Ubuntu Red Hot!

Click on the image to download the 'Ubuntu Red Hot' wallpaper.

Manage Your Contacts With The 'Rubrica Addressbook' for GNOME.

Manage all your contacts with the 'Rubrica' for GNOME to maintain a nice addressbook.Rubrica provides you enough options to create a highly efficient and simple addressbook.With this addressbook,you can categorize your contacts into a number of groups like 'favorites','hot contacts','friends','university' and even 'free software'.There are a total of 19 groups to choose from.
Install 'Rubrica' from the 'Synaptic Package Manager' ( Miscellaneous - Graphical(universe)).Launch 'Rubrica Addressbook' from the 'Office' menu.
To create a new contact you need to create a new card.Click on the 'Modifica' menu to create a new personal or company card.A new window allowing you to enter contact fields would appear.
Rubrica stores names,web urls,email addresses,telephone numbers,job data,a photograph and even some additional notes.Thus 'Rubrica Addressbook' maintains a pretty detailed contact.Card labels and groups can be edited under the first tab.


To view a contact choose a group from the 'Groups' column and then click on the card label.
Under the 'Modifica' tab ,you can configure preferences.Here ,you get to choose the web browser to handle URLs,an email client for handling emails.An option to launch Ekiga on clicking a telephone number is also provided.



Use 'Rubrica Addressbok' and give your feedback in the comments section.

Organize your music with the 'Audio Tag Tool'

To maintain a nicely organized music library,you need to properly tag your MP3s and OGG files.
'Audio Tag Tool' is a package that can tag your music.It has a very simple and nice GUI.Install 'Audio Tag Tool' from the 'Synaptic Package Manager' (search for 'tagtool' in the Multimedia Universe repository).After installation ,launch it from the 'Sound and Video' menu.Load MP3 or OGG files in the 'Working Directory'.


You can tag these files individually as well as in a group.Five tabs are provided on the right side of the window.The first tab allows you to tag an individual file and the second tab allows you to tag a group of files.
The other three tabs allow you to clear tags ,configure the file name format and create play lists.
Once you fill in all the required fields , click on 'Go' button provided at the bottom of the window.A drop down menu present along with the 'Go' button allows you to apply the tag fields to all the files of the directory or only the selected files.
'Audio Tag Tool' can create ID3 v1 and ID3 v2 tags.You can choose between the two formats from the 'ID3 Preferences' section under the 'Settings' menu.Your music player may support a particular ID3 version so check with the reference before applying tags and transferring music.'Character Conversions' can help you in easily removing the underscore symbol found in the names of the music files.You can change all underscores to white spaces and vice-verse.An option of converting case is also provided.



The only disappointment is probably the absence of an album art field.
So have a nicely organized music collection with 'Audio Tag Tool'.

Scan Documents In PDF

To save a scanned document as a PDF file you can use 'gscan2pdf'.It provides an easy to use GUI to aid the process of converting a scanned document to PDF.
This package is available in the 'universe' repository of ubuntu.Install it from the 'Synaptic Package Manager'.
Launch 'gscan2pdf' from the 'Graphics' menu.Click on the 'scan document' button on the toolbar.A window allowing you to configure your scanner appears.Under the 'Scan Options' tab you can set the paper size,choose the compression format and set the resolution.Under the 'Page Options' keep the '# Pages' to 1 and check the '#' radio button otherwise the same document would be scanned again and again.


To scan a document click on the 'Scan' button at the bottom.Once the document is scanned save it in the PDF or an image format from the 'File' menu.You can even email the document in PDF.
Use the buttons provided on the toolbar to zoom in/out of the document and rotate it by 90 or 180 degrees.
Copyright 2006--2008 Jeffrey Ratcliffe
Home Page:http://gscan2pdf.sf.net

Listen - Just Listen

The tag line of 'Listen' is 'Just Listen' but you can certainly do a lot more than just listening to your music.
'Listen' music player for Gnome is a great way to 'Listen ' to your music.
Get instant artist,album or song information from 'Wikipedia' and discover similar songs from 'LastFm' as you enjoy your music.
Checkout the column right in the middle of the window.It gives you direct access to 'Wikipedia','LastFm'.The 'Context' section of this column maintains three play lists of 'Favorite albums','Favorite songs' and 'Last played songs'.All these play lists are maintained depending on your listening habits.The 'Lyrics' section provides you the lyrics of the current song being played.Data for lyrics can be fetched from lyrc.com.ar or leoslyrics.com.Browse your folders and files from the 'Filesystem' section.


Maintaining album covers with 'Listen' is very simple.Just right click on the album art window to apply a custom album art or find it online.Left click on the window to get an enlarged view of the album art.


Click on the 'View' menu to enable the 'Party mode' or press CTR + H.'Party mode' provides a full screen view of the music player.
To configure 'Listen' ,click on the 'Music' menu and open the 'Preferences' section.If you want a splash screen with the startup then enable it under the 'Startup' section.
To enable the 'LastFm' support,you need to provide your user name and password under the 'Audioscrobbler' tab.'Listen' also provides the visualisation support that can be enabled from the 'Behavior' section under the 'General' tab.


One of the problems that you might encounter with 'Listen' could be that the playback slider might not work.If it works for you,please do let us know.
Install 'Listen' from the 'Synaptic Package Manager'.

Ubuntu Bricked

Desktop Drapes-Wallpaper manager

'Desktop Drapes' is another application for Ubuntu that changes wallpapers after regular intervals.Install 'Desktop Drapes' from the 'Synaptic Package Manager'.Just search for 'drapes' and mark for installation.'Desktop Drapes' much more stable and configurable as compared to the 'wallpaper-tray'.Launch 'Desktop Drapes' from the 'Preferences' menu.This application also goes straight to the notification area.It automatically categorizes wallpapers according to their resolution such as 'wide screen','Perfect fit' 'Regular' and other resolutions.Right click on the 'Desktop Drapes' icon in the notification area and add wallpapers to it.Under the 'General' tab,you get to configure the rotation interval and other options.
'Desktop Drapes' is pretty stable as compared to the 'wallpaper-tray' but the minimum rotation interval that can be set is 5 minutes.
Don't just go on adding wallpapers.Add your favorite wallpapers only,otherwise it would become difficult to remove them later.This could also slow down the application.

Enable automatic wallpaper/background Change in Ubuntu.

To change wallpapers after regular intervals in ubuntu,you can use a very small application called 'wallpaper-tray'.Install this application from the 'Synaptic Package Manager'.Search for 'wallpaper-tray'.Now go to the 'Graphics' menu to launch this application. Have a look at the notification area.Right click on the 'wallpaper-tray' box in the notification area to configure it.The interface is very simple.Simply add your wallpaper directories.Under the 'More Options' tab configure the wallpaper rotation interval.Remember to check the 'Timed Wallpaper Change' box.
Although 'wallpaper-tray' is pretty simple and does its job well,it is not very stable.It can crash pretty frequently.
Do not add too many or too large directories in the 'Directory List' which could lead to a crash.