Tuesday, May 29, 2012

How-To: This Unity News Lens Helps You Find News Fast

In this how to, I'm going to teach you how to install the Unity News Lens, right after I finish explaining what exactly it is.


Every day, we consume a enormous amount of news. You might not realize it, but you do. Knowing what the weather is going to be about is considered news, the latest rumors might even be considered news by some people.


Alot of this news might be "junk news." Celebrity, TV, music, sport etc – or the information equivalent of  ‘broccoli’ – politics, world, business, etc – it remains important to keep ourselves aware of something.


If you happen to use Ubuntu, and use Unity, reading news just got a whole lot easier. Introducing the Unity News Lens.


The News Lens, created by prolific lens developer David Callé, works like any other lens in Unity: you open the Dash, select it, then enter a query. Results are then displayed.


When you click on a story, it is opened with your default browser. By default the lens uses your system language. But that’s not always preferable. If you are wanting to read another language besides your default system language, you have to enter in the syntax.


!fr for French, !sv for Swedish, !ru for Russian, !de for German, etc. A full list can be found at Wikipedia. And example is below.
How to install (the how to segment)
Sadly, the news lens is not available from the Ubuntu Software Center yet. I know, that's sad, but the developer is already working on that.


However, there is a PPA you can add. You can either choose to add it through the software-center, but I prefer using the Terminal. Don't worry, just paste the following lines and you'll be fine. I promise :-).
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:scopes-packagers/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install unity-lens-news


Then, type this in:
sudo apt-get install unity-lens-news


You will have to log out and then log back in to get the news lens in Unity. If you do want to have some other cool lenses, follow this link. Since you have the PPA already added at this point, just copy the name of the lens, then type in sudo in the terminal, and then paste the name. You can also use the software-center, once you have the PPA added. I prefer terminal, because the packages don't always show up in the software-center.


And, what kind of lens would you like to have next? If I can learn how to create one, I will make a lens that you can use to browse articles on Techman's World via the RSS feed that I already have. I can also have a latest comments RSS feed, but that is less important to me.


Also, did you see the Disqus 2012 on Techman's World article yet? I want everyone's feedback on Disqus 2012.