We want to let you know that on Tuesday, February 28th we will be removing Notes from the Ubuntu One web interface. The reason for this is that the U1 Notes web interface hasn’t really been working as well as we want it to. We have looked at the improvements required and the resources needed to raise the overall quality of the notes web interface. However, with everything that we have to work on in 2012, plus continuing to improve our core services, we just won’t be able to give it the attention it needs.

For those of you syncing notes with Ubuntu One, this means you’ll continue to sync them via Tomboy just as you do today. The only difference is that you won’t be able to access these notes via the Ubuntu One web site after February 27th. If you have any more questions around U1 Notes please contact us.

Meanwhile, we’re continuing to build a new higher quality data sync service that will benefit notes as well as other types of data. This service will provide a solid foundation for our own data sync services as well as those of app developers. We’ll continue to post updates about that exciting development as we have more news.

As the dust settles from the holidays the U1 team is kicking off the new year with our first release of 2012.  Our eagerly anticipated Files app for iOS is now ready for download in the app store.

The Android version of this app has been hugely successful and the iOS version delivers to the same high standard, so you can secure and manage your photos and files directly from your iOS device wherever you are.

One great feature of the Ubuntu One Files app is that each time you open it, it will automatically send photos snapped on your iOS device directly to your Ubuntu One personal cloud and other connected devices. So you’ll have peace of mind knowing all your precious photos are backed up to your Ubuntu One cloud instantly. Sharing photos with family, friends and to social spaces from the app is also made easy and you can post straight to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or your blog. This is a free app so all you have to do to get started is install the app and login to your Ubuntu One account. If you are new to Ubuntu One simply register for a free account and get 5GB of free cloud storage.

More good news is that for the first time we will be at CES this year in Las Vegas from 10-13th of January. Ubuntu One will be showcased alongside the Ubuntu OS, so if you are heading to CES come by and see us at the Ubuntu booth located on the upper level South Hall 4, #35379 . Some members of the Ubuntu One team will be on hand to demonstrate all the great things Ubuntu One can do and to answer any questions you may have. There will also be some U1 goodies to take home. Along with all our file sync and mobile music streaming services, the recently launched Web Music Streaming and the new Files app for iOS will be available to demo, as well as an exclusive sneak peak at the future evolution of Ubuntu One. Exciting times lie ahead as we will continue to lead the way in linking the personal cloud with consumer electronics by being first to bring the convenience of the Ubuntu One personal cloud to the connected car. We have partnered with several auto electronic engineering suppliers to create a prototype of the Ubuntu One connect car. The first iteration will focus on music streaming with major auto suppliers Visteon and Delphi at CES showcasing their take on music streaming from your Ubuntu One personal cloud to your car.

In addition, embedded systems software developer AllGo Systems will show Ubuntu One music streaming integrated into their automotive middleware. Plus, semiconductor producer Freescale will demonstrate Ubuntu One music streaming on their ARM i.MX platform.

All in all it’s a busy start to the year for us and in 2012 we are looking to continue the same fast pace we set in 2011. Throughout this year we will be working hard to further enhance performance of current services and introduce more great features for our loyal users to enjoy. We also aim to bring Ubuntu One to new audiences so even more people around the world can share the Ubuntu One personal cloud experience.

Merry Christmas from the Ubuntu One team! As announced at UDS in Orlando in November, the Ubuntu One team have been working on a project to allow application developers to sync data to Ubuntu One, and we’ve now reached the tech preview stage. Here’s the details.

U1DB is a database API for synchronised databases of JSON documents. It’s simple to use in applications, and allows apps to store documents and synchronise them between machines and devices. U1DB itself is not a database: instead, it’s an API and data model which can be backed by any database for storage. This means that you can use U1DB on different platforms, from different languages, and backed on to different databases, and sync between all of them.

Data sync is an essential part of what we want to offer with Ubuntu One. We already offer file sync, and that’s also part of our developer story (the APIs for file sync and music streaming are documented at https://one.ubuntu.com/developer/); U1DB is designed to offer data sync. Some information in your personal cloud is best done as files: your music, your photos, letters written in Word, things you want to back up. However, applications work with data: contacts, metadata about your files, todo lists, preferences and settings, and most stuff an application works with. We’re building U1DB to allow app developers to work with the same data on every platform and in every language; to save data and sync it between devices without having to manage that themselves.

