Hotot – Sexy Native Linux Twitter app

Hotot is one of the lovely apps that got me impressed. I mean you should see it to believe it. Its like app is perfectly designed. feels like you are on iPhone in linux. It supports twitter and indenti.ca microblogging service with multi-profile support.

The app is pretty basic. Single window interface with separate tabs for home, replies and so on.

The Main Window:

The mentions window:

Its the only app which have seen which implements replies perfectly. It shows to which tweet, it was replied. There is also an option where you check all the tweets in that conversation. neat!

Extensions:

Yes you are right. It supports extensions. Currently there are very less number of extensions. But im sure as the development moves along there will be a lot. The one extension i like most now is picture preview.

Installation:

If you are on Ubuntu, there is PPA for both stable and daily build. I use daily build since its under constant development.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hotot-team

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install hotot

The Bad:

Hotot is still in alpha, there are lotta hiccups here and there. Only thing that is missing for me is Facebook support. Hope it comes soon

Download youtube videos via command line

I know there are plenty of plugins, application out there which allows us to download youtubue videos.

One of the best ways to download youtube videos on Ubuntu is play any video on youtube or vimeo and navigate to  folder /tmp. you’ll find your download file, sitting right there. Can’t get any simpler than this right?

However those who love command line, would definitely love this. There is some kind of feeling when you do your tasks via command line

youtube-dl is a  command line utility, which  downloads youtube videos without any online applications, converters or etc.

Installation:

Ubuntu : sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

Windows : guide to install youtube-dl under Windows XP.

Usuage:

If you want to download some youtube video, for example this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjDjPCCgxvE

Just enter this command

youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjDjPCCgxvE

The downloaded video will be in your home folder. Check out the below screenshot!

Revamped Nautilus Elementary Sidebar

No more talk, one pic to say it all! Lovely isn’t it?

Installation:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:am-monkeyd/nautilus-elementary-ppa

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Pretty Ubuntu Lucid Lynx CD Cover

Just received my ubuntu cd from canonical. I have crazy habit of collecting ubuntu cds of each version. I have been collecting since 8.04 version.

Over the years, the cd cover art has changed a lot, but this time its simply awesome. Take a look!

Turpial – Awesome Lightweight native Linux twitter client

Turpial is no doubt one of the best native linux twitter client out there. Though i’m a huge fan of adobe Air Based Tweetdeck, this thing looks promising. Turpial until now was availble only in Spanish, thanks to developers now its available in English via PPA.

Turpial has both single window mode, as well as Tweetdeck like wide mode.

Single Window mode

Wide Mode:

It supports every feature any decent twitter app provides like Url shortening and image upload with dozen services.

Installation:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:effie-jayx/turpial-devel
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install turpial

This client is still under development, and you’ll surely have lot of crashes. But once the final release comes its a very promising twitter client.

Essential Softwares for Ubuntu!

No doubt ubuntu is one of the finest linux breeds. It gives best of both worlds. When you install ubuntu it is preloaded with lot of apps. However there are lot of apps that are not there and which are essential. So i decided why not blog about best apps that you can install and use on ubuntu. Here is my list.

1. Elementary Theme

First and fore most thing i do whenever i install ubuntu is install elementary theme. It comes with a PPA, so you can just add it and install the required software. This PPA not only contains elementary desktop, but also applications like docky, banashee etc.. that we’ll follow up as we setup.

Installation:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elementaryart/elementarydesktop

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install elementary-theme

sudo apt-get install elementary-icon-theme

This will install all the necessary themes and icons. You can navigate to System -> Appearance -> and click on elementary theme.

2. Ubuntu restricted extras

Ubuntu doesn’t come with mp3 playback, avi video playback, flash, java etc. But don worry you can get all those in ubuntu     restricted extras. Installing this package will pull in support for MP3 playback and decoding, support for various other audio formats (GStreamer plugins), Microsoft fonts, Java runtime environment, Flash plugin, LAME (to create compressed audio files), and DVD playback.

Install Now

3. Docky – Elegant, powerful, clean dock

A full fledged dock application that makes opening common applications and managing windows easier and quicker. Docky is fully integrated into the GNOME Desktop and features a no non-sense approach to configuration and usage. It just works. Docky provides an application launcher, running application management, and various “docklets” including a CPU monitor, weather report and clock. Applications can integrate with Docky to add extra items to their context menus or modify their icons to display more information. This package includes integration helpers for a number of applications, including Banshee, Rhythmbox, Deluge, Tomboy and Zeitgeist.

Install Now

4. VLC media player

VLC is the VideoLAN project’s media player. No doubt you would have heard about vlc. its versatile video player for ubuntu. It plays MPEG, MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, MOV, WMV, QuickTime, mp3, Ogg/Vorbis files, DVDs, VCDs, and multimedia streams from various network sources.

