Installing Google Gadgets on Ubuntu 8.10

Google Desktop gadgets are interactive mini-applications that can be placed anywhere on the user’s desktop to show new email, weather, photos, personalized news or other desired information. Google offers a gallery of pre-built gadgets for download on the official website.

To install Google Gadgets on Ubuntu 8.10:

1. Download the .deb package.
2. Install the package using the following command:
sudo dpkg -i google-gadgets_0.10.4-0~getdeb1_i386.deb

3. Run the apps using the command ggl-gtk or from the Applications menu.

Autostart:

1. Add a new entry at System -> Preference -> Sessions.
2. The command entry would be ggl-gtk

Enjoy.

Resource: Howto install Google Gadgets in ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)

GrNotify: Your Google Reader Feeds Notification

I’m addicted to my rss feeds. I go over the feeds for tech news, current affairs, friends blogs, and many more. However, I don’t want to go to www.google.com/reader each time want to find out what’s new. This is where desktop applications that provides Google Reader notifications comes in.

For Windows: We have Google Reader Notifier for Windows.

For Mac: There’s a desktop application by the same name, for Mac users.

Firefox Extension: There’s even a extension for it.

But what about Linux users?

Enter GrNotify

GrNotify is a simple Python written tray application that will allow you to know when there are new items in the Google Reader.

Here’s a screenshot:

GrNotify Screenshot
GrNotify Screenshot

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Cleaning up your Ubuntu Filesystem using FSlint

FSlint is a utility to find and clean various forms of unwanted/junk/lint files on your Ubuntu filesystem. For example, one form of unwanted files it finds is duplicate files, bad names, temporary files, files with bad symlinks, empty directory, and others.

To install:
sudo apt-get install fslint

Using Fslint:
If you want to open goto Applications—>System Tools—>FSlint

Screenshot:

Drop it, Dropbox!

It’s been awhile since I’m searching for a perfect online backup application. I’ve tried many, but none have really captured my attention. Not until I’ve tried Dropbox.

Dropbox is a free, multi-platform, online backup and synchronization application. My first attraction to Dropbox is because the client tools supports Linux. It also suports Mac OSX, and oh yeah, Windows too. Installation on my Ubuntu Hardy laptop is a breeze. Just download the debian package, and the rest of the installation is pretty straight forward. No extra tricky setup, configuration or anything. Upon the completion of the installation, just point your Dropbox location to a folder path on your machine, and you ready to go.

  An icon installed on the taskbar for easy access.

Online Backup
Dropbox currently provides 2GB of storage, which is sufficient for me at this time to backup all of my important files. Backing up files is very easy. Just open your Dropbox folder, and copy-paste the file(s) that you wish to backup to that folder.

Dropbox location on your folder.

Seamless sync
I have a couple of computers at home, which is running Ubuntu 8.04, and also a Windows 2003 machine running at my office. Installing Dropbox client on all of these boxes enabling me to sync all my files between those boxes, seamless, and without much effort at all. Just make sure Dropbox client is running, and those files will be sync automatically.

Dropbox website
Just in case you want to grab or upload your files, but Dropbox client are not installed, you can always go to Dropbox site.

Dropbox web interface

Another cool feature is, the files you stored has “Revisions”. Meaning, you don’t have to worry if any of our files get accidentally deleted or overwritten, since you can always retrieve deleted or the previous version of your files.

Dropbox revision feature

Feel free to watch Dropbox screencast for more info on their features and functions. Have you tried Dropbox or any equivalent online backup application? Feel free to share your experiences.