"8 more" becase we already wrote about another 6 nice Xsplash themes for Ubuntu.

The first 3 XSplash themes (screens) are part of the Fusion-GX-v00 pack and can be downloaded from the same location - download link after the third XSplash.

Before I tell you what this is about, please note that the source is marked as "unreliable?" on Wikipedia so it may or may not be true.

I recently came across an idea on Ubuntu Brainstorm about preserving laptops battery life that leads to an Wikipedia article which states that a Li-ion battery can have a much longer life if charged to only 40%-60% of it's capacity, and not to 100% like most laptop batteries are charged:

The New Wave Gnome theme was updated to version 0.8.2. This new version includes lots of changes:

- Statusbar, selected text, popups in Nautilus, tooltips, text improvements (lighter text)
- More lightness in menus and desktop items (transparancy and toned colors)
- Improved active tab and horizontal line gradients.
- Transparent panels and items possible when using flat panel theme (use NW Configurator to set up)
- IconView and Assistant Window themed much better.
- Infobars are styled properly to match the theme.
- Added focus for the items in nautilus and many other apps.
- Improved selected workspace bg color in the applet.
- Fixed the rendering glitch in Appearance manager.
- Improved NW Configurator - transparent panels and more.
- Redesigned progressbars inside treeviews to match the other progressbars better.
- Fixed long standing issue with Evolution's preferences wrong colors.
- Restyled frames in Gedit statusbar and the panel.
- New theme format gtp for easier installation (just double click)

Besides the New Wave Gtk2.x theme, the package also contains:

• New Wave Configurator (GUI),
• Emerald themes,
• Compiz-fusion settings,
• Second theme with dark menus,
• Firefox skin,
• Some metacity tweaks.
• Time applet tips.
• Theme for xfwm4 (Xubuntu)

I've been using New Wave ever since the release of Ubuntu Jaunty and it has been my favourite theme since then. I strongly recommend it, but in the end, it's all a matter of taste I guess...

Download New Wave v0.8.2 @ Gnome Look.

Up until now, Twitterfeed was the most popular service for posting feed content to Twitter but as always, Google wants it all and it has now added an option to Feedburner which allows it to automatically post updates from your feed to your Twitter account.

Ubuntu Software Center (initially Ubuntu Software Store) was released with Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala and it currently has only a few of the features it was designed for, being just stage 1 out of 4.

The Ubuntu Software Center is a graphical utility for package management in Ubuntu. In version 1, it builds on the basic philosophy of Add/Remove Applications with an easier-to-use design. In version 2, the primary goals are to take the place of Synaptic and apturl, and to include ratings and reviews of software.

Let's take a deeper look to what we'll have with Ubuntu Software center version 2 and more.

- Ratings and reviews:

There is already work in progress for this feature which gives users the possibility to rate applications and post 'comments' (reviews). Also, everyone will be able to offer suggestions to the packages maintainers. The users will need to have a Launchpad account.

Third-party repositories packages can also offer these features (ratings and comments), but the meta data will have to be directly integrated into the packages.

Some time ago, we talked about CookiePie, a Firefox add-on which allows you to use a new session so that you can log in to the same service with multiple accounts (such as multiple Google accounts, etc). But CookiePie doesn't always work and it breaks the cookies if you move the tabs around.

Multifox is another Firefox extension for logging in to multiple accounts on the same site which I like because it doesn't messes with your cookies and I was never logged out from both accounts like it sometimes happens with CookiePie.

The Dropbox repository for Ubuntu (http://linux.getdropbox.com/ubuntu ...) has been changed because the official Dropbox website is now dropbox.com. I've just tried to reinstall Dropbox and the old repository no longer works.

To update your repository, simply go to System > Administration > Software Sources, look for linux.getdropbox.com and remove the "get" in front of "dropbox.com".

That's it.

TrueTwit is a Twitter service which will help you fight spammers. TrueTwit works by sending a DM to each new Twitter follower you have with a verification link where the follower needs to enter the Captcha seen in the image. You will then be notified by email if your new followers pass this verification or you can set TrueTwit to automatically follow them once they have passed the verification.

While in theory, this sounds like an amazing service, it has the downside that it needs to send a direct message to each of your new followers - a behavior which most of the times is considered as spam so people might ignore your message. But TrueTwit might use another method for verifying users:

The reason I am writing this post is because I tried many howto's which didn't work and I eventually ended up combining some to get both rtorrent and wtorrent to install and run on my Debian 5 Lenny VPS (thanks to Costin for the VPS).

In case you don't know: wtorrent is a WebUI for rtorrent, a command line Bittorrent client.

Be aware, there are quite a few steps on doing this, so you need a lot of patience and time. Let's get started!