'My Weather Indicator' 0.2.0 Released, New PPA For All Atareao Applications

Atareao.es has created quite a few Ubuntu applications which include Picapy, My Weather Indicator, Touchpad Indicator, Google Reader Indicator and more. Starting yesterday, all these great applications will be available from a single PPA: ppa:atareao/atareao. Add the PPA using the following command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao && sudo apt-get update

Further more, 'My Weather Indicator' was updated today, the new version brining a new API for the Weather (the Google API is now used instead of the Weather Channel). In my test, there were't many cities available for my country but you can at least see all the available cities in a drop-down and if yours is not available, select one near it. Thanks to the new API, 'My Weather Indicator is a lot faster and there are fewer errors.

Other changes include new icons for the weather and new translations: German, Italian, Galician and French.

To install 'My Weather Indicator', simply add the Atareao PPA as stated in the beginning of the post, then use the following command:

sudo apt-get install my-weather-indicator

If you encounter any bugs, report them @ Launchpad.

Official 'My Weather Indicator' 0.2.0 announcement (Spanish).

Weather Indicator Lives On, Gets A New PPA

Weather Indicator is an Ubuntu appindicator that displays the current weather. Its development stopped a while back and the PPA was removed but Vadim Rutkovsky brought Weather Indicator back to life - for the past two weeks he's been fixing bugs for the old Weather Indicator and also, he has created a new PPA for easy installation.

Weather Indicator features:

• Notifications support for severe weather or every weather condition change
• the temperature unit can be set to Celsius, Fahrenheit or Kelvin
• Multiple locations support
• Extended weather
• Sunlight/Sunset support with day/night icons
• The Applet can find your location for you

(Weather Indicator Forecast)

See our previous posts on Weather Indicator for more info:

• Install A Weather Indicator Applet With Notifications Support In Ubuntu
• Indicator Weather Update Brings Many Changes, Bug Fixes

Install Weather Indicator

To add the new Weather Indicator PPA and install it in Ubuntu Maverick and Natty, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:weather-indicator-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indicator-weather

Then you can start the initial setup assistant by going to System > Preferences > Weather Indicator Preferences.

Remember to submit any bugs you may find @ Launchpad.

See also: 'My Weather Indicator': A New Ubuntu Weather Appindicator

'My Weather Indicator': A New Ubuntu Weather Appindicator

The new indicator-datetime (clock indicator) which was released in Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition (and will also be default in 11.04 Desktop edition too) doesn't provide any weather info like the old Gnome Clock applet.

A while back, a weather indicator was released, however its PPA is empty for a long time and it seems its development has stopped but luckily, Atareao @ atareao.es has started a new project called "My Weather Indicator" designed to bring back the weather conditions to your panel.

Besides the info available in the appindicator (temperature, termic sensation, wind velocity, humidity and so on), 'My Weather Indicator' also displays NotifyOSD notifications on conditions change and you can get an extended weather forecast by clicking the "Forecast" option in its menu:

This being the first release, there are some bugs too, most of them probably because of the weather service it uses (The Weather Channel): sometimes it takes a long time for the Forecast dialog to open; also, I've tried various cities in my country and for some, the weather wasn't displayed correctly while for others, the city wasn't found at all. Further more, the application lacks an option to change the measuring unit (so for now you're stuck with °C and km/h).

Install "My Weather Indicator" in Ubuntu

To add the PPA and install My Weather Indicator in Ubuntu Lucid, Maverick or Natty, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lorenzo-carbonell/atareao
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install my-weather-indicator

Once installed, run it by going to Accessories > My Weather Indicator.

Unfortunately My Weather Indicator doesn't have a Launchpad page so you can't easily submit the bugs may find. However, you can let the author know if something doesn't work @ atareao.es.

Install A Weather Indicator Applet With Notifications Support In Ubuntu

Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat will remove the current clock applet and replace it with a very simplified applet which you probably already have if you installed Unity in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid. If not, this is how it looks:

As you can see, it's just a simple clock, with no weather conditions.

But a new Weather Applet was released on Launchpad (pictured in the beginning of the post) which comes with indicator applet support, lots of configurable options and notifications - which you can set to give you severe weather alerts or just weather conditions change:

Weather Indicator Applet also comes with an extended weather forecast:

Being still experimental, there are bugs: even though I've set the temperature unit to Celsius, it displays the extended forecast in Fahrenheit. Also, the panel applet doesn't seem to change (it shows a sun while it's 12:07 AM here).

To install the Weather Indicator Applet in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx or Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:weather-indicator-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indicator-weather

Update July 11, 2010: I've updated the last command since 'weather-indicator' became 'indicator-weather'.

After installing, go to Applications > Accessories > Weather Indicator Applet and when prompted, simply enter your location like so:

Update January 16, 2011: I've replace the old PPA (which no longer exists) with a new PPA that provides new versions of Weather Indicator!

Real-Time Earth Wallpaper For Linux

We already wrote about a wallpaper application for Linux which displays the current weather, moon phases and time of day based on your current location, in real time. This time, I'm going to tell you about a script created by Claudio Novais @ Ubuntued which displays a picture of the Earth, in real time, like so:

The script needs a permanent internet connection and uses just ~400kb of memory so don't worry about it eating system resources. Also, please note the the script tries to update every hour but if it fails, it tries to get the image from 5 to 5 seconds, for 5 minutes and if it still fails, it tries again in an hour. That's especially useful for when running the script at system start-up, because it takes some time until the internet connection is set up, or for when the internet connection goes down, etc.

How to use the real-time Earth wallpaper script for Linux

1. Download the script from HERE.

2. Create a new folder in your home partition, let's call it "earthwallpaper" and put the script you just downloaded into this folder.

3. Open a terminal, navigate to the folder you created at step 2 and make the script executable:

~/earthwallpaper
chmod +x changer.sh

4. Go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications and select "Add", in the name field enter "Earth Wallpaper" and in the command field, enter:

/path/to/changer.sh

Changing /path/to with the path to were you copied the changer.sh file you downloaded at step 1.

Now, each time you start your computer, the script which updates your wallpaper will automatically run.

5. Log out and log back in! Running the script creates a new wallpaper called world_sunlight_Wallpaper.jpg in your ~/.gnome2 folder. We need to set this as your wallpaper. This picture is constantly updated by the script, thus making the image dynamic. To do this, open Nautilus, toggle the text-based address bar and type:

~/.gnome2

Which will open the hidden .gnome2 folder from your home directory. Now, on your desktop, right click and select "Change Desktop Background" which will open the Appearance dialog. Having both the Appearance dialog opened and the ~/.gnome2 folder, drag and drop the world_sunlight_Wallpaper.jpg file from Nautilus, into the Appearance dialog (Background tab). That's it. Now you just have to keep the terminal opened so that the script will continue to update the world_sunlight_Wallpaper.jpg wallpaper in real-time.

Enjoy.

Please note that while I only tested the script in Ubuntu, it should work in any Linux distro.

If you are looking for a Windows alternative, try the Real Time Globe Wallpaper For Windows.