CloudSN (Cloud Services Notifications) is an application similar to Specto (which is not maintained anymore): it can display notifications when you have new emails (POP3 and IMAP), new Identi.ca messages, Google Reader unread items or it can watch any RSS feed for changes. It used to also work with Twitter but since Twitter introduced OAuth for all apps, CloudSN stopped working with Twitter (hopefully it will be fixed soon).

Since CloudSN supports any RSS feed, it can be used for many services, not just regular websites. You could for instance add your Facebook RSS feeds (<-- click to read on how to get various Facebook feeds to use in CloudSN or any RSS feed reader; once you have the Facebook RSS feed URL you want to receive notifications for, add it using the RSS News option in CloudSN) and instantly get an Facebook RSS notifier with Ubuntu Messaging Menu integration.

If you're dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows, you can use a simple command (or create a menu shortcut for it) to easily restart in Windows from Ubuntu. This should actually work with any Grub entry, not just Windows (so if you using multiple Linux distributions, it will work with that too).

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A quick update: a while back we wrote about 'fixing' the GTK-RecordMyDesktop videos for uploading to YouTube and other video sharing websites. Well, I don't know what did it but today when I've recorded a video with GTK-RecordMyDesktop and uploaded it to YouTube, it worked with no further tweaking (using Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat with up-to-date packages). What's sure is that it wasn't because of GTK-RecordMyDesktop as there were no recent updates to this applications.

As a sample video, see the PyWO video (it has been recorded with GTK-RecordMyDesktop and uploaded as an .ogv to YouTube).

Xmonad / Bluetile are awesome but the use their own window decorations. You can use the Compiz Grid plugin or even an AWN applet for organizing your windows, but there's one tool that stands out: PyWO - Python Window Organizer.

PyWO is inspired by Quicktile and Compiz Grid, Put and Maximuze plugins and it allows you to easily organize windows on the desktop using keyboard shortcuts. It works with Compiz, Metacity, KDE, XFCE, E16, OpenBox and FVWM.

PyWO can organize your windows in multiple ways: you can move a window in any director without resizing it and snap it to other windows' edges, you can move and resize the window in the same time (according to the grid you set) and even shrink and expand the windows. PyWO is also very customizable - it doesn't have a GUI for this and everything is done through a configuration text file, but it's very easy and well documented on its wiki page.

Ubucompilator is a tool to easily create Ubuntu / Debian .deb packages. It's basically a GUI for all the commands required to make a .deb - to understand exactly what it does, take a look at this video (it's not the latest version, but you'll get an idea on what Ubucompilator does):

Firefox Elementary theme can now be downloaded from Launchpad, through BZR. Thomas already started working on version 3.0 which includes changes to the tabbar, new graphics and it now recolors with the GTK scheme (of course, you could already use this Firefox theme with any GTK theme, but now it should integrate better)! Also, the new Firefox Elementary 3.0 will not come with a tabs on top version anymore because it caused some theme issues and made GTK recoloring not possible.

Until today, to install Java in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, you'd either have to switch to the Lucid Partner repository or use a PPA. That's not required because Sun Java (6.21) has finally been uploaded to the Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat official Partner repository.

Banshee 1.8.0 (stable) has been released yesterday. There are many new features and improvements since the last stable version: Amazon MP3 Store and Download plugins, MPRIS v2 support (it should now be integrated into the Ubuntu 10.10 Sound Menu), Miro Podcast Directory which allows you to stream and subscribe to podcasts, Bulk Metadata Fixup Extension, improved iPhone, iTouch, iPad, and iPod support, improved audiobook support and a lot of other improvements. A complete list can be found @ Banshee release announcement.

Glippy is a clipboard manager for the Gnome desktop. Some of its main features are: Ubuntu appindicator support, it can store test from both keyboard and mouse (select some text using your mouse and it will be available in Glippy), you can easily access the keboard using a hotkey (CTRL + SUPER + C by default, but it can be customized).