As you might know, Firefox is also highly extensible. It's easy to add some features that were not originally bundled with the browser. Ubiquity is a über-extension, that a makes your daily experience on-line more agile and fun. I say über, because it provides multiple functionalities that are otherwise given by a plethora of other extensions or web applications.

Take maps for example.

There is no need to visit google maps. Tell Ubiquity "map 18 Brooklyn Ave, NY", and it will show you where it is. If you see the address on a page, it suffices selecting it and asking ubiquity to map it.

Plus, you get e-mail. If you're using Gmail type "mail I love you dear! your_spouse@gmail.com" and you're done.

And twitter "twitter Writing a blog post while showing how cool Ubiquity is." I actually did that.

Another remarkable feat you can impress your friends is adding an event to Google Calendar just by typing "Dinner with Katie on Friday". That's right, Ubiquity understands natural language. Check your calendar, someone's getting lucky this Friday night.

Also, select a piece of text on a page written in a incomprehensible (for you) language and type "translate this to English". You start getting all the potential. Additionally you can check the weather for a given location, watch a youtube video, define a word. The options are literally boundless, and Ubiquity can further be extended by developers to include any cool extension you might think of. Play songs using Grooveshark, for instance. All of this neatly integrated with your Ubuntu system, by using its eye-candy alert system.

Watch the intro video, or drop us a line with your personal experience with Ubiquity and with your favorite extensions!

Step 1
Navigate to your Dropbox/ folder and create a new folder called Tomboy.

Note: Remember you actually need Dropbox for this to work.

Step 2
Launch the Tomboy application from Applications->Accessories and then right click on the Tomboy icon in the system tray, click on Preferences.

Step 3
Navigate to the Synchronization tab and make the server Local Folder and the folder path the Tomboy folder we created in Step 1.

Step 4
Check the automatically sync box and adjust the time, I've got mine set to 5 mins, save and exit.

Your done! Now you can have access to your tomboy notes on all your systems.

Note: Tomboy is cross-platform as is Dropbox and I've tested this between Windows and Ubuntu and it works great!

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Surf to alternativeto.net and learn what you can use instead of the application you use to have on your older system. Who knows, maybe you'll even find a fresh new approach to the task at hand that will boost your productivity!

Note: Due to a recent update, you can now install Skype via the Ubuntu Software Centre, just do a search for it. You can also install it via the command line with the following: sudo apt-get install skype

Step 1
Go to www.skype.com/download and get the appropriate 8.10+ version for you (32/64-bit).

Step 2
Launch the Skype install .deb file (just double click it) and follow the on screen prompts.

Note: If you have a dependency error or the installer fails, install a missing dependency using the following: sudo apt-get install libqt4-dbus
Step 3
Launch Skype from Applications->Internet menu and press either Ctrl+O or press the Skype symbol at the bottom of the window to open the options menu.

In the menu you'll see a option to Choose style: change that too "Desktop Settings or GTK+". Then apply the changes and next time you open Skype it'll be using you native theme.

Note: I'd advise doing a Test Call to make sure everything is working okay. I found that sometimes Ubuntu by default mutes your mic so if you go into your sound preferences under System->Preferences->Sound and then go to te Input tab you should make sure that the mute box in unchecked.

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Step 1

Go to "Applications"->"Wine"->"Wine Configure" and go to the "Audio" tab, it takes a moment to load up. The settings that I found worked well for me was as follows:

Uncheck "ALSA Driver" box
Check "EsounD Driver" box

Hit Apply, OK and then "Test Sound" and if you can hear the sound clearly try running Spotify again and see if that fixes your sound problems, worked great for me haven't had any problems since.

Note: If that didn't work for you can try the Spotify suggested configuration here.

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Step 1

If you don't have wine installed open up the "Ubuntu Software Centre" in the "Applications" menu and do a search for wine and install it from there.

Alternatively you can just open up a Terminal window and run the following command:

sudo apt-get install wine

Step 2

Once that's done you'll need to download and install Spotify, download it here.

Find the download and just double click it and you'll be greeted with a very basic installer, follow the on screen prompts.

That's pretty much it, everything should be working fine. You'll have the Spotify application launch under "Wine" in the "Applications" menu. Enjoy 100% free and legal music streaming!

