Barnes & Noble seeks to revitalize its Android-powered Nook tablet line over arch-rival Amazon's Kindle tablets by adding Google Play and full Android app support.

Mozilla, Otoy debut high-speed codec for any browser

Mozilla and Los Angeles, California–based graphics software company Otoy have jointly announced ORBX.js, a new JavaScript library which the companies say can deliver full 1080p, 60fps digital video in a browser window using only web standards–based technologies.

Join open source cloud experts from CloudStack, Eucalyptus, Gluster, OpenShift, OpenStack, Puppet Labs, Rackspace and Red Hat for a Linux Foundation live video chat next Tuesday, May 7 at 10 a.m. Pacific, via Google Hangouts On Air.

Google yesterday launched an official Chrome app for their newish note-taking service Keep.  

As a ‘packaged app’, Keep for Chrome doesn’t run as a tab in your browser, or as a drop-down item in the toolbar, but as a ‘near-native’ application. It can run ‘free’ of Chrome (in the sense that Chrome doesn’t need to be running to use it) and it can be used offline. 

Packaged Apps will be pushed heavily by Google in the coming months, with existing “web-based apps” moved to a “websites” category in the Chrome Web Store.

Be sure to follow our sister site OMG! Chrome! if you’re interested in Chrome-related news, extensions, tip and more.

This article will show you how to add Keep to Unity’s launcher so that it a) shows an application icon and b) can be launched without Chrome itself being open.

Add Google Keep to Unity Launcher

Before we begin you need to check that you are running Google Chrome Stable or above, or a recent-ish version of Chromium (preferably not the stock version available in Ubuntu Software Centre). If not, head over to Google’s Chrome site to nab a .Deb installer for Ubuntu.

With checks out of the way it’s time for the first logical step: installing the Google Keep app in Google Chrome.

As it’s not available through general searching you will need to click the following button to find it.

Google Keep For Chrome

Once installed locate it in Chrome’s app launcher. Right-click on its icon and, from the menu that opens, click ‘Create Shortcuts…’.

A window will appear asking you where you want to place your Application Shortcuts.

There are two ways to proceed. For the purposes of this tutorial we are not going to use the second option, create launcher in ‘Applications Menu’, because the shortcut it creates sometimes launches the browser instead of the Keep app.

So, check the ‘Desktop’ option, then hit ‘Create’.

A shortcut for the app will now be available on your desktop. You can double-click on this to open it instantly – but since you might not want to keep it on your desktop I suggest moving it to a dedicated ‘web apps’ folder.

After moving the shortcut to a ‘safe’ folder all that’s left is to drag and drop it on to the Unity launcher to add it.

All that’s left to do is click on the launcher item to open Keep. Sign in with your Google Account if prompted – this will make sure your notes are accessible from anywhere else you use Keep (be it on the web, or the Android or iOS apps).

As a packaged app Keep is able to work offline.

Add The New Google Keep App to Unity OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Steam for Linux users rejoice! Valve has released a Portal Beta for Linux on Steam

Valve, the company behind Steam and several games on the platform, has released a beta version of their critically acclaimed, physics-based puzzler, Portal, for Linux.

Some Inference

What does this mean for fans of Valve games? Well it shows Valve’s continued dedication to Linux as a gaming platform and the ongoing port of the Source game engine to Linux means any non-Valve games that use it will also benefit. Also, this beta release indicates that it’s very likely that the rest of  the Half Life and Portal series may be coming to Linux in the not so distant future.

Download The Portal Beta for Linux

If you don’t have Steam already installed you can do so via the Ubuntu Software Centre

Install Steam via the Ubuntu Software Centre 

Or directly from Valve:

Download and Install Steam 

Or for you command line fans:

wget http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/archive/precise/steam_latest.deb sudo dpkg -i steam_latest.deb && sudo apt-get install -fy

If you already have Steam installed, or have just finished installing and setting it up, you can click the following button to download and install the Portal Beta:

Download Portal Beta via Steam Client

Happy portaling! (Spoiler alert: The cake is a lie.)

Valve Release Portal Beta For Linux OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

'We were here first, Microsoft!'

Rackspace is making overtures to Microsoft users by broadening .NET support for its cloud and managed hosting, though these devs may be increasingly swayed by Azure.

Open-source e-mail app Geary may have struggled to find funding recently, but that doesn’t mean it’s game over for desktop e-mail apps.

“Revolutionary Email client” Inky, though not well known, is on its way to the Linux desktop. The application is already available to download for free on OS X and Windows.

Inky is pretty unlike any other email app currently available on Linux – not just in looks but also in features.

For example, Inky scans your inbox and contacts during set-up to work out which messages are more likely to be ‘important’ to you, and which aren’t. The darker an ink drop next to a message the more important Inky considers it.

Setting up accounts is really easy – and yes you can add multiple-accounts, including  GMail, Yahoo! and Windows Live/Outlook, and any other account supporting POP or IMAP.

Smart Views can be added to the sidebar to let you quickly jump to email grouped by a specific theme (shopping mail shots, social networking, mails from contacts only, etc).

