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Homebrew coder Simon Kagstrom has released a new version of UAE Wii, a Commodore Amiga emulator for
the Nintendo Wii. The latest update of the classic emulator has added some new features, more fixes
and various other
Decloner 1.2Decloner helps you find and eliminate duplicate files on your Mac.
It uses SHA-1 algorithm to reliably determine if files are identical. Decloner has a simple
straightforward user interface where you only need to specify a directory to scan, and Decloner
will find duplicate files in that directory and all its subdirectories. It then will show you the
found duplicates and help get rid of them safely. Decloner never deletes anything permanently. All
removed files are moved into the Trash so you can always restore them if you change your mind. When
determining which files to delete, you can see their information and use QuickLook to examine the
contents just like you would do it in Finder. You can define exclusion patterns to ignore certain
file names, and set minimum file size to ignore very small files. Decloner can process large number
of files on internal or external disk drives. For your convenience Decloner includes Sparkle
auto-update feature.
WHAT'S NEWVersion 1.2:
New features
Safe mode: instead of trashing duplicate files, Decloner moves them to a folder of your
choice (~/Desktop/Duplicates by default), preserving paths, for complete peace of mind
A new feature to preserve at least one copy of a file: Decloner will now optionally ignore
any marked files in duplicate groups that have all their files marked, and you will need to
unmark at least one file in a group to have duplicates deleted in that group.
Replaced action buttons with pulldown menu buttons
Added Follow aliases preference, off by default
Dock icon now only bounces once when Decloner displays sheets
A new alert bar notifies you if any files could not be deleted
Implemented smarter selection of files by date and name
Files within each group of duplicates are now sorted
Logging to file to assist troubleshooting
64-bit version
Fixes
Fixed empty Minimum file size field when opening Preferences
Removed Mark All action as potentially destructive
Fixed selection size and wasted space wraparound at 4 GB
Aliases are no longer treated as duplicates
Improved speed of "Preparing display" stage of the scan
This afternoon I took a little time to work on some changes in Acire; my little graphical front-end to a library of
Python Snippets. I wanted to share this work as I think it will continue to help Acire be a
useful little tool.
Today I added a new feature that helps you tie online documentation with a snippet. So, if you
take a look at this screenshot:
You can see that in the snippet information (which I have changed the layout on a little) there
are now a couple of link buttons. If you click on one of the buttons it will load up the
documentation in your web browser. This documentation is added to the snippet like this:
Acire will then grab the title of those sites and display the buttons underneath the snippet.
This is a great way of including a link to the manual page for a given feature, tutorial links or
anything else with a snippet. This is just a first cut of the feature and I am sure there some
bugs to irk out, so merge proposals are welcome.
In addition to this I added some additional fixes and features:
Alphabetized Lists – the list of categories in Acire and the list of
snippets in each category has now been alphabetized which makes navigating available snippets
much easier.
HIG improvements – thanks to Matthew Pirocchi fo contributing a branch
for helping Acire to fit in with the GNOME HIG better. The changes are subtle but really sleek.
Number of snippets – the number of snippets that are currently available
are now shown on the status bar.
Link to how to add snippets – Acire is nothing without python-snippets, so I added a link in the
Help menu to this page which
explains how people can contribute snippets.
The python-snippets project which provides
the library of snippets that Acire uses has been seeing some wonderful contributions across a
range of categories. Here is a quick screenie showing the range of categories that we have
snippets in now:
So, I am planning on doing a little more bug-fixing and then rolling a 0.5 release of Acire.
FmPro Migrator quickly and accurately migrates FileMaker Pro database structure
and data to MySQL, Oracle, Access, SQL Server, Sybase, DB2, OpenBase, PostgreSQL, FrontBase,
SQLite and Valentina.
