Month: July 2010

GMail Notify Programs

digitaleagle Email, Gnome, Ubuntu, Uncategorized 1 Comment

I have noticed this nice little indicator-applet on the panel at the top of my Ubuntu screen, but I haven’t had much chance to use it.  I found the specs for it here.  By default, Skype and GMail don’t integrate into it, so I am looking for solutions.  I thought I would look for GMail first:

KCheckMail is one option, but it is for KDE.

The next hit I found was a little bit unusual.  Psi is another chatting application, and in the psi-plus-plugins, there is a GMail checker.  I found an interesting article describing the application and a link to configuring with GMail.  Come to find out, Google has some instructions, too.

Gnome-Gmail-Notifier is another option.  The Main Website has a little more information, but from the screenshots, it looks like it creates a system tray icon rather than using the indicator applet.

The Gmail-Notify program is a python/gtk option (not to be confused with the GMail-Notifier only available on Windows).  It’s goal is to provide an alternative for Google’s Windows only program.

The next item is not really a notifier applet: prism-google-mail.  It is actually a Prism application.  This installs the GMail webapp listed in the bundles section.

CheckGmail is the next option.  From what I can tell, it only looks like it works with a system tray icon.

xfce4-mailwatch-plugin is an option for XFCE.

KGmailNotifier is an option for KDE.

desktop-webmail looks like an interesting tool even though it isn’t a notifier.  The Gnome-GMail mentioned in the article looks like another thing to research although I didn’t see it in the repositories.

conduit is a tool that I had seen before.  It is not a notifier, but a cool app nonetheless.

mail-notification looks more generic but is a notifier.

cgmail is another option.  Again, it looks like it only creates a systray icon.

I also did a little searching on this, and apparently, I am not the only one asking this question — Ubuntu Forums: gmail in indicator-applet

The thread mentions gm-notify as an option that uses the indicator applet.  It is not in the repositories, but you can add it using Software Sources.  Add “ppa:gm-notify-maintainers/ppa”.  Then, you can install the package.  Here is what it looks like:

Desk 1_001

My next step is to check out this article to try to integrate Skype into the mix.  Before I upgraded, I had been using Cairo-Dock.  My quick search didn’t show the indicator applet for it, but I did see an article about AWN supporting the indicator applet.  I will have to put some more time into that.

Lirc and Volume

digitaleagle Mythbuntu, sound, Uncategorized Leave a comment

We have been having trouble with the remote not being able to control the volume on our Mythbuntu installation.  I just came across the pulseaudio-module-lirc package —

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio-module-lirc

My mute button didn’t work, so I tried adding the lirc configuration as explained in this thread.  It didn’t work.  The volume up and down did work though before I added that configuration.  The only thing I didn’t like was that it didn’t show the visual volume display on the screen.

On a side note, I found another application that looked interesting from this post: gizmod.  Actually, even though the post says they don’t have deb packages, I found one already in the repositories!

Another handy program is unclutter:

sudo apt-get install unclutter

It hides the mouse cursor so that you don’t see it in front of the videos you are watching.  I found it here, and here is another post about it.

Hulu with MythTV

digitaleagle Hulu, Mythbuntu, Uncategorized Leave a comment

We found some of the old shows on Hulu, and we have really been enjoying them: Bewitched, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, etc.  Since we don’t have cable, this works great for us.  It’s like a new kind of TV!

On top of that, I found out that I could install the Hulu application on my MythTV box.

I downloaded it from here:

Hulu Desktop (Linux)

And, I followed these directions:

Mythbuntu Wiki: Hulu Desktop in Mythbuntu

dualscreen-mouse-utils

digitaleagle Troubleshooting, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I ran across this tool a while ago, but I hadn’t had the opportunity to try it out.  It is called dualscreen-mouse-utils, and the thing that I want to use it for is to create a way to switch between my monitors with a remote control button. Here are some links to start with:

So, my first attempt was to download the compressed file, extract it, and try to compile.  I got a slew of errors, the first of which, was:

mouse-wrapscreen.c:63:22: error: X11/Xlib.h: No such file or directory

I did a little research and found this post:

It said to install this package:

sudo apt-get install xlibs-dev

But, the package didn’t exist.  I received this error:

E: Package xlibs-dev has no installation candidate

A quick search revealed this package that did install successfully:

sudo apt-get install libx11-dev

Then, it compiled cleanly with the “make” command.

I just tested it and it worked!  Next step is to setup a script to make it do a couple more things and add that to my lirc configuration.  I’ll save that for another post!

Great Link: Backup Programs List

digitaleagle Great Links, Uncategorized Leave a comment

Before upgrading my laptop to Ubuntu 10.04, I wanted to backup my data.  I found this list of backup utilities:

TechRepublic: 10 outstanding Linux backup utilities

I chose to install sbackup, but it didn’t work so hot for me.  It kicked off the process to start backing up, and I liked the interface the way I could choose what I wanted backed up.  But, what I didn’t like is that the process ran in the background, and I couldn’t see any status of the backup or confirm that it was running.  I thought for sure that I chose the destination as my external drive, but it began backing up to /var/backup instead, and it filled up my drive.

Once I found and deleted that backup, I ended up just using a GUI front-end to rsync.  I think it was the grsync one.  If you do a search for “rsync” in synaptic, you will see a number of options.