We’ve been working on U1DB enough to have a working implementation, and now we want to get it out to all of you. We’re calling this a tech preview — it’s a working version of U1DB, with the intention that developers look at it and play with it and start working with it. We’re very interested in hearing your thoughts on the current implementation, the API, and its use in applications. Give us your thoughts in comments here or on the U1DB mailing list at https://launchpad.net/~u1db-discuss or just join us at #u1db on freenode for a chat. The tech preview is of the reference implementation — this is written in (and to be used from) Python on Windows or Ubuntu or anywhere Python runs, and it’s where we work on the algorithms and API used across all U1DB implementations. This tech preview contains the library to work with U1DBs from Python, and an example server and client implementation — U1DB is peer-to-peer syncing, so it’s perfectly possible to run your own server and sync to that, and this tech preview has an example server to play with.

You can see (early) documentation of U1DB, the API, and example usage at http://people.canonical.com/~aquarius/u1db-docs/. We are also working on Vala and JavaScript implementations of U1DB: you can find the Vala implementation at http://launchpad.net/shardbridge, and we plan to build implementations of U1DB for iOS (Obj-C on SQLite) and Android (Java on SQLite) in the future.

The tech preview is mostly about getting input into the product so we can make sure we build something that is useful for people. We also have listed a number of open questions on detailed technical subjects which we’d like to hear opinions on from people who would be interested in using U1DB or writing a new implementation for another platform or language or database backend. Give us your thoughts on these too!

Open Questions

1. In general, creating an API that is conceptually portable across many languages has some difficulties. For example, currently, the reference implementation provides a Document object, where doc_obj.content is a JSON string of the document content. This means that app developers using the Python API need to json.loads(doc_obj.content) to edit the content of a Document. Should a Document be addressable as a dictionary? This is an obvious thing to do in Python, but it does not necessarily make sense across many platforms; how would you envisage a Document object looking in C? In Java? In Objective C? In your choice of language?
2. Revision IDs for a U1DB Document are currently quite verbose, but this makes them easy to read (and makes it easier to debug issues). Should we use a less readable but more compact format for these version vectors?
3. Ubuntu One’s U1DB server will have a direct HTTP API, so that apps can retrieve and store data directly in the cloud without syncing. The HTTP API is also used for syncing U1DBs to Ubuntu One. What form of authorization should be used for this HTTP API, both for syncing and for direct access? Other Ubuntu One services use OAuth 1.1; should we examine OAuth 2, or other alternatives, or is it more important to be able to use the same tokens and auth libraries as other Ubuntu One services?
4. Indexing is a tricky issue. Letting users provide code to do the indexing is tricky and creating a reasonably thorough DSL is a lot of work. We’re currently taking the DSL route; index expressions are basically a domain-specific language for querying a u1db. Is there a middle ground?
5. Index expressions can not only name fields but also apply transformation functions to them. For example, lower(fieldname) stores the lowercased contents of a field as an index key, and splitwords(fieldname) splits the contents of the field on whitespace and stores each item as an index key. What are the basic transformation functions we should support? What are the use cases for your proposals? What do apps need?
6. Each peer in replication has a replica uid, a name for that device. Should those ids be just uuids (as they are currently)? Can we use hostnames? Can we detect a db copied across machines? How about a db copied locally? Is identifying these important?

These questions are the stuff we are discussing currently. Any comments on these or other issues not covered here will be most welcome.

So, to get started, see the quickstart guide at http://people.canonical.com/~aquarius/u1db-docs/, and let us know about your ideas for applications using U1DB and your thoughts on the API!

As of today, you can now stream your music stored in Ubuntu One via the web, a great addition to our already popular service for Android and iOS devices. Listen to any song, anywhere on your mobile and now on the web! This latest update comes just in time for the holidays, so you can stream your festive favourites at your work party or family events.

