The Canonical design team are currently hard at work designing, testing, evaluating new layouts for the Ubuntu Software Centre version 5.0. Their work so far has resulted in three highly impressive mock-ups of Ubuntu Software Store interfaces heavily featuring an aggregated set of features that are par-the-course for Application Stores across various platforms.
One of the many criticisms that the Ubuntu Software Centre has come under since its launch is how difficult it's been to get paid, commercial applications submitted for inclusion in the Paid Apps section. Ever since we released Volley Brawl a couple of months ago, I've had numerous emails from publishers and developers asking me "how on earth did you do that?! We've been trying to contact Canonical for months now to get [game] into the Software Center to no avail." Thankfully it's a problem Canonical are all to aware of, so they've been working on a Developer Portal similar to that of the Android Market or iOS App Store. Developers or publishers can submit their app, add a title, description, price, category and more.
Canonical's Creative Strategy Lead Ivanka Majic is taking a break from coordinating the design of Ubuntu to enjoy her honeymoon on a motorbike trip from the top of North America to the bottom of South America.
One of Canonical's founding members and current CTO (Chief Technology Officer), Matt Zimmerman, is to leave the company after seven years. In a statement published on the Canonical blog this morning, Matt spoke of his reason for leaving, saying that the 'the time is right for [him] to move on' and go in 'search of new challenges'. He will formally leave the position in June of this year.
To help tide us all over until the Ubuntu 11.04 discs go on sale in the Canonical Store we thought we'd share with you the new artwork the 11.04 disc will be using. Make the jump to see...
Just in time for the release of Ubuntu 11.04, Canonical have unleashed the Natty Narwhal T Shirts into their online store. The navy T Shirts sport a large centered orange Narwhal design on the front and ?Natty Narwhal 11.04? on the back.
Canonical have announced that they will be discontinuing the free CD shipping service Shipit. Writing on the Canonical blog Ubuntu's Gerry Carr said that the company would instead focus on their CD distributor programme and shipping CDs directly to LoCos - Local Ubuntu community teams - instead.
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.
Little known and obscure laptop manufacturer Hercules have today rolled out a couple of new ARM netbooks into the UK market dubbed the "Slim HD" and "Ex HD," touting Ubuntu Netbook Remix.
It's a mug from Ubuntu.
With every new release of Ubuntu comes a rare but welcomed update to the official website. Only a month away from Natty, the Server section of the website has been completely replaced by a new Business section.
