UbuntuOne
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Ubuntu One reaches Mac in beta, completes the cloud storage circle
For all of the many directions Ubuntu One's cloud storage has gone, it hasn't headed the Mac's way. Official clients have been the province of Linux devotees (naturally, Ubuntu is recommended) and their Windows friends across the aisle. A newly available Mac beta puts all three major desktop platforms on an even keel, very literally -- the OS X port is almost identical to what you'd get in Linux or Windows, including a few rough points where other interface concepts clash. Still, the Ubuntu One test build has a handy Mac-specific menu bar item, and it's one of the few cloud options that will natively support both the Ubuntu box in your den and the MacBook Pro in your bag. Grab your copy at the source link if you can deal with a few unfinished elements.
Ubuntu One Music Store comes to mobile and web, skips the plugins
If you'd wanted to shop Ubuntu One's Music Store in the past, you had to use a plugin through an app like Banshee or Rhythmbox. Not very convenient, we'd say. Someone must have been listening up in Canonical's cloud, as Ubuntu One just brought its 7digital-based store to the web and mobile devices. Apart from widening the software scope, it's billed as a more direct interface to shop for tunes and send them to Ubuntu One's cloud for either streaming or syncing. Don't think that's enough of a perk? Early purchasers get half a year's worth of Ubuntu One Music Streaming for free -- as strong an incentive as any to dip a toe into the (music) stream before jumping in.
Mozilla releases Thunderbird 15 with Firefox-like UI, live chat
Mozilla might be scaling back its official support of Thunderbird, but it still has love left for those who yearn for more in their e-mail clients than OS developers can give. The newly-released Thunderbird 15 update's most conspicuous change is a deliberate visual harmony with its Firefox cousin: the company wants its apps to have more in common than just a shared name on the About screen. Under the hood, there's now a live chat feature to skip the wait for e-mail, a Do Not Track option for web searches and the choice of using Ubuntu One cloud storage for large attachments. It's hard to know if future Thunderbird releases will be as substantial once the community takes the reins. For now, though, Thunderbird aficionados can relax. [Thanks, Keith]
Canonical launches Ubuntu One referrals program, lets you earn cloud storage one friend at a time
If you're rich in buddies, but poor in cloud storage space, Canonical will let you turn those relations into megabytes with its new Ubuntu One referrals program. If you didn't want to pay before, you could get up to 5GB of storage, with an upgrade to 20GB available for $30 per year. Now, you can use the new link on the service's web dash to tell your contacts all about it via Twitter, Facebook or email. For each one that signs up, you'll get an extra 500MB, gratis, as will your newly clouded pal. However, if you're thinking you can leverage that fat Twitter list into terrabytes of offsite storage joy, think again -- the limit is 40 invites, or 20GB. Still, that's that's not bad compared to the competition and other referral programs, so check the source to see how to start.
Canonical's AWSOME API bridges OpenStack and Amazon clouds, Ubuntu has its head in both
New features and services that improve Canonical's latest version of Ubuntu seem to keep rolling in. The latest addition being the announcement of its AWSOME proxy service. No, that's not us getting over excited about it, that stands for Any Web Service Over Me, and it includes APIs that smooth the transition to OpenStack for those currently using Amazon's cloud services. Although not open source, Amazon's Web Service has such a large market share, that Canonical clearly wants to make integrating with it as smooth as possible. The AWSOME proxy will only provide basic functionality for the AWS side of things, with users still encouraged to adopt the OpenStack infrastructure for deeper capabilities. Still, if you're currently working with Bezos' platform, and this was the last barrier to hopping aboard the Precise Pangolin ship, you're in luck.
Canonical gets a little more precise about what's in store for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Look, codenames are all fine and dandy, but we want the meat -- we want to know exactly what Precise Pangolin has in store. Specifics are still a little hard to come by, but there were some tidbits out of the Ubuntu Developer Summit. For one, Canonical has decided to bump the size of the ISO from 700MB to 750MB. That might not seem like a huge deal, but it means CDs are out and thumb drives or DVDs are in for installs. The company is also considering using Ubuntu One accounts for logging into the desktop, allowing you to quickly sync your settings and files on any Ubuntu machine -- not unlike Google's Chrome OS. Lastly there are a few software changes coming. The Software Center will be getting some serious optimization for quicker launches and better performance, while Rhythmbox will be returning to the fold after being banished for Banshee in 11.04. You'll find a few more details about Ubuntu 12.04 at the source link.
'Humanity toward others' extended to Windows with Ubuntu One cloud storage
Are you a Windows user in need of yet another cloud storage option? Lucky for you, after a long-running beta, Canonical's Ubuntu One client has officially debuted on Microsoft's platform. First introduced with Ubuntu 10.10, the service offers 5GB of free storage, with file syncing across multiple machines, ala Dropbox. Android and iOS clients are already available. If you need more space, how about 20GB for $29.99 a year or $2.99 a month? And if portable tunes is your game, you can have that same 20GB along with music streaming apps (similar to Google Music Beta) for $39.99 a year or $3.99 a month. Click the source link to engage in some cross-platform storage.
Ubuntu One music streaming app updated with AirPlay support
Download Squad tipped us off that the Ubuntu One Music app has been updated to support Apple's new AirPlay streaming system. As such, it can now play music from your iOS device via any Apple TV or Airport Express unit on your network. Ubuntu One is a cloud storage service from the vendor of the popular Linux distribution of the same name. Much like MobileMe and Dropbox, it allows the user to upload files to cloud servers and to synchronize personal information such as calendars, contact lists, and bookmarks -- with support for Linux, Windows, and mobile devices. Unlike the other services, however, Ubuntu One has a strong emphasis on music streaming. It has an integrated music store and allows users to supplant music purchases with uploads of their own music to their cloud space. Store-bought and uploaded files are both available for streaming back out. The iOS app that was updated today is a client for receiving that streaming audio on your iOS devices, over WiFi or 3G connections. This differs from stream-music-from-home services like Simplify Media because it doesn't rely on you having a computer at home powered up to stream the music from -- the files come from the cloud. There is a cost associated with using Ubuntu's system. The service offers 2GB of basic storage for free, but mobile support is $4 a month / $40 per year (the app itself is free) and extra storage, in blocks of 20GB, is $3 per month / $30 per year. As such, Ubuntu One is probably only really interesting to people with lots of Ubuntu computers in their life.