Web music streaming lives in the new Music tab on the U1 dash when you log in to one.ubuntu.com. With song, artist and album views, simple playlist creation, queue management and random play, you’ll be able to listen to your music in your favorite way.

If you already have a Music Streaming subscription you’ll instantly be able to access web music streaming. If not, the Ubuntu One Music Streaming subscription comes with 20GB of storage built-in, all for just $3.99 per month or $39.99 per year and you can try it free for 30 days. If you already have an Ubuntu One account, when logged in just follow the ‘Try free for 30days’ upgrade link in the music tab. If you are new to Ubuntu One, first set up a Free account and then add Music Streaming.

2011 has been a busy year for the Ubuntu One team with multiple milestone releases. So we’d like to say happy holidays to all our loyal users and thank you for all your support throughout 2011! After a much needed rest over the holidays the team are going to be hard at work again making sure 2012 starts with a bang, so keep your eye on the blog to find out more about Ubuntu One exciting plans in the new year.

It’s been a busy few months for the team at Ubuntu One with our official release of Windows at the end of September and then Ubuntu 11.10 last week. Those of you who have already upgraded to 11.10 may have noticed that Ubuntu One no longer supports bookmarks sync, this is because we have decided to discontinue bookmarks sync as a feature. There are a few reasons for this, the main one being that we felt we were not delivering a quality experience to our users. We have been aware for some time about performance issues with bookmark sync and users have feedback that in many cases it’s not been working properly. We would like to apologise to those of you who have been affected by this. We have tried repeatedly to find a good fix, but alas to no avail. This is mostly due to factors outside of our control and is burdened further by providers constantly changing their API’s, making it expensive and time consuming for us to maintain an old service that isn’t delivering much user value.

We want our data sync services to have the same high quality as our file sync and music streaming services, so in the longer term we are aiming for a major upgrade to our data sync infrastructure. Enabling us to provide a robust platform that will serve as the foundation for future services we and other developers will build. We’ll have more details in a future post.

It’s been a long time coming but today we are thrilled to tell you that the much anticipated Ubuntu One official client for Windows is now available for download.

A question we get asked a lot is…..why an Ubuntu One Windows client?

Well there are a few reasons: The most important is we listen to our users. We have long received feedback from Ubuntu users regarding their evolving needs to manage all their content  from a single, secure place across multiple platforms and devices. We’ve looked at many use cases, the most common being the Ubuntu user who is using more than one device or OS. Many people have to work in Windows or Mac environments, even if they prefer to use Ubuntu as their home desktop or OS of choice. Another case is enabling more opportunities for sharing across platforms. For example families using different operating systems in one household can use Ubuntu One as their central place to store all their music, documents, photos and share them easily with each other and friends.

Ubuntu One has a clearly defined strategy of being multi-platform, Windows is one element of that strategy. We believe in giving all users regardless of platform, access to one of the best personal cloud services available. We want as many people as possible to be able to enjoy Ubuntu One and as a consequence, want to know more about all the great benefits of using Ubuntu.

Based on all of this feedback we released our first Windows client beta back in November 2010. Since then, it’s certainly been a labour of love for the team but they have done an excellent job creating a lightweight Windows desktop app so you can use all the great features of Ubuntu One on a Windows machine. This is a major milestone for the Ubuntu One team and we’d like to say well done to Roberto, Manuel, Natalia, Alejandro, Diego, Lisette, Andrews- Junior, Joshua, Sian and everyone else who has contributed.

However, the real heroes are our loyal beta testers, so we wanted to take this opportunity to say a great big thank you to our community who have been reporting bugs and giving us feedback for twelve months. Due to this we have been able to improve the Ubuntu One Windows installer to the slick official version now available for download. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Ubuntu One for Windows is easy to use, all you have to do is:

1. Save the installer to your computer
   
2. Double-click on the download in your web browser’s download status to launch the installer.
   
3. Setup – If you already have an Ubuntu One account sign in with your existing account. If you are new to Ubuntu One, you will be asked to set up an Ubuntu One Free account, this also gives you 5GB of free cloud storage. On successful registration an email will be sent to you with a verification code. Copy and paste that code into the installer when prompted.
   
