The ability to see the night sky is an important part of amateur astronomy. To help make the planning of stargazing activities easier, a new Unity lens has been created by developer David Turner.
Finding and reading the latest news on any subject has just gotten super easy in Ubuntu...
The Wikipedia lens for Ubuntu's Unity dash we wrote about several days back has been updated. Visually the Lens now looks neater, sporting article snippets and thumbnails (where applicable) thanks to use of the 'card view' layout available to developers. Want it? Read on for the details.
We've all been there: you recognise the face if that guy in that movie - but you can't recall his name; or you're 3 names short of listing all the states in America. These are pretty rubbish examples of what Wikipedia - the world famous collaboratively maintained encyclopedia - is useful for, but they are, nevertheless, real-world instances of Wiki scratching an intellectual itch. And in Ubuntu you can scratch this itch even quicker by adding the 'Wikipedia Lens' to the Unity Dash.
Ubuntu 12.04 Beta users are being asked to help test an improved version of the Files Lens for Unity. The file search in the ‘testing’ version has been tweaked to look for files sources additional […]
Developers continue to cook up intuitive uses for Unity's Lenses feature - the latest of which of a Cooking Lens. The lens uses social food network 'recipefy.com' as its search back-end, meaning access to a searchable catalog of 4000 recipes is placed within easy reach. You can search by keyword, ingredient, or dish type, and see information such as cooking time required and difficulty level.
Searching for something to watch will be much easier in Ubuntu 12.04 thanks to addition of a new default Video Lens. As well as being able to sift through the metadata of local files stored in your Videos folder based on a search term, the lens is backed by a set of smart 'remote video' scopes that query online services such as YouTube Movies, Amazon, indie service VODO and, for British users, the hallowed BBC iPlayer.
It's somewhat apt that Ubuntu's 'Lenses' feature has brought Unity into clearer focus for many of its initial critics. The search-orientated display windows - called 'Lenses' - make finding specific files, apps or information easy to do thanks to their tuned 'search backends' - called Scopes'. Inside we lost 10 of the best Lenses and Scopes available for Ubuntu 11.10.
Not a fan of the 8 giant shortcuts in the Unity Dash? Ubuntu 12.04 might just present you with something different... Ubuntu developers are testing a new layout for the Unity 'Home Lens'.
Ubuntu 12.04 has added the option to disable the "Apps available for Download" pane shown in Unity's Applications Lens
Remember that YouTube Lens for Unity we showed you last week? It's just gotten a little bit better. The Lens lets you browser through YouTube's extensive video library without having to open your browser. When you want to watch a video you just click on the thumbnail and out pops VLC ready to play the video right away.
A new photo-orientated Lens for Unity that lets you browse through your Shotwell library and online Flickr collection is seeking testers. The 'Photo Lens' adds an easy-to-access photo-centric pane to your Unity Dash that's powered by two 'Scopes' (search backends) - one for Ubuntu's default photo app Shotwell, and the other for popular online photo service Flickr.