Smart Views in Inky

In fact, many of Inky’s features remind me more of web-mail services like GMail than traditional desktop apps. Which is quite an exciting thing.

You can read about more of Inky’s features on its website.

Official Inky Website

Inky devs aren’t giving any firm date for the release of a Linux port other than a vague “quite soon”. But ‘soon’ is better than a ‘never’, so I’m okay with that.

In all, Inky is unlikely to persuade ardent web-mail users to switch to a dedicated desktop app, but if the Linux version maintains feature parity with the Windows and Mac clients it’ll certainly offer a compelling alternative for those using, but not satisfied with, Thunderbird, Evolution or Geary.

Thanks to Steven Judge Top image credit: Inky

Desktop Email App Inky Coming to Linux ‘Soon’ OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Despite the risks of space, a growing number of organizations are developing tiny, low-cost nanosatellites built with Linux, Android, and Arduino gear. And many are using open source designs.

I am pleased to announce The Linux Foundation is funding three Linux kernel internships through the Outreach Program for Women administered by the GNOME Foundation. These internships have a $5,000 stipend and come with a $500 travel grant to attend and speak at LinuxCon this fall. This is a great opportunity to work with a mentor and get started with kernel development, which as many articles report, is a great way to land a high-paying job.  The official deadline for applying to OPW is May 1st. However, the kernel project joined late, so that deadline is flexible. Please fill our your initial application, and then update by May 17th with your initial patch. Applicants will be notified by May 27th if they have been accepted. Participating areas of...

To get some real world examples of Linux deployments in action, we followed up on the Enterprise End User Survey with an informal poll of the Linux Foundation’s LinkedIn community.

Red Hat's Gluster open-source community has been all about its namesake, the GlusterFS, but now it's expanding to cover other open-source, software-defined storage technologies.

Solr search engine means elephants don't need to chew big data cud

You are not just imagining it. Every commercial distributor of the Hadoop system for storing and chewing through unstructured data has come up with its own a different way to deliver something akin to SQL query functionality while at the same time boosting the speed of ad hoc queries.

It might not have been mature enough to ship in Ubuntu 13.04, but work on enhancing the Smart Scopes Service for Unity continues apace.

Over in the more ‘development-y’ of the development PPAs enhanced previews are now available for most results, including those from DeviantArt, Launchpad and Wikipedia:

It’s also now possible to see what ‘Scopes’ – thinks ‘content-specific search engine’ plugins – are installed by way of Applications Lens > Filters > Search Plugins (see image at top of post).

Right-clicking on one of the Scope results shown opens a Preview with further details and, more interestingly, a toggle for enabling/disabling it.

Install Smart Scopes in Ubuntu 13.04

Installing the Smart Scopes Service and upgrading the various bits and pieces that are needed to make use of it, is easy to do but not recommended.

It didn’t make it into 13.04 for a reason. Parts of it are buggy, slow, and in varying stages of completion. If you value a stable, productive desktop (or you’re allergic to web results appearing in the Dash) you’re better off sticking with stable Unity.

Stern talk over, upgrading to the smarter version of Unity requires the addition of one of two PPAs.

The first is called ‘experimental-unvalidated’. This is the most frequently updated but also the one most likely to break your desktop. It’s the pre-validation PPA that the above changes are currently in.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-unity/experimental-prevalidation sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade sudo apt-get install unity-lens-* unity-scope-*

The second, much safter option is ‘experimental-certified’. While this is generally more robust to use as packages are tested before being pushed to it, it is also updated far less regularly. The features mentioned above are yet to land in it at the time of writing.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-unity/experimental-certified sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade sudo apt-get install unity-lens-* unity-scope-*

Downgrading back to stable Unity is possible using the PPA Purge tool available from the Ubuntu Software Center.

Enhanced Previews, Scope Toggles Added to Unity Testing PPA OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Vid Fancy a shower with your fondleslab? Or booting it down the stairs?

In the UK, Panasonic is not known as a high-street PC player - but the company’s Tough range of products makes quite an impression in the world of business.

Power management, new processors, SSD caching and more

Linus Torvalds has unleashed version 3.9 of the Linux kernel.

D-Link scrambles upgrade, Vivotek silent says Core Sec

D-Link and Vivotek have submitted their entries for “dumbest security vulnerability of 2013”, with Core Security turning up a variety of daft bugs in their IP cameras, including hard-coded backdoor passwords.

As discussed in the last tutorial, you can write your own code to enable multi-touch manually. However, in the case of common multi-touch gestures, like double-tap, scroll, and fling, you can also simplify matters by taking advantage of the built-in GestureDetector.

Not enough to keep it from booking a loss, though

It is tough to find a choppier business than the supercomputer market, and Cray CEO Peter Ungaro had to remind Wall Street once again to not judge the company on a single quarter, and particularly on the first quarter that it has just turned in.

Eric Brown's seven top smartwatches available now. 

Ten weeks to the day after the arrival of version 3.8, Linux creator Linus Torvalds on Monday released version 3.9 of the Linux kernel. Here are six interesting new features from Linux.com writer Katherine Noyes.