Google Music Frame, an an application that integrates Google Music in the Ubuntu sound menu and adds NotifyOSD notifications got two new very important features in the latest daily PPA builds: multimedia keys support and Last.fm scrobbling (thanks to an user script that you must install manually).

Also, the daily builds PPA now provides packages for Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat and 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot too. Soon, it will also support Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.

AwOken, an amazing Gnome (works great with both Gnome 2 and Gnome 3) icon theme was updated yesterday, getting support for Gnome Shell tray icons. The new version (2.2) also comes with fully revamped audio, network, battery and arrow icons as well as 371 new small size icons and some new/revamped icons.

Double Commander is a very interesting cross-platform file manager inspired by Total Commander (it even supports Total Commander plugins). It uses two panels side by side and comes with a huge feature list: tabbed interface, multi-rename tool, embedded terminal, internal text editor and file viewer, browse archives (ZIP, TGZ, LZMA, RPM, RAR, DEB, etc.), extended search and is fully customizable.

Ambiance Blue is a pack that includes GTK2, GTK3, GNOME Shell and Avant Window Navigator themes, especially designed for those who like the Ambiance theme style but don't like the orange or simply want to try a fresh style while keeping the overall Ambiance look.

Since the pack comes with both GTK2 and GTK3 themes, you can use Ambiance Blue in both GNOME 2 (Ubuntu 11.04 or older) as well as GNOME 3 (Ubuntu 11.10) - or other Linux distributions, but for the GTK3 theme you'll need to install Unico GTK3 engine.

In GNOME 3 (be it Fedora 15, Ubuntu 11.10 with Unity or GNOME Shell, etc.), you can't move files or folders to trash by pressing the DELETE key anymore and you must use CTRL + DELETE instead. But you can restore the Gnome 2 behavior - just follow the steps below.

By default, Pidgin saves all your passwords in plain text (look under ~/.purple/accounts.xml). About four years ago there was a bug report that asked to encrypt the passwords, but the developers marked the bug as "wontfix". Update: you can read about the reasons behind this, here.

Here's where Pidgin Gnome Keyring plugin comes in: this plugin will make Pidgin store your passwords in the system keyring. One note though: the plugin will not prevent other plugins from writing passwords in the accounts.xml file (I don't use any such plugins so I can't give you an example).

Update: Despite the plugin being called "Pidgin GNOME Keyring", it was ported from gnome-keyring to libsecret in February 2015.

Tiheum, who is best known for the Faenza icon theme and Equinox GTK themes has started working on a new icon theme for GNOME 3 / GNOME Shell called "Faience". The theme is work in progress (this is the first public release) and it currently depends on the original Faenza for many icons, but it looks really promising and it already comes with 3 folder color variations.

Google Music is a service that allows you to upload up to 20,000 songs which you can then listen from any computer and even your phone, for free. Google Music is only available in the US for now and requires an invitation (you can request an invite from its main page).

While the Google Music Manager is available for Linux, the service uses a web interface for playing the songs, so there is no desktop integration. But you can get Ubuntu Sound Menu integration and NotifyOSD notifications thanks to an application called Google Music Frame:

Unity 4.10.2 was uploaded to the Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot repositories last night, bringing lots of changes. The most important change is that window controls are now hidden for maximized windows and are displayed on mouse over.

Ext2Fsd has limited EXT4 support and by default it will load the filesystems in read-only mode, but you can force this if you really have to write on EXT4 partitions from Windows (this is not recommended). Using it, your EXT partitions will be displayed just like native NTFS or FAT partitions, being accessible from Windows Explorer.