Converts Access Forms/Reports, Relationships, Value Lists, Queries and Visual Basic to
FileMaker 10
Converts FileMaker Pro Layouts/Scripts/Value Lists to Microsoft Access
Converts FileMaker Pro Layouts/Scripts/Value Lists, Relationships to Servoy Projects
Converts Layouts to HTML/JavaScript
Converts Layouts/Scripts to Revolution Stacks
Migrates Access, Bento, Firebird and SQL Server to FileMaker 10
Converts Bento Forms to FileMaker Layouts
Automated Table Consolidation Feature
Generates Perl CGI scripts for all databases
Facilitates FileMaker ESS Configurations
Host FileMaker Pro data at any ISP supporting MySQL
Documents FileMaker Pro database structure
Migration of large text fields and image data for all supported databases
No ODBC driver licensing required for UNIX servers
Repeating Fields Extraction
Economical Single-User License
FileMaker image export feature
Export Layout XML to individual files (Developer Edition Feature)
FileMaker Pro database fields containing more than 255 or 4000 characters of text are migrated to
the appropriate large text column type in the destination database. Container field data within
FileMaker Pro container fields is migrated directly to the appropriate BLOB type of database
columns through a network connection. No manual data entry is required for processing either of
these specialized data types.
WHAT'S NEWVersion 5.57:
Added new PHP to revTalk conversion feature.
Added new BASIC to revTalk conversion feature.
Fixed the Value Lists generated for Servoy migration projects to add rn instead of only r as
value list item separators.
Updated Fmig_Preferences.db3 (v6) and MigrationProcess.db3 (v4) files to include new
preference items for new features.
Renamed Convert Database to Revolution feature with new icon and changed name to Convert
Layouts to Rev.
Canonical has announced the availability of the first Ubuntu 10.04 beta release. The new version
of Ubuntu, codenamed Lucid Lynx, is scheduled to arrive in April. It will be a long-term support
(LTS) release, which means that updates will be available for three years on the desktop and five
years on servers.
Although the Ubuntu developers have largely focused on boosting stability for this release, they
have also added a number of noteworthy new features and applications. One of the most visible
changes is the introduction of a
new theme—a change that is part of a broader rebranding initiative that aims to update
Ubuntu's visual identity.
It looks like while the Bing app has been pulled from international App Stores, and updated version of the Bing app has
been released on the US App Store. Aside from a number of stability fixes and usability tweaks,
the app also features some rather nice new features, such as:
proNotes 1.9.0.78proNotes has a whole host of features to keep you organized and
help you find your information quickly. The whole philosophy behind proNotes is to give you
powerful features that keep you productive without getting in your way.
Notes
The basic component of proNotes is a note. A note has a category, title, status, note text,
attachments, a keyword, and to-dos. What's cool about proNotes is as soon as you save a new note,
it's organized for you in the Main Window and it's text is searchable. It does all this on the
fly. You don't have to create an organizational scheme or a directory structure in advance.
Fast Searching
There are two ways of searching proNotes: clicking & typing.
Clicking on a category finds all the titles with that category. Clicking on a title finds
just the notes with that title. One last click in the details table shows you the note.
Typing in the search field narrows things down just like clicking. proNotes will quickly show
you all the notes, for all the statuses, that have the search text in the category, title, note,
attachment name, to-do item or keyword. You can search all the elements or just one (by clicking
on the magnifying glass in the search field). You can search for words or a phrase (by
surrounding your search in double-quotes).
To-Dos Like You've Never Used Them Before
Many programs have to-do lists but proNotes handles to-do lists in a unique and powerful way.
Just like with notes, proNotes lets you click and search your to-do's. That means in just a few
clicks you can:
See all your to-dos for all your notes.
See just the to-dos for a particular title (i.e. all the to-dos for the Acme account)
See just the to-dos for a particular note (i.e. all the to-dos from the conference call you
had with Jack Strong on 12/26/2008.)
Pretty cool huh? Not many programs can do that so well and as fast as proNotes! Check out the
screen shots here
WHAT'S NEW1.9.0.78:
23 new features.
updated interface with colors
editing in the Main Window
keyboard control of the interface.
history sort options
new buttons in main window for new, edit, print and save
The official Bing app only dropped in December, but the Bing blog
reports that a new and improved app is now available for free from the App Store. Some new features include the
incorporation of bookmarks, copy and pasting URLs, and direct sharing via e-mail, along with a host
of other new features and tweaks. More »
The official Bing app only dropped in December, but the Bing blog
reports that a new and improved app is now available for free from the App Store. Some new features include the
incorporation of bookmarks, copy and pasting URLs, and direct sharing via e-mail, along with a host
of other new features and tweaks. More »
Review The PS3 Slim sees Sony hoping to invigorate sales of the Playstation 3
with a lighter and much less expensive model. No doubt the company views this as a chance to
redeem the brand before it starts to look like a fat old aunt in the console war. For this
redemption to take place we would need to see some serious new features go into the rebirth of
this gaming console....
Microsoft just launched a
new version of its Bing iPhone app. The iPhone app gives you comprehensive
access to Bing's core services, including Bing maps and
directions, as well as news and image search. Besides offering better stability and a few
interface tweaks, the new version of the Bing app also integrates more tightly with the iPhone by
giving you access to your contacts in the mapping feature and making it easier to copy and paste
URLs and share interesting results through email.
Sponsor
Releasing Bing for iPhone Worldwide was an Accident...
Just as it launched this new version of the app, however, Microsoft also
pulled the Bing applications from all the non-U.S. versions of the App Store. According to a
statement Microsoft
sent to Neowin, the company "inadvertently made it available to all countries in which the
Apple Marketplace has a presence." Why it took Microsoft three months to pull the app, which was
released in December 2009, remains a bit of a mystery.
New Features
If you are in the U.S., however, the Bing iPhone app remains to be the best way to access
Microsoft's "decision engine" on your phone. The new version now includes a number of interesting
new features. One of the most useful features is the app's ability to let you bookmark maps,
websites and direction. Sadly, however, this feature isn't integrated with Apple's Safari, so
your bookmarks don't carry over to the iPhone's default browser.
Other new features include better parental control settings, private search and the ability to
edit your search history and support for first generation iPod touch devices.
If you’re a
photographer and use a Mac, chances are you’re using Lightroom or Aperture. Probably
Lightroom, since Aperture is less popular among pros — and the latest version seems to be
an acknowledgment of that. The features added in version 3 are clearly intended to draw casual
shooters using iPhoto to the paid image editing honey pot.
Since so many of these amazing new features are direct side-loads from iPhoto, it smooths the
process and makes the program as a whole more approachable, though whether existing Aperture
users will find them helpful is questionable. Brushes, on the other hand, are a welcome addition
to any photographer’s toolset, and depending on how dedicated you are, may be worth the
price of admission.
If you’re a photographer and use a Mac, chances are you’re using Lightroom or
Aperture. Probably Lightroom, since Aperture is less popular among pros — and the latest
version seems to be an acknowledgment of that. The features added in version 3 are clearly
intended to draw casual shooters using iPhoto to the paid image editing honey pot. Since so many
of these amazing new features are direct side-loads from iPhoto, it smooths the process and makes
the program as a whole more approachable, though whether existing Aperture users will find them
helpful is questionable. Brushes, on the other hand, are a welcome addition to any
photographer’s toolset, and depending on how dedicated you are, may be worth the price of
admission.
Invasion of the iPhoto features
As long as I’ve been using Aperture, I’ve considered it a processing
application. Its photo management was troublesome here and there, and iPhoto had the best ways of
showing off your shots, but I dealt with it since maintaining two separate libraries of the same
photos would be disk space suicide. I’ve only used Lightroom a little bit (and a version or
two back) but all my friends say that it just has a better workflow for serious photo work
— importing a couple hundred shots, scrubbing through them, doing the necessary
adjustments, and outputting to the necessary format. Not that I have trouble doing that in
Aperture, but apparently it’s faster and better in Lightroom.
Confronted with such a fearsome opponent, Apple decided that it would be better to flank than to
risk a frontal assault. Hence the expansion of Aperture’s incorporation of iPhoto features
Faces and Places. I question their relevance in a photo processing application, but given
Apple’s tendency towards coalescing functionality, I’m guessing that iPhoto will
eventually be Aperture: Gimped Edition, and the only real choice for organizing and messing with
large numbers of photos will be Aperture.
