Ubuntu Apps

Create a Modern Windows 7 Like Menu with GnoMenu 2.0

Kevin Prag — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:18:39 +0000

GnoMenu 2.0 was recently released as a .tar.gz file. GnoMenu fixed many bugs with the previous versions, adds a new default menu, theme sounds and much more. GnoMenu creates a Microsoft Windows like menu that includes the ability to search for an application as well as creates easy to read menu links to Music, Videos, Documents as well as other items. The 2.0 version of GnoMenu seems noticeably faster than previous version.

In Ubuntu Apps I’ve featured GnoMenu and provide information on how to set it up as well as how to create custom menu icons such as the flower icon shown in the screenshot below.

GnoMenu 2.0 can be downloaded from:
https://launchpad.net/gnomenu/+download

Download

Kevin Prag — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:10:58 +0000

I’ve added an alternative download link in case there is an issue with Mediafire.

Download Sources

Mediafire
Alternative Source

The Marketing Has Begun

Kevin Prag — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:04:43 +0000

The marketing has begun for Ubuntu Apps. Ubuntu Apps is being marketing differently from most other books. Rather than going through a publisher and having them provide much of the marketing, I’ve chosen to self-publish and do the hard work myself.

The main part of the marketing is going to be using social networks to make others aware of the book. Using Facebook, social storywriting sites and bookmark sites will help to get the message out.

Word of mouth will help also and that is why the e-book is being given away for free. This should help the word of mouth effect. Without this, it is just another book or ebook that costs $$. By giving the e-book away, the word of mouth effect should take off and many will download it. Those that like it will purchase the print book which is my main goal.

For those of you who wish to follow along, please check back on the blog or subscribe to the RSS Feed to track as the marketing experiment moves along.

Self Publishing Profit Spreadsheet

Kevin Prag — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:28:06 +0000

For those of you curious about how much money is made on books, I’ve created a spreadsheet which shows exactly how much money is made self-plublishing e-books and print books.

The spreadsheet compares most of the major self publishing services: Lulu, Create Space, Lightning Source, Amazon Digital Text Platform (Kindle), Amazon e-docs, as well as selling directly through the web.

The comparisons shows how much profit can be made selling a self published book using the various companies and various different formats.

As you can see above, the most profitable option for print books is to point your customers to Lulu or CreateSpace Pro store. This option would give you $$5.61 and $6.76 per book on a $14 book. For books that are distributed on Amazon or other retail sites, Lightningsource is the most profitable option followed by CreateSpace Pro. Lightning Source gives flexibility with the discount rate which can increase profitability further as well as opening the doors to websites besides Amazon.com. CreateSpace Pro provides greater ease of use and lower start-up costs.

e-Book Moving to MediaFire

Kevin Prag — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:20:48 +0000

The e-book will be hosted on MediaFire in the future as I gear up for the official launch of Ubuntu Apps. Currently it is being hosted on a dedicated server but the download speed on the dedicated server is only about 1MB/s upload so it won’t take many people downloading it before it slows to a crawl.

The PDF file is now nearly 15MB. After spending a day trying to compress it using the various image compression formats, then trying compressing it via .zip, .7z and other compression methods, it became apparent that this was not the best option because the image quality started going downhill each time the compression went up.

The other option is to release it as a torrent which I’m a bit hesitant to do because it will most likely get out of my hands where I have little control over it. The result of this may be that people avoid the website entirely, or a stale version of Ubuntu Apps floating around on the torrents.

MediaFire has received some good reviews and I hope it works out well. I’m also putting the sources.list files on MediaFire.

mediafire

9.04 update

Kevin Prag — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:16:30 +0000

The 9.04 update includes repository update information for Ubuntu 9.04. It also includes the addition of several applications and tips. They are included as follows below:

Addition of Adobe Reader
Removal of VMware
VirtualBox addition
GnomeMenu with customization tips
Synergy pre-boot fix
Pidgin saving account fix
New AWN plugins & screen shots (Pandora, Weather, and Dilbert)
GYachi (Yahoo Messenger clone) addition
Moblock (PeerGuardian clone) addition

Community Contributed Book Ideas

Kevin Prag — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:57:25 +0000

Recently I was thinking about the idea of doing some sort of community generated book that is based on contributed content from the public.

The idea comes as a result of recent publishing deals from http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/ and http://petswhowanttokillthemselves.com/

Both of these sites are comedy based sites which are based solely on user uploaded pictures.

Regarding a Linux or Ubuntu based book such as Ubuntu Apps, user contribution could play a role in improving future versions of Ubuntu Apps or other other books.

The idea is to have users make contributions or suggestions via some sort of interface such as a forum, blog, wiki or some other type of interface.

If anyone has any suggestions for what type of interface to use, feel free to post it here in the comments section.