CloudSN: Google Reader, Identi.ca, Facebook Or Any RSS Feed Notifier (And More) With Messaging Menu Integration

CloudSN (Cloud Services Notifications) is an application similar to Specto (which is not maintained anymore): it can display notifications when you have new emails (POP3 and IMAP), new Identi.ca messages, Google Reader unread items or it can watch any RSS feed for changes. It used to also work with Twitter but since Twitter introduced OAuth for all apps, CloudSN stopped working with Twitter (hopefully it will be fixed soon).

Since CloudSN supports any RSS feed, it can be used for many services, not just regular websites. You could for instance add your Facebook RSS feeds (<-- click to read on how to get various Facebook feeds to use in CloudSN or any RSS feed reader; once you have the Facebook RSS feed URL you want to receive notifications for, add it using the RSS News option in CloudSN) and instantly get an Facebook RSS notifier with Ubuntu Messaging Menu integration.

The notifications are displayed by using NotifyOSD and the number of unread items for each account is available in the Ubuntu Messaging Menu:

You can also set CloudSN to use a normal notification area icon instead of the Messaging Menu:

CloudSN PPA updated; version 0.8.0 available for Ubuntu 10.10

Today, the CloudSN PPA has finally been updated with Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat packages and along with this update, a new version has been released (0.8.0 - for Ubuntu 10.10 only for now) which adds an option to play a beep when you get a notification, IMAP labels support, RSS cache, a "clean" button which marks RSS feeds as read and Gmail bug fixes.

Install CloudSN in Ubuntu

CloudSN comes with an Ubuntu PPA for Karmic, Lucid and Maverick, however the latest version - 0.8.0 is only available for Maverick for now.

To add the CloudSN and install it in Ubuntu, run the following commands in a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chuchiperriman/cloudsn
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cloudsn

Once installed, you can access it by going to Applications > Internet > Cloud Services Notifications.