Tag: gwibber

Linux: Ubuntu’s Gwibber App Gets Threaded.. or so it Seems

Another discovery of mine has led to the exposure an unmentioned feature in Gwibber that will help you follow your friends’ conversation more closely (or so I assume).

Thread me not..

If you’re the ultimate stalker, like my girlfriend, then you’ll most likely find this feature to be very useful. Others may only use it on rare occasions.

New in Gwibber is the ability to expand conversations you’ve directed towards Twitter. With an expand button (currently the somewhat large green plus icon), you’re able to view a conversation you’ve posted to Twitter and (assumingly) the follow up posts from your friends.

At the moment Gwibber only seems to expand your own personal tweets, but it appears to be a feature that will (as a speculated example) help you find out exactly why your friend Kathy agrees with your tweet on the recently hot weather in Raleigh.

Understand that my speculations are just that, speculations, and nothing more. This feature could easily evolve into anything more than I’ve imagined. In the meantime, share your ideas, thoughts and opinions! I’m always excited to hear new speculation and ideas!

Ubuntu One Music Store..Get a Link!

I just saw this change marked in my updates recently for Rhythmbox in Ubuntu 10.10 and thought I would share whats new so far!

The new "Get a link" button in action.

The new “Get a link for the current song to the Ubuntu One Music Store” button is now present and functional in Rhythmbox for Ubuntu 10.10.

When you click on the “Get a link” button, you are prompted with a dialog that scans the online music store for a match and displays the result for you. The address to the song or album is automatically copied into the clipboard and is ready to paste!

Here's you link and you're ready to paste!

This feature can be used to send a link of a favorite song to your friends, where they can purchase the track right away if they choose to. If you want to go even one step further, you can even tweet the link to your friends and followers!

Tweet your current song to your friends and followers!

As you can see, this new Tweet feature is built upon the tightly integrated Gwibber application. Though I haven’t tried this yet, it should be possible to post to other services such as Facebook if you have them enabled in Gwibber.

It appears that the whole “Social from the start” idea that was first started with Ubuntu 10.04 is now moving to another level and becoming commonly integrated with deeper parts of the operating system.

Tweet software from Ubuntu Software Center.

Above is an example of Twitter integration in the Ubuntu Software Center that allows you to easily suggest software to your friends.

“Share via microblog”

I just came across this in Ubuntu 10.10 while browsing the Software Center.

"Share via microblog"

I’m not sure how long this little feature has been available, but it sure does make promoting your favorite applications a breeze for Ubuntu users!

Clicking the linked text, as you can see, brings up a box to post to your “Broadcast” accounts (as Ubuntu calls them, otherwise known as your social networks). Here is an example of what it posts.

You’re free to edit the message how you see fit, with the important part being the “apturl:rhythmbox” token. For the record, there appears to be a bug at the moment that resets your edited message back to the default, but this will most likely be fixed.

I’m a little confused as to how this will work, since Firefox supports apt:application by default and not apturl:application. Also, Firefox requires the text to be a hyperlink, like the following examples apt:application and/or apturl:application.

If you find your browser unable to handle such links, you can find information here that should help you get them working.

I suppose this is yet another way that Ubuntu is becoming “social from the start!”

Gwibber Account UI Improvements

Here are a couple of mock-ups that I’ve made to illustrate how Gwibber and Empathy should evolve with similar interfaces, especially in the account windows.

Current state of Gwibber (top) and Empathy (bottom)

After making a few adjustments to make the Gwibber accounts window more similar to Empathy’s accounts window, this is what I came up with. I also moved the help button to the right to make it feel more appropriately place (to me).

Mock-up of Gwibber (top) and Empathy (bottom) with Gwibber's accounts window modified.

Ideally, I think the two should merge their windows when both are installed simultaneously. They could be separated via tabs, but contained in a similar window, thus making settings in Linux a tad bit easily to navigate through.

A mock-up of Gwibber and Empathy accounts merged into one using tabs to separate.

If they do plan to implement a better interface for social and messaging accounts, this would be an example that I think would be highly effect and reduce the need for so many preference menu items at the same time.

Making My.Opera more social

I recently posted an idea in the “Idea Mill” for Gwibber which is a social client for GNOME developed with Python and GTK+.

My idea is to evolve My.Opera from a traditional web browser based social community to a client based community so that users can quickly and effortlessly update their status, reply and receive private messages, follow community updates and more.

This project will require a large effort to get going from the start, but would help the My.Opera community grow by making the service available to a larger crowd.

The current problem with My.Opera is that it depends on a community of Opera enthusiasts. Lets face it, Opera has a very small market share when compared to the current leading browsers. If the community is to truly succeed it would make more sense to remove the requirement of being an “Opera fan” and focus more on making the service a social success such as Facebook or Twitter.

With my idea, My.Opera could integrate with applications such as Gwibber and TweetDeck to allow users of the online service to easily follow others, review and update their private messages, keep track of community updates and stay updated in general with the activities available at My.Opera.com.

Here is my mockup for Gwibber:

As you can see, My.Opera would be able to attract users in a fashion nearly identical to that of Twitter with features that already exist and have existed for some time now.

The only current setback….My.Opera doesn’t offer an extensive API to make this idea possible. While they do have some API support in place, they lack what is needed (AFAIK) to make this support possible without fetching and parsing pages designed for a web browser.

The inclusion of this support would be very beneficial to My.Opera, especially when Ubuntu 10.04 is release with default integration with the social client Gwibber.

Making this giant step into the micro-blogging and “friending” era via clients would also be very beneficial to Opera Software ASA‘s business model. With more people joining the My.Opera community (after seeing the service support in Gwibber and other clients) the number of people exposed to the Opera browser would be fantastic!

This could potentially be a game changing move for Opera and it would be wise to take advantage of it as soon as possible with the current popularity and high demand for social micro-blogging services today!

If you’re a frequent My.Opera user and you’re interested in this idea for Gwibber and potentially other social clients, please cast your vote to show support and let the My.Opera community developers know that you’re interested!

Gwibber + U.NU

I’ve been using Gwibber on and off for a while now, but recently I’ve started using Ubuntu 10.04 full time and Gwibber has now been directly integrated.

Back when I used Gwibber before, it was a half-developed Twitter client. Its much more than that now and its progressing nicely!

Gwibber 2.29.90.1

Some people might compare it to TweetDeck for Windows, but it has a little ways to go before its as feature complete as TweetDeck.

I’ve decided to start making contributions to the client via user interface improvements and improving service reliability among other things. However, I’ve started with a simple contribution that is one requirement for me…the use of my favorite url shortener service: U.NU

U.NU is your basic url shortening service, but it lacks a great deal of features that other services typically offer such as detailed statistics for each link. This doesn’t bother me, as the most important thing to me is a short url. 😉

Now that I’ve submitted a (very) simple python script that enables a new url service in Gwibber, I’ve marked a point where I’ve actively began contributing to the open source community (to applications that are not my own).

Gwibber is now a part of Gnome so I’m hoping that when Gwibber 2.30 is released, along side Gnome 2.30, they will include my little patch/contribution so I can use my favorite url shortener in my tweets. This is the beauty of open source. 😀

If you’re curious about the theme I’m using, it’s the Homosapien Metacity theme. I used the online Homosapien Metacity Customizer to get the blue theme though. You can make your own remix of this theme there if you wish or you can just download the exact one that I’m using.