Music Store Coming to Ubuntu?

It seems like Ubuntu will be getting a music store integrated into the desktop music player! The Ubuntu One Music Store! Specifications and details have not yet been published but a Launchpad project page has been created.

It is about time Linux users, and especially those in less favored countries, have a decent and well supported route to acquiring high quality music legally. Many would suggest running iTunes in WINE. But I have no intention of supporting a service that does not support my OS of choice. Then there is the Amazon music store which does not sell outside the U.S.A. Other online stores I have looked into have a rather limited library of content, and most of the time I do not find the music I am looking for.

I am looking forward to seeing how this store and project develops. Will there be DRM? I surely hope not. Will it be limited to Ubuntu users? How large will the library be? Will it offer free content? Will it use free codecs? Will it provide a new and unrestricted platform for independent artists? Will it offer more incentive for people to switch to Linux? So many questions... A meeting is scheduled for Wednesday at the UDS. Let's wait and see.

More power to you Ubuntu and Canonical!

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Tidbit: Using Yahoo as your default email client

I just wrote a post on using GMail as your default email client and I thought there should be an easy way to do this for Yahoo Mail as well. And of course there is! Create a bash script with the following code and use it just as you would the gmailer script from the other post.

#!/bin/bash

getopen () {

if [ -x /usr/bin/xdg-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/xdg-open"
elif [ -x /usr/bin/kde-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/kde-open"
elif [ -x /usr/bin/gnome-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/gnome-open"
else
echo "Requires xdg-open, kde-open or gnome-open"
exit 1
fi
}

getemail () {

export address=`echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`
export targeturl="http://compose.mail.yahoo.com/?To=$address"
}

getopen
getemail $1
exec $opener $targeturl
exit 0

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Tidbit: Using GMail as your default email client

I mostly use GMail for email purposes and so it makes sense to make it my default email client. There are many ways to do this on the web. However, most are desktop environment or browser specific. It is nice to have things behave similarly across desktop environments or even installations. So I threw together a quick bash script that would use the default browser that is configured for your system. Here it is.

#!/bin/bash

getopen () {

if [ -x /usr/bin/xdg-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/xdg-open"
elif [ -x /usr/bin/kde-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/kde-open"
elif [ -x /usr/bin/gnome-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/gnome-open"
else
echo "Requires xdg-open, kde-open or gnome-open"
exit 1
fi
}

getemail () {

export address=`echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`
export targeturl="https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&source=mailto&to=$address"
}

getopen
getemail $1
exec $opener $targeturl
exit 0

Save this in a file. I called mine gmailer and saved it to ~/bin. Make sure it is executable and that your system is configured to search ~/bin for executable commands. Now configure your system to open mailto: links with gmailer. That would be gmailer %s in Gnome/XFCE and gmailer %t in KDE4. Cool thing is that gmailer emailaddress@isp.com run from command line or the Ctr+F2 launcher works just as well!

There is a limitation to it. If you are not already logged into GMail or your browser does not automatically log you in, it will not work. It surely can be better but it works just fine for me right now. Obviously, suggestions are most welcome! Enjoy!

[EDIT] Want to do this with Yahoo Mail instead? Click here.

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