There are some kinks to be worked out. Faces plainly doesn’t work. After it spent literally
five hours going through my photos (about 1000 per hour), this is what it has come up with:
No, it didn’t have a lot to go on (I hadn’t “trained” it much yet) but
really now. After giving it a few more pointers on what I looked like, it still mistook
a three-year-old tow-headed girl, my friend Monica (who is Indian, and in a wedding dress), some
E3 booth babes, and Casio president Kazuo Kashio for pale, bearded, Devin Coldewey. The
cork board background is jarring and the interface for going through your shots is terrible. I
realize this is a technology still being perfected, and that is why I am wondering: what is it
doing in my RAW editing program?
Places is useful if you have a geotagging
camera (still rare) or want to spend a few hours dragging and dropping stuff onto the map. It can
be fun, actually, if you take a lot of pictures of your friends, and want to drag and drop this
or that night onto the location you went to; it’s like creating a different kind of album
(“Linda’s Tavern”), and indeed you can make a browsable smart album from
locations. If you’re like me, you won’t feel complete until the photos are more or
less where they were within the city, and not all grouped in a single pin, smack in the middle of
the city. This could have some promise, but with a backlog of several thousand shots, getting a
library up to date in Places is a task I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
It’s a mistake to judge Faces and Places by simply saying “well we were fine before
them,” because it may just be that we found ways of working in the old system of
organization (Project>Folder>Album) that approximated what these new features do. But I
don’t think it’s wrong to say they just don’t really do much, and feel out of
place to boot. You have to work at them, or shoot for them, in order for them to really be
worthwhile. Still I have to give credit where credit’s due: if you just consider Faces and
Places new columns to organize by (like rating or date) then they’re worth their salt. As
flagship features, though, they’re duds.
Lastly, the slide show thing. It’s like finding a trout in the milk. Not that it
doesn’t work — it works as well as iPhoto’s thing, and I suppose
it’s better to have than not. It’s just a little weird to have a sort of…
aftermarket feature popped in there next to the serious editing tools. Its little presets are,
like in most Apple programs, 25% solid, 75% fluff. Who in the name of all that is holy is going
to pick “Shatter” as their slide show transition? It’s ghastly.
The new features are very well explained in little videos accessible through the
“Welcome” screen, which will be handy for new users — if they can find the
screen after they close it (it’s in Help>Welcome to Aperture).
The good stuff
So if the iPhoto features are icing, the actual cake is the RAW editing, adjustment tools, and
user interface. Let’s start with what I would say is the best new feature: Brushes.
You can see a pretty thorough overview of the feature at Apple’s site, but the gist is that
it allows you to apply certain effects in limited areas using a brush of adjustable size and
intensity. That’s great! I can’t count the number of times I’ve vacillated
between two versions of a photo where an adjustment necessary for one part ended up blowing out
another, or I just wanted to bring out the color in the eyes but not in the background. A lot of
fiddling could usually approximate the effect I wanted, but it would be so much easier to just
use a brush. I’ll be using the hell out of this feature, and it’s perhaps the only
real step Apple took against Adobe in this update.
(combination Brushes and Help Video screenshot)
The brushes are non-destructive, like any of the dials and curves you can play with in the
adjustments panel, so you can feel free to experiment, layer, and try out different effects. One
thing I often have to do when shooting review shots is emphasize the color of LEDs, but if the
subject is well-lit, the LEDs are going to be barely visible. No problem; make a little brush,
add in a little contrast right there, bump the saturation just in the one area, and boom, it
sticks out like a sore thumb. Brushes are useful for lots of little things like that.
The new full-screen browser is handy but not really a revolution. They’ve added the ability
to get around your library a little more, which is nice, but it’s not as streamlined as the
regular browser, which is always accessible by a single keystroke. The fullscreen presentation
has definitely been improved, however, and when showing off photos to friends or clients,
it’s a better option than either the plain editing window or a slide show.
The preset adjustments, I think we can agree, are being blown way out of proportion. These are
the same kind of “professional adjustments” that you have been able to apply on cheap
point-and-shoots since the beginning of time. There are a few quick adjust things like
high-contrast black-and-white or exposure +1 that are nice to have previews for (the live preview
window is handy), but let’s be honest, these are just filters. I’d like to be able to
say that they’re carefully adjusted so you won’t see weird color effects, blackouts,
or blowouts, but the fact is every one I tried looked cheap and overdone. The others, like white
balance and so on, seem pretty redundant considering the actual controls for adjusting those
aspects are mere pixels away in the same window.