Note: If you're having some sound problems with Spoitfy I've written another piece with my configuration, it's easy to do and has been working perfectly for me, check it out here.

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Note: If you don't have Adobe Air installed please follow this guide first and then return to here.

Step 1
Go to tweetdeck.com and click the yellow download button.

Step 2
It'll take a second to prompt you to install click yes and it'll then take a few more seconds to open up an Adobe Air window asking you if you'd like to install this application. Press Install, Continue and then Agree.

Step 3
The application should open automatically after it's finished installing and you can just type in your Twitter, Facebook etc...

It's optional to sign up for a TweetDeck account, but I hope you enjoy this great application! You'll also notice that you have a TweetDeck launcher on your desktop (which you can remove if you like) and it's also under the Applications->Accessories menu.

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Basically a symbolic link will allow a folder to be in two places at once. In my case I'd like to make a symbolic link of my /Documents folder and place it in my /Dropbox folder so it will be synced to my other machines.

Step 1

Open a Terminal and simply run the following command:

ln -s ~/Documents ~/Dropbox

It's that simple! There are many different ways you can use symbolic links, this is just one way I'm using it. Leave a comment below if you're trying/using them in a different way.

Note: The ~ represents the current users home directory.
Note: To remove the symbolic link just delete it the say way you'd delete a normal folder, so in this case you'd just delete the folder in ~/Dropbox/Documents. Don't worry I wont do anything do the actual ~/Documents folder.

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Step 1

Download the source files from here www.getdropbox.com/downloading and unzip it (right click and "Extract Here").

Note: If you don't have a dropbox account sign-up for one here

Step 2

We now need to install the dependencies in order to build our install files from source.
Open up your Terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install libnautilus-extension-dev libnotify-dev python-docutils

Follow the prompts and it should a a few minutes to download and install everything.

Step 3

Navigate to where you created your /nautilus-dropbox folder (it'll probably have a version number after it) in the Terminal, in my case:

cd /Downloads/nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1/

Step 4

Once inside type the following commands into your Terminal:

./configure
make
sudo make install


Run each command one after another, they'll run for just a couple of seconds each.

Step 5

After installing it simply log out and log back into your system, navigate to Applications → Internet → Dropbox, click “OK” and it'll download and install the daemon and then prompt you for your Dropbox details.

As you can see it's a pretty easy install and it's been working great for me!

If you have any questions, comments or tips, please leave a comment below.

Note: I originally posted this guide for the Karmic beta, but seeing as it's release and dropbox have a .deb installer it'll have more use under this post.

Step 1
Open up your Terminal under Application->Accessories menu and run the following command:

gksudo nautilus /usr/share/applications

This will basically open up your file manager as root so you can edit the Home Folder executable.

Step 2
Scroll down the list until you find the Home Folder icon and name. Right click on it and go to Properties and under Command change the line to the following:

nautilus --no-desktop --browser . <-- Note: Fullstop not a typo!

Note: After the word browser there is a space and then a fullstop, this is deliberate, make sure you do this!

Simple click close and exit the file manager, Terminal and now if you use Gnome Do to open up your home folder it should work!

Note: You may need to logout and log back in in order for this to take affect.

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When I opened up alsamixer pressed tab until I was viewing [All] I saw that there were two options both called analog and I figure well everything else seems to be on why no see what they do, anyway, I ended up pressing up once to change them both to Digital and that seemed to fix my problem instantly!

A little secondary tip would be to have the Sound Preferences application focused on input and try and make the little bar move when you make a sound. Then test it out with the Sound Recorder application under Applications -> Sound & Video

Hope this helps someone else out!

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Step 1

Go to www.getdropbox.com/downloading and download the appropriate package for your system.

Note: If you don't have a dropbox account sign-up for one here

Step 2

Run the .deb file and follow the install instructions, it'll just take a moment.

Step 3

It'll tell you to logout and log back in, do so. Now run the application from Applications->Internet->Dropbox. It'll take a moment to load up then give you a warning that it's going to download/install a nautilus daemon, allow it to do so. This will just take a minute or so.

Step 4

You'll soon be greeted with a window that'll ask you if you'd like to login or create an account do what's appropriate for you.

