UbuContest 2015

Canonical Ltd., the Ubucon Germany 2015 team, and the UbuContest 2015 team, are happy to announce the first UbuContest! We are excited to bring you an engaging, enlightening, community-organised competition, where the Ubuntu community brings forward innovative, creative and incredible apps, scopes and ideas for the converging Ubuntu world of the future. Contestants from all over the world will have until September 18, 2015 to build and publish their apps and scopes using the Ubuntu SDK and Ubuntu platform, starting today.

We know it's not all about shiny new apps and scopes! A great platform also needs content, great design, testing, documentation, bug management, developer support, interesting blog posts, news, technology demonstrations and all of the other incredible things our community does every day. So we give you, our community members, the opportunity to nominate other community members for prizes!

We are proud to present five dedicated categories:

1. Best Team Entry: A team of up to three developers may register up to two apps/scopes they are developing. The jury will assign points in categories including "Creativity", "Functionality", "Design", "Technical Level" and "Convergence". The top three entries with the most points win.
2. Best Individual Entry: A lone developer may register up to two apps/scopes he or she is developing. The rest of the rules are identical to the "Best Team Entry" category.
3. Outstanding Technical Contribution: Members of the general public may nominate candidates who, in their opinion, have done something "exceptional" with an Ubuntu-based device, Unity8, Mir, etc. on a technical level. Each jury member has one vote, and the nominated candidate with the most jury votes wins.
4. Outstanding Non-Technical Contribution: Members of the general public may nominate candidates who, in their opinion, have done something exceptional, but non-technical, to bring the Ubuntu platform forward. So, for example, you can nominate a friend who has reported and commented on all those phone-related bugs on Launchpad. Or nominate a member of your local community who did translations for Core Apps. Or nominate someone who has contributed documentation, written awesome blog articles, etc. The rest of the rules are identical to the "Outstanding Technical Contribution" category.
5. Convergence Hero: The "Best Team Entry" or "Best Individual Entry" contribution with the highest number of "Convergence" points wins. The winner in this category will probably surprise us in ways we have yet to imagine.

Our community jury panel members Laura Cowen, Carla Sella, Simos Xenitellis, Sujeevan Vijayakumaran and Michael Zanetti will select the winners in each category. Successful winners will be awarded items from a huge pile of prizes, including travel subsidies for the first-placed winners to attend Ubucon Germany 2015 in Berlin, four Ubuntu Phones sponsored by bq and Meizu, t-shirts, and bundles of items from the official Ubuntu Shop.

We wish all the contestants good luck!

Go to ubucontest.eu for more information, including how to register and nominate folks. You can also follow us on Twitter @ubucontest, or contact us via e-mail at contest@ubucon.de.

UbuContest details and story

Snappy Personal Desktop

It is still a WIP and it is also quite early, but if you want to try out Snappy Personal Desktop, here is how to do it:

$ sudo ubuntu-device-flash personal rolling --channel edge -o personal_x86.img --developer-mode
$ kvm -m 2048 -vga qxl personal_x86.img

the password for logging in is "ubuntu".

Oh, for this to work you need  Ubuntu 15.10 or at least ubuntu-device-flash from Wily.

Ubuntu Insiders Hangout - news on new BQ and Meizu Ubuntu Phones.

So guys and gals I've got a lot of news for you! As an Ubuntu Insider we had a Hangout  just a fiew hours agoe and I am going to share with you all the good news Cristian Parrino, Joe Odukoya and Amrisha Prashar shared with us:

So first:

Next week,  on Tuesday 9th June  BQ is going to release a new Ubuntu Phone, the Aquaris E5: http://www.bq.com/gb/aquaris-e5, compared to the E4.5 it will have a bigger screen, better resolution, better camera (5 Mpx on the front one and 14 Mpx on the rear one) and it will be sold directly form BQ's site at 199.90 Euro. There is an article here: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/06/bq-aquaris-e5-ubuntu-phone-details with more specs.

Over the next couple of weeks (second, third week of June) we will also have the Meizu MX4 been sold in Europe, it will be sold at 299.99 Euro directly from the Meizu European site, but it won't be easy, to buy it, you will have to go to a special section of the site where you will find and origami wall that includes a couple of hundred of invites a day, you will have to poke around to get an invite to buy a phone. More on it here: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/06/meizu-mx4-ubuntu-phone-europe-release-date and here: http://www.meizu.com/en/products/mx4/features.html.

Remember Ubuntu Phone is still a phone for enthusiasts and developers, it's not yet for end users, ecosystem and product maturity are still missing for general consumers, but I am sure that by next year it will be ready also for that target.

Ubuntu Phone will get OTA (Over The Air) monthly updates (probably towards the end of every month), we will get OTA 4 soon, probably next week.