Click to see it larger. You can’t really tell here, since this photo isn’t very high
contrast, but in several of the other shots I tried this on, the vintage look was really
purple, cross-processing was really green, and toy camera pushed the contrast
way too far. Subtle adjustments these are not.
The good news is that people new to the program might try a couple, see that they were created by
dragging curves and color bars around, and then make their own. I’ve had my own
“base” adjustment for years now, which was just as easily accessible and just as
customizable. Putting together a “look” for a shoot using this feature might be
easier now than before, but it’s still just a toy at this point.
The ability to have multiple libraries is nice; splitting work and personal stuff would be my
move, so that if a meteor crashed into TC HQ (or, more likely, I’m fired for
insubordination), I could free up a couple gigs in one clean sweep. It’s also convenient
for backing up and sharing; “here’s my whole ‘wedding’ library, feel free
to do what you like with it” rather than “here’s a folder full of RAW
files.”
A quick note
Just a PSA: installation of Aperture 3 took ages. Plan on losing at least a working day to 100%
processor usage as it converts your library, searches for Faces, and reprocesses your RAW files
with the new profile. I’m not holding this against Apple (it’s a LOT of data to sift
through) but it’s just something to be aware of.
Conclusion
Aperture is still a great program, in my opinion, and the budding photographer would be a lot
better off with this than with iPhoto if they’re planning on doing anything more than
collecting snapshots. I’ve gotten used to Aperture’s workflow and they haven’t
changed it much in 3, in fact they’ve provided a couple serious improvements with Brushes
and potentially Places and Faces — you know, if you’re into that kind of
thing.
The trouble I see is that Aperture, once a rather single-minded program, is being diluted with
features that have nothing to do with its core functionality. Why not have a new program, called
“Collection” or something, that hooks into all your libraries, allows for creating
robust slide shows, exporting directly to Facebook, and all that sort of thing? Putting all this
junk into Aperture is doing to it what Apple has done to iTunes: once a sleek and straightforward
program, it has now grown bloated beyond comprehension; it’s a bit like seeing a once-great
fighter gone to seed. I have more of an attachment to Aperture than to iTunes, but if Aperture 4
continues along the vector indicated by Aperture 3, you can consider me a Lightroom conversion.
Last month we
wrote about Crocodoc, a new Y Combinator-funded company that makes it very easy to upload a
text document or PowerPoint deck and mark it up online to share with your colleagues.
Unfortunately, it was also pretty bare boned — you couldn’t
even save your edited document to your hard drive. Today, that’s changing: Crocodoc has
rolled out some key new features (including the ability to save) that make the service
significantly more flexible, and also pits it more directly against Adobe’s Acrobat Pro.
Aside from the ability to save to PDF, the new version includes a freehand pen tool, a tool to
convert any website to PDF (which you can then add notes to), and a new API. In a few days, the
company will be releasing its application on Google’s recently-launched App Marketplace. The service will
also be rolling out a Flash-based embeddable document viewer (similar to what you’ll find
on DocStoc and Scribd) that lets you both view and mark up embedded documents.
CEO Ryan Damico says that these features make Crocodoc more competitive with Adobe’s $400
Acrobat Pro software because the free Acrobat Reader most people have doesn’t allow them to
mark up and save their documents (personally, I’ve been avoiding any software with the word
‘Acrobat’ in its title for years). Damico does acknowledge that there are still
plenty of premium features that Crocodoc doesn’t have that Adobe’s paid
software does, but says that this basic editing/saving functionality is what most people are
after, anyway. Damico says that in the long term, Crocodoc is hoping to “do to
Acrobat what Gmail did to Outlook” by taking a widely used desktop application and bringing
it online. CrunchBase InformationCrocodocInformation provided by CrunchBase
About a year ago, we covered the Taga Stroller Trike, which is
essentially exactly what it says that it is: a way of putting your little kids on a much easier
method of transport.
