Sunday, 9 February 2014

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Canonical At Mobile World Congress 2014 – What Can We Expect?

Ubuntu Touch



It’s the world’s biggest meeting of mobile industry experts, enthusiasts and original equipment manufacturers and, once again, Canonical will be in attendance.
Mobile World Congress 2014 kicks off in Barcelona, Spain on February 24 and runs until the 27th.
The annual event is often used by companies to unveil new hardware and showboat advances in new mobile technology.
It’s not all phones and frolics. The event also holds a respected conference that gives platform to ‘thought-leaders’, analysts and industry players. Keynote speakers this year include Mark Zuckerberg, WhatsApp’s Jan Koum, and IBM CEO Virginia M. Rometty.
Seminars, discussion panels and meetings are also held throughout the four-day gathering.

What To Expect from Canonical

Canonical used last year’s event to demonstrate the (then newly released) developer previews of Ubuntu for Tablets and Smartphones. This year looks set to offer more of the same.

Canonical are pitching up a stall in the “App Planet” section — billed by organisers as ‘the centre of the mobile apps universe’ where developers can network and engage with each other — to, they say, show off the latest progress on Ubuntu for Phones and Tablets and ‘showcas[e] a variety of ways to discover content on Ubuntu – from native and web apps to our unique scopes”. 
Are shiny new demos of Unity all we can expect to see from Ubuntu at MWC? With anticipation for hardware-related announcements building, and hints from within the company that smaller OEMs are ‘likely’ to debut devices this year, it wouldn’t be out of the blue.
Canonical themselves are not (yet) listed as exhibiting in the event’s main halls which is where hardware is typically shown off.

Mark Shuttleworth’s Input

In addition to sharing square footage with the likes of Microsoft, Samsung, the Tizen Association and hundreds of other app and software vendors, Mark Shuttleworth will also be popping up on stage as part of a conference discussion on “Building the 50 billionth Connected Device” alongside Freescale’s Sylvain Gardet and Colin Giles of Huawei.
For more information on the conference agenda, list of exhibitors and seminar schedule head over to the official website...

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Ubuntu To Create New File Manager for Unity 8 Desktop


With the scheduled switch to Unity 8 on the Ubuntu desktop creeping ever closer, Ubuntu developers are toy with the idea of creating an entirely new file manager.
With GNOME’s Nautilus forging ahead in its own direction(and shedding features faster than Ubuntu can patch them back in) thoughts are turning to the creation of a brand new file manager for the Unity 8 desktop with its intended debut this October.
“With all the complaints and unhappiness about Nautilus upstream ripping out things like dual pane and other beloved and helpful features I expect we can do better,” writes developer Oliver Grawert on the Ubuntu Desktop mailing list.
Now, before anyone gets overly excited, I will point out that, as with all plans of a development nature, this change is not set in stone. Heck, even the arrival of Unity 8 on the desktop isn’t guaranteed for 14.10.
But, caution aside, there’s no denying that the idea has merit.
Ubuntu foundations have been rebuilt with different priorities as cement. So, while apps and utilities built in GTK and other non-QML toolkits will undoubtedly continue to play an important role in those plans, it will be those leveraging Qt5 technologies that stand to deliver the best, most seamless, and fully featured experience to users.
Feedback and suggestions on the sort of features the proposed file manager should include are now being sought.



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Firefox 27 Released, Adds Delicious, Saavn Music Integration



Firefox 27 has been released by Mozilla.
The latest version of the popular open-source browser comes with a major update to the Firefox Social feature introduced back in 2012. Originally supporting just Facebook, the selection was later expanded to include little known services like Cliqz and Mixi. 
Today’s update adds support for bookmarking site Delicious (trivia: after leaving OMG! Ubuntu! Benjamin Humphrey worked on its redesign) and Saavn, a music service based in India. Furthermore, the Social API is now able to connect to more than one service at a time – a change that should go some way to persuading developers to give integration a whirl.
Social shenanigans aside, Mozilla has also added support for the latest SPDY 3.1 protocol, and TLS 1.1 and 1.2, helping to beef up the browser’s networking prowess.
One lone Linux-specific change, a fix for content rendering issues with Azure/Skia, also features.
Firefox 27 is a free download, available from today from the Mozilla website. Ubuntu users will receive the update through the Software Updater utility at some point in the next few days.


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UpClock Is an Ubuntu Touch Inspired Clock Widget for Ubuntu Desktop




he Ubuntu Touch ‘welcome screen’ design has become synonymous with Canonical’s mobile efforts – and it’s easy to see why.
Its design is both striking and informative; passive tidbits of information, like how many photos you’ve taken in the last 24 hours or how many missed calls your have, are displayed within an animated, evolving band of circles.
The info graphic should arrive on the desktop alongside Unity 8 in October 2014. But while we wait, there is an interim solution.

