Extensions for Banshee Music Player
- Alarm Clock – You can use Banshee to wake up or go to sleep to a selection of your own music.
- Ampache – Browse and play your remote music with Ampache.
- AppIndicator – Use the new application indicator area available in Ubuntu.
- Awn – Sets the current album cover as banshee icon in awn.
- ClutterFlow – A CoverFlow clone that allows you to browse your album collection.
- Cover Wallpaper – Sets the current playing album cover as the GNOME desktop wallpaper.
- Jamendo – Download and listen to over 20,000 free albums.
- Karaoke – Filter the singers voice out of songs.
- Lastfm Fingerprint – Identify your music automatically, using the Last.fm online service.
- LCD – Display track info on a LCD using LCDproc.
- Lirc – Control Banshee via a normal (infrared) remote control. Requires LIRC.
- Live Radio – Another way to discover internet radio stations.
- Lyrics – Fetches and displays lyrics for the current song.
- Magnatune – Listen to streamed music from Magnatune.com.
- Mirage – Adds playback shuffle-by-similar and Auto DJ fill-by-similar modes, based on songs' acoustic similarity.
- OpenVP – Draws patterns to your music using the Open Visualization Platform.
- Radio Station Fetcher – Fetch radio stations from shoutcast.com and xiph.org.
- Random By Lastfm – Shuffle your library using information from the Last.fm online service.
- Stream Recorder – Record internet-radio streams.
- Telepathy – Browse your IM friends' music library, download or stream their tracks and share what you're listening to.
- Zeitgeist Dataprovider – Publish your Banshee activities into Zeitgeist.
Complete List of Ubuntu Unity Shortcut keys & Mouse Tricks
Hold Super Key - Invokes Launcher.
Hold Super Key and hit 1, 2, 3 etc - Open an Application from Launcher. When you hold the Super Key, specific numbers will be displayed in order above each application.
Alt + F1 - Put keyboard focus on the Launcher, use arrow keys to navigate, Enter launches the application, Right arrow exposes the quicklists if an application has them.
Alt + F2 - Opens dash in special mode to run any commands.
Super + A - Opens up application window from launcher.
Super + F - Opens up files and folders window from launcher. Both these shortcuts can be viewed by simply holding the Super Key as well.
Super + W - Spread mode, zoom out on all windows in all workspaces.
Super + D - Minimize all windows(acts as Show Desktop). Hitting it again restores them.
Super + T - Opens trash can.
Super + S - Expo mode (for everything), zooms out on all the workspaces and let's you manage windows.
Ctrl + Alt + T - Launch Terminal.
Ctrl + Alt + L - Lock Screen.
Ctrl + Alt + Left/Right/Up/Down - Move to new workspace.
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Left/Right/Up/Down - Place window to a new workspace.
F10 - Open the first menu on top panel, use arrows keys to browse across the menus.
Mouse Shortcuts/Tricks for Ubuntu Unity
- Clicking and holding an icon and then dragging it around will allow you to reorder it on the launcher. You can also drag it off to the right of the launcher to move it around. Note that you need to make an explicit movement to the right to move the icon off the launcher before you can move it around.
- Dragging and Dropping an icon into the trash can will remove it from the Launcher.
- Moving and holding the cursor on the left side for a few seconds will launch Unity dock.
- Moving the cursor to top-left corner(near Ubuntu icon) will launch Unity dock as well.
- Scrolling the mouse wheel while over the Launcher scrolls the icons if you have too many and need to move around quickly.
- By Scrolling the mouse wheel while over the Sound icon on top panel helps you increase or decrease system volume.
- Middle click on an application's launcher icon - Open a new instance of the application in a new window. Very useful at times. In laptops with touchpads, hitting left/right click buttons together is akin to middle click.
- Maximizing - Dragging a window to the top panel will maximize it.
- Restore/Unmaximize - Dragging the top panel down OR double clicking on the top panel will do.
- Tiling - Dragging a Window to the left/right border will auto tile it to that side of the screen. One of the highlights of new Unity experience.
Alt + F10 - Toggle between Maximize/Unmaximize current window.
Alt + F9 - Minimize current window.
Alt + Tab - Toggle between currently open windows.
Alt + F4 - Closes current window.
Alt + F7 - Moves the current window(both keyboard and mouse can be used).
Canonical sets the date for ubuntu 11.04
Canonical has announced that Ubuntu 11.04 will be available on 28 April.
Canonical had always planned to ship Ubuntu 11.04 on 28 April, however with a week to go it has confirmed that everything is on track for a timely release. Gerry Carr, marketing manager at Canonical told The INQUIRER that last week's second beta was the final pre-production release of Ubuntu 11.04, adding that it is "good enough" not to require a release candidate.
For Canonical, Ubuntu 11.04 is a major release, in that it will be the first where the default desktop will be Unity, instead of Gnome. Carr said that Canonical spent the past two years designing and engineering the multi-touch capable desktop system but added that Gnome will be available to users for years to come. Carr also pointed out that Canonical, through Ubuntu, is still the biggest shipper of Gnome desktops.
When asked why Canonical took the major task of developing Unity when other distributions shipped with Gnome, KDE and Xfce, Carr told The INQUIRER that "other distributions are not as focused on bringing a free desktop to the market". As for whether other distributions might offer the open source Unity desktop in the future, Carr said that he didn't know of any other distribution and held no expectations.
Aside from Unity, Canonical is working to increase that awareness of Linux and Carr said that Microsoft, not other Linux distributions, is the outfit's main rival. Carr said that he "does not mind if people choose other [Linux] distributions". To that end, Canonical will introduce a cloud based trial of Ubuntu 11.04.
Ubuntu had pre-announced that it will be offering a cloud based trial service of Ubuntu 11.04, though Carr said that will come a little after the launch. A live trial version is vital to grow the popularity of Ubuntu, according to Carr, who said that even downloading LiveCDs is a barrier for some.
Carr said that in order to try out Ubuntu 11.04 all users will need is a web browser, but he confirmed that due to rendering limitations, users will only have access to a 2D version of Unity. Nevertheless, being able to try a fully featured Linux distribution should dispel any myths about its supposedly steep learning curve.
Canonical has enjoyed considerable success with its Ubuntu Linux distribution. It has made a brave move to rejig the user interface in order to attract more Windows users to Linux. Whether it will succeed remains to be seen, but Canonical certainly can't be faulted for a lack of effort.
Ubuntu One Music on Android just got a whole lot better
The first thing you’ll notice in the new UI is album art so you will now see any saved album covers. Managing your playlists is now even easier as you can create, edit and delete playlists straight from your device. Those of you with lots of music will notice the overall speed improvement, meaning you can enjoy your huge music collection without any long waits. Plus, we have also added support for non-DRM iTunes songs so that you can stream songs you’ve purchased from iTunes just as easily as your MP3s, bringing all your music together.
In addition many of you requested this next feature so we’re sure you’ll be pleased that we now support songs in Ogg Vorbis format so you can stream your collection of Ogg music natively, without the need to convert it to another format. If you’re a developer you may be interested in knowing that playlists are stored in your CouchDB database allowing you to write applications that read/write to them.
So that’s faster access to more of your music wherever you are in the world. The latest version 1.2 is now available in the Android market, happy listening and watch this space for upcoming updates to our iPhone app.
