Showing headlines posted by kiterunner

A friend of mine asked this question few days ago which I thought was just basic stuff(both of us were using Android 2.3.3 powered Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone). I eventually came to realize that there is no easy way to do this. Following is what I did to put files on Android homescreen without much hiccup. Read on.

Android Market is all over the news for the stupendous growth it managed to achieve in such a short span of time. Searching for the right applications in Android Market, with over 600,000+ apps already, is a classic needle-in-a-haystack problem. We have already pitched in to help you choose the right set of Siri alternatives and top launchers for Android from that burgeoning list of apps, now let's take a sneak peek into the best music player apps available for Android.

Among other big ticket announcements during recently concluded Ubuntu Developer Summit(UDS) was Ubuntu Unity's foray into Mobile and TV space. This was an exciting development to everyone in the community and user-contributed design mockups have been pouring in ever since. We had featured a bunch of really interesting Unity Mobile mockups before, now it's the turn of Unity TV based design mockups and ideas. Read on.

We had informed you about the imminent arrival of award winning World of Goo puzzle game for Android based smartphones and tablets few weeks back. Now it's here and it is already getting some rave reviews from users and reviewers alike.

Linux Mint, the venerable Ubuntu based Linux distro, is in the news again. Linux Mint 12 codenamed "Lisa" is finally released. It based on GNOME 3.0 and runs GNOME Shell with some ingenious tweaks of its own. Detailed review of Linux Mint 12 "Lisa" OS. Read on.

SwipePad is a simple application that lets you launch any app with a single swipe action from within any other app. Upon being recommended by a friend of mine, SwipePad was one of those applications I installed immediately after receiving my first Android phone. Since then, SwipePad has become an integral part of my daily life that I almost started seeing it as one of those core apps for Android which comes as default.

How much Apple's founder Steve Jobs hated Android is evident from his last conversations with his biographer, Walter Isaacson. Steve Jobs claimed that Android was a rip-off of Apple's iOS and that he will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong, to destroy Android. This created an uproar. In an interview with Reuters, Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, said that all these allegations are baseless and that Android project started well before the iPhone effort. Let's find out how true a statement that is.

Many long-term Ubuntu users(including me) overlook at the fact that, there are plenty of good quality applications available free of cost in Ubuntu Software Center already. If you look at our reviews of applications here, a good number of them require adding and updating third party repositories. Not that those apps are somehow inferior, but we will, for a change, list the most highly rated applications which are available for free installation from Ubuntu Software Center.

User created ideas and concepts have always been an hallmark of popular Linux based distors like Ubuntu. We have featured such awesome works by loyal users, ranging from awe inspiring Ubuntu Unity mockups to professional looking LibreOffice mockups. Shuttleworth, during the recently concluded Ubuntu Developer Summit(UDS), made it clear that they will be taking Ubuntu to smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs. Inspired from that, some users have already created interesting mockups based on the idea of mobile Ubuntu Unity.

Ubuntu Software Center had a complete makeover recently. But I have to admit, even with all those changes, it still feels unfinished. In our earlier Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot review, we did shared our concern with the unfinished nature of Ubuntu Software Center and had promised a more elaborate take on the issue. So here is it, things I would like to see improved in the next iteration of Ubuntu Software Center. Read on.

Firefox 8.0 has just been released and we will see how to install or upgrade to latest Firefox 8.0 in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot below. Meanwhile, nightly builds of Firefox 10.0 is already available for installation in Ubuntu Oneiric via PPA. Firefox 10.0 Alpha 1, as expected, scores a perfect 100 in Acid 3 tests and is visibly more faster than its previous iterations.

AwOken along with Faenza icons theme are surely among the most feverishly updated icon themes for GNOME. With the arrival of Unity and GNOME Shell though, all these popular icon themes needed to adapt in order to stay relevant. AwOken icons theme 2.3 update does just that. Latest iteration of AwOken comes with a number of updates which makes it look more integrated with Ubuntu's Unity and GNOME Shell desktops.

Canonical is in a hurry. After the successful release of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, it's time to plan for next, more important, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS release. Ubuntu 12.04 is codenamed "Precise Pangolin" and following are the important changes in the upcoming Ubuntu 12.04 release, as decided upon during recently concluded Ubuntu Developer Summit.

One of the most hyped features of recently launched iPhone 4S was Siri, the new voice assistant application for iPhone. I don't own an iPhone 4S and hence I can't comment on how good Siri works. But upon searching a bit, I found out that there are quite a few good Siri alternatives for Android readily available in the Android Market and most of them are free too. Here is quick collection of top free Siri alternatives for Android.

Extensions support is one on the most widely appreciated feature of GNOME Shell. In our previous post which listed those stunning GNOME Shell themes, we all saw how difficult it is to do such trivial stuff like installing themes in GNOME Shell. Well, there is a GNOME Shell extension called User-Theme Extension that makes everything about GNOME Shell theming a lot simpler and easier, exactly how it should have been in the first place. Learn how to install GNOME Shell themes the easier way in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot.

GNOME Shell is GNOME foundation's official shell for GNOME 3.0 and as we have seen in so many posts before, GNOME Shell is an incredibly good alternative for Canonical's Unity UI which became the default Ubuntu interface starting from Natty Narwhal release. The least you can say is, now you have two unique interfaces to choose from instead of plain vanilla GNOME. Top things to do after installing GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 11.10.

Unlike other major mobile phone platforms, Android can be customized the way you want. And that is one of the things I like most about Android. If you are thinking about customizing Android, Launchers are a good place to start. There are quite a number of good third-party Android Launcher apps, both free and non-free, available in the Android Market. Let's explore and find out the finest five among them. Read on.

Faenza Icons Theme is kind of an household name among Linux folks. It definitely is one of the best looking icon themes for Ubuntu. Faenza Icons Theme 1.1 brings in a number of new brilliant looking icons and is also better integrated with Ubuntu Oneiric's new Unity UI.

Being able to install GNOME Shell in Ubuntu Oneiric is exciting. And as we experienced in our earlier review of GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 11.10, GNOME Shell has came a long since its first release and now is a very stable, fast and usable shell for GNOME. To further improve the functionality, GNOME Shell has extensions support. Though these are very early stages, there are quite a number of really good GNOME Shell extensions already.

A big definitive NO should be the answer. But I found this strange new bug with the two brand new Ubuntu 11.10 installations of mine. When I tried to change the default application for AVI files from Totem to SMPlayer, an error came up with the warning that says, "Error while setting "SMPlayer" as default application: Can't create user application configuration folder /home/manu/.local/share/applications: Not a directory".