OTA 4 will bring general improvements.

Scopes improvements to understand keywords and tags, aggregating scopes will automatically add scopes tagged with certain categories.

You will be able to personalize scopes and there will also be updated layouts for news scope, for instance.

Web browser will have improved privacy, clearing cache and history,  bottom edge gesture will be much smoother and we will have better search integration.

Address book will have a couple improvements: you will be able to import contacts from your SIM and get a new settings panel.

We will have group chat in messaging so that we will be able to send messages to a number  of people at the same time.

There will also be performance improvements.

More here: https://insights.ubuntu.com/2015/05/29/phone-updates-may/?utm_source=ubunteu&utm_medium=url_shortner&utm_term=5Cb3IV&utm_campaign=shortner.

Here is what to expect in the near future: The apps will have cosmetic changes to work in a convergence world.

There will be the possibility to  add  personalized contents to scopes, it will be easy to add accounts from settings and get your scopes automatically configured.

Syncing will be made smooth and efficient.

There will be improvement of keyboards  to  make it easier to add new keyboard layout.

We will have better media handling, support for playlists in music app and the ability to use them in scopes and have music controls in the indicators.

You will be able to post and share to social media from and directly from scopes, being able to interact and have access with social media.

There will be in line playing of video and audio, you will be able to tap on content from a scope and be able to play and control media from them.

You will have more customization options, add your own scopes to aggregators  order scopes and improvement of positioning of scopes.

You will have more layout options.

Last and not least, looks like in October this year (but it's just a tentative launch date) BQ will launch the first Ubuntu Phone with convergence, more about this here: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/06/first-ubuntu-phone-with-convergence-is-being-made-by-bq.

Well I think I told you all I remember was said in the Hangout, even if probaly I missed something as a lot was said.

Stay tuned for more news.

Ubuntu Phone Update: May

So guys got some news from Canonical on Ubuntu Phone  OTA updates from May, let me share the goodness  with you:

Hi all,

Hope you're well. 

We have OTA updates from May to share with you which should be live very soon. Please find key updates below:

Web browser improvements:
- New bottom edge gesture to reveal tabs view
- New settings UI with Privacy settings

Scope improvements:
- Scope tagging (automatic aggregation of new sources)
- Today, Nearby and News scopes added support for keywords
- New and improved layout for the News scope

Address Book improvements:
- Ability to import contacts from SIM
- New settings panel
- Improved first-time user experience for contact sync/import

Toolkit upgraded:
- Version 1.3 of Toolkit
- Migrated to the 5.4 version of QT (https://wiki.qt.io/New-Features-in-Qt-5.4)

  

  

We also look forward to having those of you available on the Hangout next Monday where we'll also be sharing future anticipated updates.

Cheers,
The Ubuntu Phone Team
#ubuntuphone

Planet Ubuntu-it RSS feed scope

So now Planet Ubuntu-it has is own Ubuntu Phone RSS feed scope.

I created it using scopecreator command as I wrote in my previous article: My first Ubuntu Touch Scope.

Planet Ubuntu-it RSS feed scope

Planet Ubuntu-it RSS feed scope

Planet Ubuntu-it RSS feed scope

Planet Ubuntu-it RSS feed scope

Planet Ubuntu-it RSS feed scope

Planet Ubuntu-it has it's own Ubuntu Phone webapp

Planet Ubuntu-it

Planet Ubuntu-it

This is simply awesome!
I cannot believe how simple it is to create your webapp for Ubuntu Phone.
You just have to go to this web site: https://developer.ubuntu.com/webapp-generator
Fill in the fileds and click on the submit button.

You will get a click package downloaded to you PC.
This click package can be installed on your Phone for testing, you just have to connect  your phone to your PC with a USB cord and type in terminal:

$ adb push click-package-name /tmp
$ adb shell
$ cd /tmp
$ sudo -u phablet pkcon install-local --allow-untrusted  click-package-name

After checking everything is ok with it you can then publish it to the Ubuntu App store going to: http://developer.ubuntu.com.

Ubuntu IT web site has a Ubuntu-IT web app

So I also made it! I created my first web app for Ubuntu Phone!
So now the Italian Ubuntu Community has it's web app for it's web site: http://www.ubuntu-it.org.
I followed the official tutorial here: https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/web/tutorials/web-app-tutorial/
and it was easy and fast.
So if you have a site you would like to have an Ubuntu Phone web app for, just go for it, it's easy and fast.

Ubuntu-IT web app

Ubuntu-IT web app

Ubuntu-IT web app

Ubuntu-IT web app

Ubuntu-IT web app

Ubuntu-IT web app

Ubuntu-IT web app

Ubuntu-IT web app

Ubuntu-IT web app