Install Now

5. GVim Text Editor

Vi IMproved – enhanced vi editor – with GNOME2 GUI

Install Now

6. Gloobus Preview

Gloobus-preview is an extension of Gnome designed to enable a full screen preview of any kind of file. Install and just click on any file you want to preview, press space key and see the magic.

Installation : sudo apt-get install gloobus-preview

7. Banshee Music Player

Banshee is a media management and playback application for the GNOME desktop, allowing users to import audio from CDs.search their library, create playlists of selections of their library, sync music to/from iPods and other media devices, play and manage video files and burn selections to a CD.

Install Now

8. Ubuntu Tweak

Ubuntu Tweak is an application to config Ubuntu easier for everyone. It provides many useful desktop and system options that the default desktop environment doesn’t provide.

Installation – download deb from here

9.Cheese

Cheese is a cheesy program to take pictures and videos from your web cam. It also provides some graphical effects in order to please the user’s play instinct.

Install Now

10. Gnome Do

Allows you to quickly search for many items present in your GNOME desktop environment (applications, Evolution contacts, Firefox bookmarks, files, artists and albums in Rhythmbox, Pidgin buddies, etc.) and perform commonly used actions on those items (Run, Open, Email, Chat, Play, etc.).

Install Now

11. Transmission

Transmission-gtk is a GTK-based BitTorrent client. It features a very simple, intuitive interface on top on an efficient, cross-platform back-end.

12. TweetDeck

Adobe Air based Twitter and Facebook Client.

Installation :

1. Download AIR from http://get.adobe.com/air/

2. Change file permission by chmod a+x file

3. Install by ./file

4. Download tweetdeck from http://www.tweetdeck.com/

13. Readefine

Readefine beautifies RSS, Google Reader articles, plain text and HTML for easy reading. Read content in a book like multi-column layout and tweak settings like justification, column width, etc. for that perfect look. It is abobe air based.

Installation – Download from here

14. Google Chrome Browser

The best and faster browser for Ubuntu. Supports themes, bookmark sync, extenstions.

Download it from http://www.google.com/chrome

15. Dropbox

Dropbox is the easiest way to store, sync, and, share files online.

Download the deb file from here https://www.dropbox.com/downloading?os=lnx

16. Artha

Artha is a free GPLed English dictionary and thesaurus for Ubuntu based on WordNet. What is unique about Artha is that it completely works off-line unlike the preloaded one.

Download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/artha/ or install via Ubuntu Software centre.

I know there might be some apps that i would have missed. Please feel to free comment.

SongBird running on ubuntu!

pretty ain’t it :D

Make TweetDeck(Adobe Air) to use default Browser in Ubuntu

I use TweetDeck extensively. When my default browser was Firebox, i had  no problem opening links in firefox however when i changed my default browser to Google Chrome still the links in Tweetdeck were opening in Firefox. I thought thats strange, after googling for some time, i found this solution.

I think the problem is that AIR doesn’t ask the gnome for correct default browser. The solution to this is to set the deprecated variable manually, before you launch TweetDeck or any other AIR Application.

The following little script that does just that.

export GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID=Default

Start the Tweetdeck and open any link, voila you’ll see links opening in the default browser!

Thanks to Roy Tanck

Docky in 3D background mode – Awesome!

One more reason to love it more! The latest version of Docky has 3D background mode and its awesome

Installation:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:docky-core/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docky

Enabling ThreeDimensional (3D) Docky mode:

Simply paste this in a terminal:

gconftool-2 -t bool -s /apps/docky-2/Docky/Interface/DockPreferences
/Dock1/ThreeDimensional true

Then close Docky (if opened) and run it again. If you have more than one Docky, replace “Dock1″ in the command above with the dock you want to enable 3D mode for.

Elementary Theme and Docky!

Well i was addicted to Mac OSX theme and AWN on my ubuntu for a while. You can check my post about the theme here. It was really nice, though i got bored of it. Was definitely looking for a change, but didn’t any.

Elementary Theme :

One day was reading a blog n came across this elementary theme. After i installed it, started like it. Its a dead simple theme. Nice icons.. Overall has a same feeling like osx theme but different in its own way. Good thing is its got a PPA! yeah PPA, so you won’t miss on any updates..

Installation :

You can find this PPA here

https://launchpad.net/~elementaryart/+archive/elementarydesktop

or using the terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elementaryart/elementarydesktop

and install using:

sudo apt-get install elementary-desktop

and then running: -

/usr/share/elementary-desktop/configure.sh

Docky :

I’m a great fan of AWN. Been using it for a while, though suddenly i decided to try Docky. Because lots of people were liking it. So i thought lets give it a try and installed it.

Initially i didn’t like that much, but soon started liking it. One of the nice feature is grouping feature. If you have more than one nautilus windows open, it will be inside one icon and you right click on it to select the right window. In AWN it was like three icons for three windows. Other features include gmail notifier – very handy and nice.

Installation :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:docky-core/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docky

Note: Docky is now a standalone application and, from some point soon, no longer be part of GNOME Do.

You should definitely try this, Worth a try