4. Next click the “Start setup” button to select folders you want to sync to your personal cloud. You can select folders on your computer to sync with your personal cloud at any time in the application.
   
5. Ubuntu One will take care of the rest…you are now ready to get started syncing, sharing and streaming!
   

If you want any more information about Ubuntu One for Windows or in general contact us on the Ubuntu Community Forums, facebook and twitter. 

The Ubuntu One team

Back in July we officially launched our App Developer Program. Last Thursday we held our first app developer evening at Manchester Metropolitan University, it was an informal event for students and local developers.

We had a great time so we’d like to say a big thanks to Darren Dancey from Manchester Met for inviting us and thanks to everyone else who came along.

Stuart Langridge was on top form as usual and held a brilliant talk, then went on to hold court in the pub afterwards. We received some really helpful feedback from the attendees, with the majority of people saying they found the talk both useful and interesting.

Some great questions where asked and we had lively discussions around some really interesting topics, always good to get out there and talk to developers to further understand their needs and motivations. It’s certainly something we’ll be looking to do again so keep your eye on the blog for future event details.

A handy update this week to our Music Streaming app for Android, tons of small bug fixes have been made that will improve overall performance and a demo mode has been added.

So, what’s this ‘demo mode’?…. I hear you ask. Well,  it’s a way to play around with our Music Streaming app without having to sign up to the Music Streaming subscription and upload your own music beforehand. The demo mode lets you stream from 98 free tracks instantly with no commitment, so you can sample Music Streaming for Android straight away. The app itself is free to download and demo, if you like all the great features such as offline listening and want to continue to use it you’ll have to add on a Music Streaming subscription. This plan is great value at just $3.99 per month, which now includes 20GB of storage built in so you can continue to grow your music collection. You still get a 30 day free trial and on top of that if you sign up for twelve months you only pay $39.99, so that’s an additional two months for free.

Happy listening!

Also, just a quick reminder about our App Developer evening on Thursday at Manchester Metropolitan University, where Stuart Langridge will be talking Ubuntu One apps from 7pm , it’s free and there’s still time to register. Hope to see you there.

A few weeks ago we told you that we’d submitted our shiny new Music Streaming iPhone app, well after some time doing the ‘app review dance’ with Apple we’re pleased to tell you it’s now live and ready for you to download

The new Ubuntu One Music Streaming app for iPhone comes packed full of great functionality and an elegant new UI, so you can wirelessly sync your entire music collection saved to your Ubuntu One personal cloud. Along with supporting MP3′s and non-DRM iTunes song formats we’ve made managing your music on the fly easy, so you can browse and search by artist, album, or song title. You can also build and listen to playlists and control your listening with skip, shuffle and repeat functions.

What makes it perfect for everyday use is that you can listen offline without a connection and enjoy your favorite songs at the gym, on that run, commute or flight. No need to worry if you get a call half way through your favourite chorus, as it will automatically resume playing when you’ve finished your call.

You can try the Ubuntu One Music Streaming on iPhone free for 30 days, after the free trial period expires Music Streaming is just $3.99 per month which now has 20GB of storage included in the price. Plus if you sign up for 12 months you get 2 months for free!

So what are you waiting for?!….Simply download from the App store and try it free for 30 days.

Happy listening!

Last week we told you that we launched our App Developer Program. Today we’re pleased to announce our first Ubuntu One App Developer event. Our App Developer Program is open to everybody and on Thursday 1st of September we’re inviting any interested developers to an evening of talking Ubuntu One apps and a drink or two with our futures architect, Stuart Langridge, at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK from 7pm. If you’re interested in building apps for mobile, web or the desktop to work with or use Ubuntu One’s features, or you want to bring Ubuntu One to a new platform, or you just want to hear about what’s going on, come along!

It’s a chance to bounce around some ideas, ask questions and chat with like-minded folks so come and join us. Please let us know you’re coming at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1981804631

We’re really looking forward to seeing you there on the 1st and hearing what imaginative Ubuntu One app ideas are out there…and helping you make them! To find out more about the Ubuntu One APIs we’ve already published, for file syncing and music streaming and data storage, take a look at  https://one.ubuntu.com/developer/.