, is developed in several branches simultaneously which makes it kinda hard to track. There are currently three different versions of Firefox under development not counting the future releases of Firefox 3.7 and 4.0. First there are the two official public releases Firefox 3.0.15 and Firefox 3.5.4 and second there is the soon to be released Firefox 3.6. The release schedule looks like the following currently (subject to change, source: FF Extension Guru).

Firefox 3.5.5 – November 6th
Firefox 3.0.16 – December 15th
Firefox 3.5.6 – December 15th
Firefox 3.6 RC1 – Late November 2009
Firefox 3.6 – Mid December 2009

According to this list two versions of the Firefox 3.5.x branch will be released this year, one Firefox 3.0.x version and the final version of Firefox 3.6 which is likely to replace the Firefox 3.5.x branch. If you are a Firefox user: Which version of the web browser are you currently running and why?

Tags: firefox, firefox 3, firefox 3.5, firefox 3.6, firefox release

Mozilla Posts Firefox 3.6 Beta and 3.5.4 Release Candidates (1)
Firefox 3.5 RC2 (16)
Firefox 3.02 Final (12)
Expect A Faster Firefox 3.6 Beta Next Week (8)
Web Browser: Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 (4)

Hyundai Replaces Car Destroyed In BMW Parking Lot Attack [Above And Beyond]

Chris Walters — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:05:06 PST

About a week ago, a woman tried to park her BMW X5 in a gym parking lot in Thornhill, Ontario. For some mysterious reason, she instead drove over two other cars and sat on top of them for a few seconds, like a big game cat savoring her kill. Then she drove off.

One of the demolished cars was a 2004 Hyundai Elantra that the owner had just finished paying off, and on Friday Hyundai gave him a new car.

Luckily the incident was caught on a security camera, so if you haven't seen it yet, here ya go:

The 62-year-old driver returned to the scene of the crime—she was a member of the gym—last week, where she was identified by a gym employee with a special interest in solving the case. The Globe and Mail writes, "She was identified when an Extreme Fitness staff member, whose own car had been crushed in the Oct. 22 incident, spotted a similar-looking SUV in the parking lot again Wednesday morning [October 28] and called police."

The Elantra owner, Todd Jamison, was surprised last Friday by a Hyundai representative in the parking lot:

...when colleagues called him into the office on a pretense, he found a shiny 2010 Hyundai Elantra in the lot along with a smiling Hyundai representative. ""We wanted to help the guy," a Hyundai spokesman told TheStar.com. "This was our random act of kindness."

Either that, or it's the best viral advertising video for both BMW vehicles, and Hyundai customer service, that I've ever seen.

"VIDEO: Hyundai steps up to remedy world's worst parking job" [Autoblog] (Thanks to GearheadGeek!)
"Woman charged after parking escapade becomes viral sensation" [The Globe and Mail]
"'Worst parking job' victim given car" [TheStar.com]

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A Guided Tour Of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

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Hyundai Replaces Car Destroyed In BMW Parking Lot Attack [Above And Beyond]