I've seen this question asked many times so here's how to clear the Zeitgeist history. To reset the Zeitgeist history, open a terminal and copy/paste the following commands:

rm ~/.local/share/zeitgeist/activity.sqlite
zeitgeist-daemon --replace

That will only clear the history, but will not stop Zeitgeist (so the files you access after running the above commands will still be tracked by Zeitgeist).

Those of you who like writing bash scripts and use Zenity for a GUI should give YAD a try. YAD (Yet Another Dialog) is a fork of Zenity with many improvements, such as custom buttons, additional dialogs, pop-up menu in notification icon and more. I've been using it for Y PPA Manager so if you want to see it in action, give Y PPA Manager a try.

Unfortunately even though Zenity is constantly updated, these updates only bring language updates and fixes. Here is where YAD shines: basically most of the stuff you ever wanted to do in Zenity is available in YAD: you can have as many buttons as you want, each with the text you want, a really nice icons dialog (which I've used as the main Y PPA Manager UI) and many more. Here's an example of a YAD dialog you could never get using Zenity:

Gnome Shell and Unity may have started on separate paths, but they are definitely heading to the same direction. Seif Lotfy has just posted a screenshot (not mockup!) of his current work: Zeitgeist and Gnome Shell:

[via Seilo @ Geeky Ogre]

Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal Alpha 1 has been released today. There's nothing much to talk about right now since it's only the beginning of the road, but since Unity received an update a couple of days ago, I though you might want to see a new video with Unity in action:

Linux Mint Debian offers the "ready to use" Linux Mint experience in a rolling release Linux distribution. Until now, LMDE was only available in 32bit, but an announcement on the Linux Mint blog states that Linux Mint Debian 64bit will be released in December.

Besides a 64bit version, there are other "goodies" that are going to be available in the new Linux Mint Debian release (if you're using the 32bit version, there's obviously no need for a clean install - since it's a rolling release, all you have to do is upgrade your packages): improvements to the installer, fonts and sound as well as performance tweaks such as the now very well known 4 lines alternative to the "200 lines Linux Kernel patch that does wonders".

[via Linux Mint blog]

Conky is simply amazing - with the help of basic scripts you can get it to display any info on your desktop. Here is how to get Conky to display Facebook notifications.

Indicator-VirtualBox is a simple yet very useful appindicator which you can use to launch VirtualBox machines without opening VirtualBox. It works with both VirtualBox and VirtualBox-OSE.

WebUpd8 reader conorsulli just sent us a tip about an Elementary scrollbars extension he's made for Google Chrome / Chromium. Even though the scrollbars are especially designed for Elementary and other GTK themes based on Elementary, the extension will of course work with any GTK theme.

To use, extract the downloaded .zip, then drag and drop the .crx file onto the Chrome window.

[Screenshot thanks to conorsulli]

In the previous post about Synapse, I was telling you that the more Zeitgeist dataproviders you have, the more info Synapse will return. For instance, right now you don't have any results in Synapse, under "Internet". That's because you need a Zeitgeist web browser data provider (currently the Zeitgeist dataproviders BZR provides 2: for Chrome and Firefox).

With the help of Alberto (who sent me the 64bit .so files), I've packaged the Zeitgeist dataprovider Chrome extension in a .crx file so you can easily install it in Google Chrome / Chromium.

Using this extension, the websites you visit in Google Chrome / Chromium will show up in the Synapse  (and other applications that make use of Zeitgeist) search results.

Adobe Flash Player 10.2 beta was released today with preliminary support for Stage Video which is supposed to reduce the performance impact while playing back video content across all platforms. The new version also brings enhanced text rendering, and two popular requests from the community: a native custom mouse cursors API and support for full screen playback with multiple monitors.

You can read the full release announcement, HERE.

Unfortunately, the new Adobe Flash Player 10.2 beta does not come with 64bit packages. A note on the Adobe labs page states that: