Interface Designer, OMG! Ubuntu! tech journalist and co-founder, Google and Ubuntu fanboy, part time musician, private pilot, geek. @humphreybc on Twitter.
Every cycle the Ubuntu project calls for people to submit their ideas for release countdown banners - small images that can be embedded in websites that update every day until they reach 0 when Ubuntu is released. This cycle is no different, and the winning three countdown banners were chosen earlier today.
Banshee 2.0 has just been released, bringing with it numerous new features such as user interface improvements, album/artist track actions, sound menu and Ubuntu One Music store extensions and more. Those that have been keeping up with the development of Banshee unstable probably won't notice many new features, but if you're upgrading from the last stable version (1.8) it's sure to be a vast improvement.
At Project Bossanova we've announced a playable demo, a pledge campaign, the open sourcing of the client and also that the final game will eventually be cross platform.
UDS-O - scheduled to be held in Budapest next month to plan the Oneiric Ocelot (11.10) release - hasn't even happened yet, but the location and date for UDS-P has been booked for later this year.
Google are known to be a cheeky company. A cheeky company that also has many employees that use Ubuntu and are looking forward to Natty Narwhal. That aside, we were still pretty surprised to see that the Google Maps team have added a giant Narwhal swimming in the Thames outside Canonical's office in the Millbank Tower for a little Ubuntu-related April Fooling.
Bad news, guys! Looks like we're having some server issues and the site is falling back to a command line prompt when you visit. Luckily, though, here at OMG! Ubuntu!, we're always prepared for any eventuality and "X server issues" (which are fairly frequent, actually) are no exception.
I'm happy to announce that Volley Brawl is finally available for everyone to try! It's just hit the Software Center for Maverick and Natty, right on time to meet the March 31st release date. All you have to do is open up the Software Center and navigate to the "For Purchase" section.
On Thursday we're releasing Volley Brawl in the Ubuntu Software Center for $2.99 USD. We've got a few copies of the game to give away for free. It's really, really easy to enter - all you have to do is suggest a new character in the comments section.
Dilogus: The Winds of War is an upcoming game being developed by Digital Arrow. The game looks promising - built on the Unigine engine, it's cross platform and runs beautifully on Linux. We sat down with Norbert Varga, who works for Digital Arrow handling production and design of the game.
It's about time we came clean with you all. Those videos, these mysterious characters appearing in the side bar every day for the last few days (currently, Pedobear is hanging out there, watching you), they've all been a bit random. So here's the truth. We're releasing a game. A cool game. A game only for Ubuntu, only for the Software Center. And it's cheap.
We've been working hard over the past month or so trying to improve the OMG! Ubuntu! experience for you guys, our faithful readers. It's all about making the experience the best we can for you, so if you can spare 20 minutes or so, we'd really appreciate your help in filling out this survey.
Over a year ago I founded the Ubuntu Manual Project, an open source Ubuntu project aimed at creating a comprehensive beginner's manual for each Ubuntu release. I led the team for around 10 months, before I had to step down as Team Lead due to other commitments (namely University, and also Ohso - the company that runs OMG! Ubuntu! etc). The team went through a bit of a lull, with a lack of contributors, no leader and little motivation to continue this awesome project - which was a complete shame. Luckily though, they've re-grouped and are now working on building a new website (which I designed way back in June last year), as well as head-hunting for two suitable people to act as Project Leader and Editor-in-Chief.
Ohso, the company behind OMG! Ubuntu! (owned by Joey and I), teamed up with indie game developers Sigmoid Development late last year. We're really excited to be releasing our first game in the Ubuntu Software Centre, Volley Brawl. More details will be revealed over the next 10 days, so stay tuned - but in the meantime, enjoy this video.
Unity is Ubuntu's innovative new user interface, designed to catapult Ubuntu into the revolution of contextual search, launchers and social integration. The unique design provides an enticing alternative to the likes of Windows and OS X. But could Unity be better?
David Reichling has created a bunch of neat mockups of how Unity should behave, most notably around the Launcher and Dash button. He shared his ideas with me via Twitter, and I thought they were so cool I'd have to publish them on here.
March 31st. Only on Ubuntu.
Over the last few days I've been posting a few photos of our new office, a space in the Centre for Innovation at Otago University in Dunedin, New Zealand thanks to The Distiller. The guys and gals on our Facebook page have enjoyed the photos, so I figured it'd be a good idea to post a few of them here for you guys to have a look too.
Good news, everyone! As part of our increasingly important goal of including our readers in more and more of what we do, we've now set up a Get Satisfaction page for you to share your ideas, ask questions and report issues with OMG! Ubuntu! and other Ohso products. Make the jump for the juicy details.