Archive for February 9th, 2010

Posted on February 9, 2010 - by jono

Social From The Start

Twitter, identi.ca and Facebook have become an increasingly common medium in which people are communicating. While Google Wave vies to be the next generation of communication (as we waxed lyrical about on the recent Shot Of Jaq), in reality email and microblogging are unlikely to be unseated as primary methods of communication. Naturally, we want to make these methods of connecting people rock good and hard in Ubuntu.

Today Ken VanDine uploaded a new Gwibber to Lucid which adds improved reliability, multi-column views, a new theme and more. It looks like this:

I love you Ryan Paul. I cried 140 individual tears of joy.

This leads me to a simple conclusion:

Goodbye Tweetdeck. You suck considerably more than Gwibber.

No more ugly Adobe Air app. No more closed source Twitter client. No more lack of identi.ca support. No more horrible notification bubbles. Instead, sweet, native, effortless microblogging, right from my Ubuntu desktop. A veritable ass kicking at at it’s finest.

Now, this is cool in of itself, but then combine it with the ability to tweet/dent right from the Me menu:

Microblogging built in, sleek and elegant. I am stoked, and Gwibber is rocking the house. Also, if you are the opportunistically development minded, don’t forget that you can build microblogging support into your apps with Gwibber’s API too, and there will be a session on how to do this at Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week.

Posted on February 9, 2010 - by jono

International Women’s Day Comp: Get Your Entries In!

Look at this lovely bag of swag:

Image courtesy of Melissa Draper.

Want to own all this goodness, including Ubuntu Backpacks, women’s t-shirts, key chains, 1 year digital subscription to Linux Pro Magazine or a 1 year print subscription Ubuntu User, and a copy of the The Art of Community by some beardy community guy?

On January 10, 2010 the Ubuntu Women Project announced an International Women’s Day Competition; an awesome effort to gather wonderful stories of how women have discovered Ubuntu. From the announcement:

Ubuntu-Women has tried in the past to find some way to celebrate this event, but as far as I can remember it has never really amounted to much other than some chattering on IRC. So let us try a bit harder for 2010!

We have all come to Ubuntu in our own special ways — every single one of us differently to the next. Yet one of the most common questions we get asked is “How can I get $woman to use Ubuntu?”.

Obviously we cannot really answer that question, but we would dearly love to have a collection of stories by women about how they discovered Ubuntu. Such a repository would allow us to demonstrate that there’s no one definitive answer, and at the same time maybe provide the gift of inspiration to women who are interested — showing them that it’s really not so unusual to be Ubuntu fans after all.

We are not expecting any particular length, but do remember that these stories should be suited to perusal at leisure and not require someone to allocate hours of their day to read. Anywhere between a few paragraphs and a OO.o Write page is ideal.

Two prizes up for grabs. One prize pack will be given to the story that the community votes is their favourite. One prize pack will be given to a randomly drawn entrant. I have been given the pleasure of drawing this entrant in a videocast, and announcing both winners to the world on March 8th. Thanks to the Ubuntu Women project for asking for to do this.

So, get your entries in to ubuntuwomen.competition at gmail.com by 23:59UTC on 22nd February 2010. Rocking!