UpClock for Ubuntu Desktop


UpClock is a desktop clock widget ‘inspired’ by the welcome screen of Ubuntu Touch. It doesn’t offer all the features found in the mobile version, so don’t expect to see any ‘stats’ on unread messages, or photos taken, etc.
But it does faithfully match the overall design and, like its source, sees the aura surrounding the circle ‘evolve’ in colour and size during the course of the day.

Features include:

  • Colouring can be configured 
  • Option of 12 hour or 24 hour clock
  • Resizable 
  • Animated effects
While I don’t foresee UpClock topping anyone’s “must-have” app list anytime soon, fans of superfluous desktop bling put off by the complexity of tools like Conky should certainly check it out.
UpClock is a free app, available for Ubuntu 12.04 through 13.10 direct from the Ubuntu Software Centre.



Saturday, 8 February 2014

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Beli Aplikasi di PlayStore Kini Bisa Pakai Rupiah


Jakarta - Ada yang berbeda di Google Play Store saat ini. Kini pengguna yang ingin membeli aplikasi berbayar di toko aplikasi Android tersebut tak perlu pusing lagi soal mengkonversi harganya.

Ya, kini Google telah memudahkan pengguna asal Indonesia dengan mengubah harga aplikasi berbayar dari dolar ke rupiah. Sehinga, harga yang tertera merupakan hasil konversi dari dolar ke rupiah.

Seperti penelusurandetikiNET, Jumat (7/10/2014), dengan harga yang dikonversikan ke rupiah, pengguna Android di tanah air pun tak perlu risau lagi mengenai fluktuasi perubahan kurs.

Kendati sudah diubah dengan daftar harga rupiah, namun pengguna Android yang ingin membeli aplikasi tetap harus memanfaatkan kartu kredit untuk melakukan transaksi. Sejauh ini belum ada metode lain.

Apa yang dilakukan Google Play Store ini mirip dengan iTunes beberapa waktu silam. Bedanya, iTunes tak hanya menggunakan harga rupiah, namun juga membuka toko musiknya ke Indonesia. Sehingga artis lokal pun bisa menjual karyanya di iTunes.

http://inet.detik.com/read/2014/02/07/080448/2489892/317/beli-aplikasi-di-playstore-kini-bisa-pakai-rupiah
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Steve Wozniak: Apple Sebaiknya Buat Ponsel Android



Pada konferensi Apps World North America di San Francisco, co-founder Apple, Steve Wozniak, lagi-lagi berbagi pemikirannya terhadap perusahaan yang didirikannya bersama Steve Jobs itu. Melalui sebuah wawancara dengan Wired, pria yang akrab disapa Woz itu menyampaikan salah satu rekomendasi yang menarik perhatian. Woz berfikir bahwa Apple sebaiknya merilis sebuah handset Android.
"Tidak ada yang akan membuat Apple melewati pasar Android sebagai pasar ponsel kedua," kata pria yang tak lagi bekerja di perusahaan Apple, seperti dilansir Wired, Kamis (6/2/2014). "Kita bisa bersaing dengan baik. Orang-orang menyukai style tampilan berharga dan proses pembuatan yang kami lakukan di produk kami dibanding dengan yang ditawarkan oleh Android lainnya. Kita bisa bermain di dua arena sekaligus."
Harapan perangkat "iAndroid" itu bukanlah hal yang tidak mungkin dan bukan pula hambatan teknis buat Apple. Sebab Android merupakan software sistem operasi terbuka (open source) yang didasarkan pada Apache Software License 2.0, dan dapat digunakan oleh setiap pembuat handset jika ingin mengadopsi dan mengembangkannya. Apple juga bisa menjadi seperti Amazon, dimana Amazon memiliki perangkat Android yang disesuaikan sendiri (tidak ada layanan Google).
Meski komentar Woz terdengar sangat bertolak belakang dengan Apple, ia yakin Apple tetap memiliki tim kecil yang bertugas mengembangkan inovasi. Menurutnya, pengembangan yang dilakukan secara rahasia bisa menghasilkan produk yang besar. Hal tersebut dijawab Woz ketika ditanya mengenai kurang suksesnya TV Apple dan rumor produk baru di pasar jam tangan pintar.
"Produk-produk besar memang berasal dari pengembangan yang rahasia," katanya. "Anda menempatkan beberapa tim kecil yang beranggotakan orang-orang hebat dan mereka bekerja tidak terganggu oleh komentar orang lain tentang apa yang mereka kerjakan. Sebuah kategori produk baru tidak selalu lahir. Mungkin bisa muncul dalam satu dekade. Kadang Anda memang harus menunggu salah satu produk itu muncul."