Step 5

Once you've gone through the setup stage your Dropbox folder will now be located in your /home directory. You can however pick where you'd like to locate it and you can see that option in the setup, but the default is fine.

Step 6

Simple drag and drop files in and out of the folder and they will sync with the cloud and other machines you have it running on (can be Windows/Mac/Linux)

Congratulates you're all done! The thing I like the most about Dropbox is the fact that it's so easy to use, cross-platform and most of all free!

If you liked this guide or would like to add to it, please post a comment below and don't forget to subscribe (it's free)

Step 1

Go to www.skype.com/download and get the appropriate 8.10+ version for you (32/64-bit).

Step 2

Launch the Skype install .deb file (just double click it) and follow the on screen prompts.

Note: If you have a dependency error or the installer fails, install a missing dependency using the following: sudo apt-get install libqt4-dbus

Step 3

Launch Skype from Applications->Internet menu and press either Ctrl+O or press the Skype symbol at the bottom of the window to open the options menu.

In the menu you'll see a option to Choose style: change that too "Desktop Settings or GTK+. Then apply the changes and next time you open Skype it'll be using you native theme.

Step 4 (Optional)

If you'd like to have Skype startup automatically when your system starts, go to "System -> Preferences -> Startup Application", Click "Add" and enter the following details:

• Name: Skype
• Command: skype

Click "Save" and you're done! Next time you load up your system Skype will auto-launch.

Note: I only tired this on the 32-bit version of Karmic, but I'm sure if you use the correct .deb it should install fine for you.

Edit: If you're having problems with getting your mic to work check out this post: Quick Tip: Getting Your Mic Working with alsamixer

Please comment if you found this helpful or would like to make a suggestion.

I did find one fix that works fairly well, which was basically to create a bash script that would turn off the system speaker when run, you'd then make it run that script on startup and you wouldn't have to worry about it any more (link at the bottom).

I did some more digging around and found a slightly better way in my opinion that involves using alsamixer. Here's how:

Step 1

Open up a Terminal and type:

sudo alsamixer

Now using your left/right arrow keys navigate over to PC Beep and press M on your keyboard, you'll see MM appear under the volume bar, this basically means it's been muted now press Esc to exit.

Step 2

Now run the command:

sudo alsactl store

This will basically save the changes you made.

That's it, pretty easy...you don't have to really muck about with bash scripts and the like, it just works.

However lets hope they fix the problem in the final release.

If you have any suggestion or question please leave a comment.

Link
Thread with startup fix and where I posted a link to this fix.

Note: I'll be upfront and say that compiling something of this size is going to that an hour or so, it does depend on the speed of your system though.

Step 1

To get started the first step to getting Chromium running on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic is to downloading and install the prerequisites, which will allow you to compile the source code.

Open up a Terminal and run this command:

sudo apt-get install subversion pkg-config python perl g++ g++-multilib bison flex gperf libnss3-dev libgtk2.0-dev libnspr4-0d libasound2-dev libnspr4-dev msttcorefonts libgconf2-dev libcairo2-dev libdbus-1-dev

Just answer yes to all the prompts and leave it to download and install everything, it'll take a few minutes.

Step 2

Now it's time to download the depot_tools, which will allow us to use the source code and the source code itself:

• depot_tools
• chromium source code

Note: The Chrome source is a couple hundred megabytes and unzipped it's over a gigabyte so downloading may take a while depending on your download speed.

Step 3

Unzip both folders and place them somewhere convenient, i just put both on my desktop.

Then go into the depot_tool directory on your desktop and select and copy all the files in there to the /src directory within the unzipped chromium source folder.

Step 4

Open up your Terminal application and navigate to that /src directory, in my case it was:

cd /Desktop/home/chrome-svn/tarball/chromium/src/

We now need to run the gclient depot_tools utility that we placed in the /src directory which basically will let us sync up with the repositories and check file consistencies and versions.

Just run the command:

./gclient sync --force

Note: It'll appear to be doing nothing for a little bit, but it'll soon start printing out things...just let it run till its done, this will take a few minutes.

