Our favorite new addition is that the U1 Files app now supports auto-upload from other photo apps you use. So if you’re into Instagram, the U1 Files app will automatically upload all those cool images to your Ubuntu One personal cloud, making them available on all your devices. We’ve also made sharing a link to Facebook, Twitter and other networks dead easy!

You’ll notice a number of UI improvements across the app, including some functional additions so you have more choice in determining how the U1 Files app performs.

The new settings functionality can help you save power and avoid incurring costly roaming charges.

• * Auto-upload only when the device is charging
• * Don’t auto-upload when roaming
• * Gallery Auto Upload – you can now choose whole galleries to Auto upload
• * ‘Cancel all uploads’ from the setting menu
• * Cancelling file downloads from the context menu

Remember Ubuntu One works on Windows, Android, iOS and of course, Ubuntu. Don’t have an account? Sign up for free and get 5GB of cloud storage for all your files, photos and more.

This feature is in the very early stages of development right now, but we wanted to give you  a sneak peak and to let you know that it will be coming soon for everyone. If you can’t wait and want early access or to learn more about this first version you can contact us and we will guide you through the implementation process.

Other news is that we will also be sponsoring the SCI-FI-LONDON festival this year. SCI-FI-LONDON is an international film festival for sci-fi enthusiasts that runs from 1st-7th of May, in London.

This event coincided perfectly with the first version of Send to Ubuntu One and you can see the first live implementation of the feature used to support SCI-FI-LONDON here.

For Ubuntu One the big story was bringing the convenience of the personal cloud to the connected car. Ubuntu One partnered with Visteon and Delphi, two of the largest companies in the automobile industry, as well as AllGo Systems to introduce prototypes of music streaming from personal cloud to automobiles. Visteon even implemented their prototype on top of Ubuntu Core, a version of Ubuntu designed for embedded devices.

This innovation in connected cars is yet another example of Ubuntu One leading the way in personal cloud services and helping users gain wider access to their personal media.

Our focus now shifts to Ubuntu One opportunities in wireless. From February 27th to the 1st of March we’ll be in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress, situated in Hall 7. Similar to our partnership with leading auto suppliers, we are working with mobile operators and handset manufacturers to further extend the personal cloud into the mobile world. Our recent experience with Vodafone is a first example in this direction.

As more and more consumers get switched on to the convenience of the could, handset manufacturers and wireless carriers are starting to create their own cloud solutions. Ubuntu One can power these efforts with a clear proposition:

1. Avoid creating another service silo – Separate services that are unique to a single device are confusing and frustrating to users. With its mobile apps for accessing files, streaming music and automatically sending photos to the cloud and other devices – Ubuntu One is already a favorite of millions of users.

2. Differrentiate by building your own new, branded features on top of Ubuntu One by using our APIs.

3. Revenue sharing across all Ubuntu One cloud services – Handset makers can earn post-sale revenue and carriers can increase ARPU to offset the costs of enhancing their networks for customers.

If you’re a handset maker or wireless carrier thinking about cloud services, we can help – so feel free to contact us.

We can finally announce that our hugely popular Ubuntu One Files app has been selected by Vodafone for their curated app store. It’s now available to download via the Vodafone store in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Russia, Italy, Greece and Portugal.

U1 Files app is free and it includes 5GB of cloud storage. Users tell us they love the seemingly magic way U1 Files automatically sends photos taken from their phones directly to their personal cloud and other devices. So snap away, and forget about uploading, sending or tethering to other devices – Ubuntu One takes care of that for you.

The benefit of this feature hit home recently when my SD card decided to die with no warning – a year’s worth of photos and important moments I’d captured were gone. Or so I thought….I remembered that the clever Ubuntu One Files app had been working hard in the background during that time, seamlessly sending my photos back to U1 and onto my home PC. I can’t tell you the massive sense of relief I got from logging in and seeing all my photos safe and available for me to share.

Ubuntu One is available on several operating systems: Windows, Android, iOS and of course, Ubuntu. But remember, while using Ubuntu as your OS is a fantastic experience – you don’t need to use Ubuntu to reap the benefits of Ubuntu One.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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