As you can see from the video, the Taga can now transform from bike into stroller. This looks
like a new feature, as I did not see that feature when I reported on it the first time. I
remember saying that it folds up, but they said nothing about its transforming feature.
This must be why the company has put out all these videos of the Transforming Taga. Especially
since it can do its shape-changing feat in just 20 seconds. Considering the struggles that I have
had with my strollers, I would say that is pretty good.
As I have said before, my experience with strollers isn’t always pleasant. I found that
strollers didn’t turn when they should, and were horrendous to push uphill, even if there
was only a slight slope. This particular Taga is like one of those awesome ones with three spoked
wheels, easy to move, and get around.
Of course, all of this costs, and costs plenty. Price of the Taga Transformer: $1,495. Dang!
Unless you are those parents from 18 Kids and Counting, I don’t see this as a wise
investment.
(Update: confirmation of Android update) Sprint on Friday made available one phone OS
upgrade and leaked another. The provider has posted a Windows Mobile 6.5 update for the HTC Touch
Pro2 that gives it all the new features of the Microsoft OS, including the more touch-friendly
interface and improved built-in web browser. It should also supply upgrades to HTC's own TouchFLO
layer (incorrectly labeled as Sense UI by Sprint) and other minor fixes....
If you're
someone who has to take a lot of meetings, you've undoubtedly run into scheduling issues at some
point and had to reschedule one . Google Calendar just added a new feature that you can enable in
Labs to make the process a lot easier (if your company uses Google Calendar). Smart
Rescheduler looks at other Google Calendars that have been shared with you and creates a ranked
list of the best times to reschedule.
It's a great idea in theory -- it even deals with room conflicts! -- but what works for the Google
Calendar team might not work for everyone. As you might expect, they all use Google
Calendar. However, if the people you're meeting with are on some other calendar software, Smart
Rescheduler won't have enough data to do its job. I really like the concept, though, and it adds to
a growing stack of reasons to get on board with Google Calendar.
Today I am pleased to announce two fantastic opportunities for two enthusiastic, motivated and
energetic folks to come and join my team for a six month internship. You will join Daniel
Holbach, Jorge Castro, and David Planella as team-mates and report to myself as honorary
horse-folk, working on awesome solutions to help make Ubuntu an ever more compelling community to
be a part of.
This is a fantastic opportunity to work inside a fast-paced, collaborative environment, solving
important problems, working with awesome colleagues and adding Canonical as a rocking reference
to your resume.
Before we get to the details about the roles, I want to be clear on a few general elements:
These are internships: they are are not normal full roles.
Like most internships, these roles are unpaid.
Each role lasts for six months.
Working hours are Mon – Fri from 9am – 6pm.
I want to be clear that my team is a fast-paced, hard-working, hectic environment. I am going to
work you hard, and you should expect that, but my goal here is to help you squeeze every ounce of
opportunity out of your internship. We will have 1-on-1 weekly calls, I will help guide you on
what to work on, help you manage your work, solve problems, and be effective in your projects. In
other words: when you sign up for your internship, expect a solid six month adventure, but an
adventure that will sow the seeds for many great opportunities in the future.
So, I am looking for two roles:
Ubuntu Community Documentation Author (Internship)
Ubuntu Community Web Developer (Internship)
Let’s take a look at the job descriptions:
Ubuntu Community Documentation Author (Internship)
Job Title: Ubuntu Community Documentation Author (Internship)
Reports to: Ubuntu Community Manager
Job Location: Home with some travel engagements.
Job Summary: To produce documentation and online materials for the Ubuntu
community and new contributors.
Key responsibilities and accountabilities:
Produce a series of well-written and clear materials about a range of different topics in the
Ubuntu community surrounding how to participate.
Make these materials available on line and ensuring they follow style and quality guidelines.
Work with the Ubuntu Documentation Team, Learning Team and Ubuntu Manual project to liaise
around collaboration and best practise for materials production.
Promote and raise awareness of this documentation inside and outside the Ubuntu community.
Identify common needs and requirements for materials, prioritize them and build them into
your workflow.