Take note towards the end of the all the things it printed in your Terminal, you'll see "WARNING" come up a few times. Start at the bottom and work your way up, it'll basically ask you to delete particular directories you don't need when compiling the source code. Here are the following ones that came up for me, yours probably wont be different, but no harm in checking:

"src/third_party/ffmpeg/binaries/chromium/mac/ia32_dbg"
"src/third_party/WebKit/WebKit/mac"
"src/third_party/python_24"
"src/third_party/WebKit/WebKitLibraries"
"src/third_party/cygwin"
"src/third_party/pdfsqueeze"
"src/third_party/ffmpeg/binaries/chromium/mac/ia32"
"src/third_party/ffmpeg/binaries/chromium/win/ia32"
"src/third_party/pthreads-win32"
"src/third_party/GTM"

Delete all those directories and then your ready to start compiling!

Step 5

In the same Terminal window move into the /build directory from the current /src directory:

cd /build

In this directory simply run:

../hammer -C build chrome

Note: Make sure you enter the command with the two full stops, this is because you want to run the file hammer.py which we put in the /src directory as apart of the depot_tools that are in the previous directory to the current /build directory we're in.

Note: Compiling the source code takes about an hour, but as I said at the start it depends on the speed of your system, so don't plan on using that machine for a while as compiling the code will take up all your system resources and make it unusable.

Step 6

The compiled code will be in /src/sconsbuild/Debug directory, so to run Chromium simply double click the chrome executable!

Note: I'd recommend making a launch shortcut, this can be done by right clicking on the desktop and clicking Create Launcher..., just put in the name of your application, then browse towards the Chromium executable. If you'd like to get the Chromium icon it's in the same folder as the executable.

Congratulations, you've just compiled Chromium from source! From my experience it's been working great, i found to to run slightly fast than the pre-compiled .deb files you can get from the dev-channel (links below) it also hasn't crashes on me, hope I didn't just jinx it!

Links I used to make this howto:

• More detail on prerequisites.
• Pre-compiled .deb files from here for both 32 and 64 bit Debian based systems.
• Chromium source code here.
• Download depot_tools, you can download either compressed file i downloaded depot_tools.tar.gz.

Please leave a comment if this tutorial was helpful or you'd like to add to it.

UPDATE: I reposted this guide seeing as there's no need for it here: Howto: Compile Dropbox from Source on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

As of yet the dropbox team haven't released a .deb file for Ubuntu 9.10 (32/64 bit), I'm sure they'll release one by the time 9.10 is released, but I can't wait that long. So what we're basically going to do here is compile it from source, it's not all that scary...

Step 1

Download the source files from here www.getdropbox.com/downloading and unzip it (right click and "Extract Here").

Note: If you don't have a dropbox account sign-up for one here

Step 2

We now need to install the dependencies in order to build our install files from source.
Open up your Terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install libnautilus-extension-dev libnotify-dev python-docutils

Follow the prompts and it should a a few minutes to download and install everything.

Step 3

Navigate to where you created your /nautilus-dropbox folder (it'll probably have a version number after it) in the Terminal, in my case:

cd /Downloads/nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1/

Step 4

Once inside type the following commands into your Terminal:

./configure
make
sudo make install


Run each command one after another, they'll run for just a couple of seconds each.

Step 5

After installing it simply log out and log back into your system, navigate to Applications → Internet → Dropbox, click “OK” and it'll download and install the daemon and then prompt you for your dropbox details.

As you can see it's a pretty easy install and it's been working great for me!

If you have any questions, comments or tips, please leave a comment below.

My current method of backup was to forward my college email to my Gmail, but this doesn't help if I can't access the internet and really need to check something. This interruption is the reason I've decided to revisit Google Gears as I've come to a point in my life were email is very important to my academics and I've got important documents I should really have local backups of.

I prefer Google Gears to other email clients such as Thunderbird or Evolution Mail, because I’ve grown accustomed to the Gmail UI and in my mind when I think of email I think, browser.

Ultimately I think the best solution is syncing your local information with the 'cloud' to give both reassurances that your information is backed up, read locally, but also be accessed from other machines via the internet if needed. Programs like Dropbox are a prime example of this unity.

Note: I noticed Gmail went down around 9PM GMT and is still not back up, just logged back on and it's back up.