TeamViewer, the easy-to-use remote desktop tool is now available for Linux desktops, the Linux client is also a no-config, no-install application that can establish connections as well as wait for incoming connects, without the need to open ports on a firewall. This tools makes screen sharing really easy across different platforms – from your *buntu you can gain control of a friendly Windows or Mac desktop in just a few seconds.

TeamViewer has .deb and .rpm builds for both 32 and 64-bit PC’s – you can grab and extract the tar.gz tarball, and run TeamViewer without installing it.

The all-in-one TeamViewer for Linux is still a beta, but has all that an administrator could need, it offers three connection options – the remote support mode allows IT professionals to take over a distant computer for troubleshooting, problem solving and teamwork, the presentation mode for sales service, training or webinars, and File transfer, “enables the fast and straightforward transfer of information from one computer to the other, regardless of where the two computers are located”.

TeamViewer full version for Linux is free for home and non-commercial use. It is also available for Mac, Windows and the iPhone.

On installing Gnome Gmail on your Ubuntu Desktop you get the option to set Gmail as your default mail reader in Preferred Applications. In other words, with Gnome Gmail, Gmail becomes an email desktop client like Thunderbird or Evolution. Its supports “To:”, “Subject:”, “body”, “CC:”, and “BCC: fields, so when you click on an email link in your web browser Gmail readily comes-up, you can right-click a file, select “Send to” to attach the file and place it in your Drafts folder, naturally you’ll have to emit your Gmail username and password.
Google Apps users, select “Configure” from the “Gnome Gmail” dialog if you want to add and make default your Google Apps account. Gnome Gmail is an open source utility, released under the GNU/GPL license. It works on all GNOME desktops like Ubuntu. Thanks TK

For Windows, and Linux: Opera Mini, the mobile version of the Opera web browser is certainly one of the best mobile browsers out there. Unlike Mozilla’s Mobile browser, Fennec, Opera Mini does not have builds for your computer, so you can’t get to test it before loading it into your smartphone, unless you use a walk-around like this one below;

To get Opera Mini on and running on your computer, do the following;
- First make sure you have Java Runtime Environment JRE installed on your system.
- Second create a folder and call it OperaMini for example.
- Third, download into the OperaMini folder and extract MicroEmulator – it’s a pure Java implementation of Java ME in Java SE.
- Fourth, download Opera Mini .jar and .jad files into the OperaMini folder.

Now run “microemulator.jar” in the microemulator folder by double-clicking on it or from your terminal dojava -jar microemulator.jar.

Go to Options -> Select device, click ‘Add’ and navigate to ‘microemulator/devices’ and select ‘microemu-device-resizable.jar’ then ‘OK’. In the next window, select the previuosly added ‘Resizable device’ profile and ‘Set as default’. Now ‘Resize’ to your taste – use your mouse to drag-out and resize.

That done, still on the MicroEmulator go to File -> Open MIDlet File” and select the opera-mini-advanced.jad you previously downloaded, now hit ‘Start’ to launch Opera Mini. Scroll down to the bottom and ‘Accept’ the EULA (End User License Agreement). You’re now set to use your Opera Mini.

via [Opera Mini - in 1280*1024!]

GNOME Activity Journal is a nascent but promising tool for the Gnome desktop environment (Ubuntu, openSUSE, Mandriva etc ) that provides a simple User Interface to browse and find files on your computer.

Formerly known as GNOME Zeitgeist, Activity Journal obtains readily available information from the Zeitgeist engine – a daemon that chronologically logs the user’s events and activities like when you open a file, view a web page, play music, watch a video or when you click-to-install a Deb package. “Since Zeitgeist is a log and not a snapshot of your environment”, it keeps the information around even when you delete files or detach your storage devices.

Installation on Ubuntu Karmic and Lucid
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zeitgeist/ppa sudo aptitude update sudo aptitude install gnome-activity-journal
You’ll find it at Applications -> Accessories -> Activity Journal.

While this very first release only supports basic browsing of file activities, you can pin items – a right click on an event and ‘Pin to Today’. It also supports image preview. Still experimental is the Tracker (sudo apt-get install tracker) based search, use Ctrl+f to bring out the search bar.

TODOS – Features in progress include; Displaying web browsing history in the journal, Search and interaction, Tags, Detailed single-day view showing relationships between files and Removing activities from the journal.

Download GNOME Activity Journal

Gnome: Chrome’s ‘Pin Tab’ feature that shrinks tabs to favicons only introduced a new way to save precious tab bar real estate in that browser, Firefox quickly got App Tabs extension. What we have here is a little libwnck hack that shrinks to icons only your windows in Ubuntu’s bottom panel, with the aim of providing more real estate space to the Windows List – its not really a great solution for those who often work with several applications opened at a time, especially browsers, I find Window Selector (right-click on bottom panel -> Add to Panel -> Window Selector) more suitable for such a task.

Pinned windows are chopped to the left, and their displayed icons look like the default ‘Show Desktop’ icon in the bottom panel. Hovering on a pinned window displays its title.
To install, copy and paste in your terminal the following lines code;
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kevin-mehall/libwnck sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libwnck22 killall gnome-panel
To pin a window, right-click on it and select “Always on visible workspace” – This also makes pinned windows visible in all workspaces.

A Better Way to Manage Long-Running Applications via [Web Upd8]

Ubuntu tweak gets an important update, its now at version 0.5.0. The last time it was mentioned on this blog was a year ago – users now get an Application Center that is supposed to be an alternative to the Ubuntu Software Center. Well Ubuntu Tweak tries to “override” Ubuntu’s basic structure – that’s why its a tweak, that’s why some like it and others don’t. Ubuntu beginners are not advised to use it, better move ahead, come back later when you’re more comfortable with Ubuntu.

The Application Center comes from the realms of the old Add/Remove, but the data is synced from ubuntu-tweak.com. I installed a few application from this app center, and the download was pretty fast. Ubuntu Tweak also gets a Source Center and an Update Manager. Both are similar to the Application Center. Support for Ubuntu 9.04 and earlier versions has been dropped.

All of what Ubuntu Tweak has to offer is found and working in Ubuntu, frankly I’ll refer updating my Ubuntu via the Update Manager, and installing new apps via the Ubuntu software Center CLI and Synaptic Package Manager. As for Ubuntu Tweak, use it to install Nautilus Extensions.

via [Ubuntu Tweak Blog ~ Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.0 released!]