REQUIREMENTS
Specific Job Skills: Excellent writing skills, strong networking and social
networking skills, good relationship building abilities, process driven, able to manage multiple
work streams, good prioritisation, independent, willing to travel potentially 25% of their work
time, and able to resolve conflict.
Experience: Experience of working with community in Ubuntu and Open Source
projects, experience of the upstream/distributor relationship, technical experience.
Key Qualities: Have strong social skills, a good networker and a good technical
knowledge of Ubuntu and the Open Source and upstream/downstream development process. Candidates
should be process driven, strategically minded and committed. Competent visual design and
artistic talent is highly desirable. Other: Candidates should provide evidence of existing
experience and work in the Open Source community and suitable references.
Ubuntu Community Web Developer (Internship)
Job Title: Ubuntu Community Web Developer (Internship)
Reports to: Ubuntu Community Manager
Job Location: Home with some travel engagements.
Job Summary: To design and develop web functionality across a range of Ubuntu
community infrastructure web properties.
Key responsibilities and accountabilities:
In conjunction with the team and the community, design new features and solutions for
specific needs in our key web properties.
Develop and implement such features and solutions using a range of appropriate tools.
Provide solid testing and quality assurance over your work during the development phase and
before deployment.
Triage, fix and deploy bug fixes.
Work with the community to collaborate together on projects and solutions.
Report your progress to the team and the wider community.
Be responsive to changing needs, emergency fixes and feature requests and be reactive to a
range of different customers.
Requirements
Specific Job Skills: Excellent web development skills (Python, Django, PHP,
HTML, CSS and Database experience are a must), good experience of Launchpad, Bazaar and Ubuntu
community infrastructure, strong networking and social networking skills, process driven, able to
manage multiple work streams, good prioritisation, independent, willing to travel potentially 25%
of their work time, and able to resolve conflict.
Experience: Experience of working on collaborative web development projects in
Python, Django and PHP, strong development experience over a range of projects, experience of
working with community in Ubuntu and Open Source projects. Key Qualities: Excellent developer,
strong social skills, a good networker and a good technical knowledge of Ubuntu and the Open
Source and upstream/downstream development process. Candidates should be process driven,
strategically minded and committed. Competent visual design and artistic talent is highly
desirable.
Other: Candidates should provide evidence of existing experience and work in the
Open Source community and suitable references.
How To Apply
If you are interested in applying for these roles do not contact me directly,
you should follow these steps:
Ensure you have a recent, up to date resume (in PDF or OpenOffice.org format) that outlines
your experience, education, your community achievements, technical background and information
about your interests and ambitions.
Send an email to alice.paul AT canonical DOT com with the subject Community Team
Internship Application and the following details:
Specify which role you are interested in.
Your resume attached.
A few paragraphs about why you would like to have the role.
Good luck and I will speak to some of you soon in an interview!
It's arriving a day late but Steve Langasek has announced the release of the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta.
This first major Ubuntu update of 2010 is codenamed "Lucid Lynx" and most Phoronix readers are
already familiar with the new features and changes from all of our Lucid articles so we will spare
you the details. Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and Mythbuntu have all reached a 10.04
Beta status too...
Laminar Research has released an update to its series of X-Plane flight simulator apps for the
iPhone and iPod touch. The update adds a replay mode that is activated when the app is paused to
allow users to view the last few minutes of their flight and provides higher-resolution maps,
complete with buildings and airport runways. Other new features include new paint and increased
detail for many of the aircraft, a more detailed lighting and fog model...
Twitter appears set
to tweak search results to return the most popular tweets first — instead of the most
recent — for any given search query.
This according to Twitter Developer Advocate Taylor Singletary, who has just updated the developer Google Group announcing the yet-to-be-released product.
Singletary says, “This is a beta project, but an important first step to surface the most
popular tweets for users searching Twitter.”
The announcement is geared towards developers to prepare them for changes in the search API. The
implication, however, is that the appearance of Twitter Search will also be altered to highlight popular tweets. Ultimately, it
appears that the revamped search experience will be available on both Twitter.com and third-party
applications and clients that move to support it.
While there’s no word on how “popular” is defined by Twitter, we can assume
that the popular tweets will be identified by attributes such as quantity of retweets, or
potentially tweets coming from a user with a high level of followers and engagement.
We think the new feature is an important evolution of the Twitter search experience and one
we’re looking forward to seeing in action.
19th March 2010: eaReckon has updated BloXpander to v1.0.2. This update brings a new feature: MIDI
Scene Selection: Now you can open or change a scene from your MIDI controller instead of having to
divert your atten...
BBC sites are responsible for 40 percent of the visits to iPlayer, according to Hitwise.
The BBC will make viewing of its on-demand videos more social by adding Facebook, Twitter and
Bebo integration into its widely popular iPlayer online video application, according to a report
in the
Daily Telegraph. The addition of more social sharing features has the potential to greatly
increase usage and viewer engagement for the iPlayer, which continues to post record numbers
month after month.
In an interview with the Telegraph, the BBC’s director of future media and technology, Erik
Huggers, said that social sharing features would be built into the iPlayer 3.0 beta, which is set
to launch soon. According to Huggers, partnerships with the various social networking sites have
already been signed, but the Beeb has been waiting until the release of the newest version of its
player before making the new features available to users.
The integration will allow users to easily share what they are watching or listening to with
friends and contacts on the social networking site. But for the integration to work, they will
have to first register an account and log into the BBC iPlayer before adding their Facebook,
Twitter and Bebo information to that account. Once that information is stored, they will no
longer have to log into the services separately to post updates to their account from the
iPlayer.
While the iPlayer could see a boost from social sharing, the video catchup service is doing just
fine on its own, posting record numbers (again!) for the month of February. The iPlayer site was
visited by an average of 1.4 million people per day , with 3.5 million requests for TV and radio
programs during the month. But the most telling stat might be the amount of time viewers spent on
the site. iPlayer viewers spent more than an hour — 64 minutes — catching up on TV
programs online.
"Many of us who tried out the Windows Phone 7 simulator were disappointed to discover the
simulator didn’t contain a lot of the functionality that was being shown off at Mix10. It
turns out Dan Ardelean has published a modified or ‘unlocked’ version of the
simulator that contains virtually everything that was displayed. The front page is now full of
apps that work, the settings menu is a long list of options for those apps."
Australian tech site, techAU.tv, recently posted two video simulations of WP7. The first video (about 10 minutes) shows different
apps in action, while the second video goes through many of the settings screens.
One item that stood out to me was a Speech setting. I was worried if VoiceCommand may not make in
WP7 (at least at launch) and was pleasantly surprised when I saw a Speech Settings option under
General Settings (near beginning of second video).
While Microsoft hasn't officially announced that voice control will be available in WP7 (they may
obviously still be working on it), I now have hope that this feature will make it at launch.
Hit the Read link for the videos and let us know your thoughts. What stands out to you?
Rumours suggest that Microsoft may be planning a new firmware update that would allow external
USB hard drives to be used with the Xbox 360.
The rumours began with website Joystiq, which claims to have received Microsoft documentation
describing the new feature, having subsequently confirmed the details with other unnamed sources.
The document purports to have been authored by a senior software development engineer at
Microsoft and states that due to "increased market penetration of high-capacity, high throughput
USB mass storage devices, a 2010 Xbox 360 system update" will allow users to use USB devices for
storage via an update due in spring 2010.
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Microsoft just launched a 
If you’re a
photographer and use a Mac, chances are you’re using Lightroom or Aperture. Probably
Lightroom, since Aperture is less popular among pros — and the latest version seems to be
an acknowledgment of that. The features added in version 3 are clearly intended to draw casual
shooters using iPhoto to the paid image editing honey pot.
(Update: confirmation of Android update) Sprint on Friday made available one phone OS
upgrade and leaked another. The provider has posted a Windows Mobile 6.5 update for the HTC Touch
Pro2 that gives it all the new features of the Microsoft OS, including the more touch-friendly
interface and improved built-in web browser. It should also supply upgrades to HTC's own TouchFLO
layer (incorrectly labeled as Sense UI by Sprint) and other minor fixes....
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