jorge's stompbox

What kind of apps should people make with Ubuntu One?

This cycle I’ll be working with the immitable Stuart Langridge on building out a community around the Ubuntu One Developer Programme, which he announced at UDS. The video isn’t up yet (but I’ll blog about it when it is).

Some of the parts are now coming together. You can find the API docs here:

https://one.ubuntu.com/developer/

and I’ve started a wiki page of some ideas for applications that people might want to build around Ubuntu One.

So what does this all mean? Well, at this point we’re getting feedback from people who are idea junkies on what kind of apps people should build. Sometimes I find people with programming skills with nothing to do and they ask me “Ok what needs to get done?” and then I kind of have nothing for them off the top of my head.

However it’s more focused when you can build a quick little plugin for Banshee or a little helper application that helps me sync something I wasn’t able to sync before. Here’s an example of some ideas so far.

As you can see we already have a bunch of ideas. Also, as you can see, the API can be used from any operating system. The Ubuntu One team will concentrate on making the API and the core syncing service and of course, integrating it with the core parts of the OS, but for the rest, there is no limit. One of the applications that added support early on was Shutter, the (amazing) screenshot program:

Integration like this is just the beginning. There are tons of devices out there, and while I can pretty much guarantee that no one at Canonical will be working on a Windows Phone 7 application for Ubuntu One, there’s nothing stopping anyone else from writing one, and it’s things like that that will enable that person to use Ubuntu better the day they do decide to try it.

So have a think about the devices you use, and platforms your friends use. I personally would /love/ to stream my Ubuntu One music right in XBMC for example.

So, this is the start, I’ll be blogging about this more regularly, expect to see updates from Stuart on how the API is progressing and improvements as they happen. Have a think about your developer friends that might be experts in other platforms, and see if they’d be interested in working on this.

Feel free to just tack on your ideas on the wiki page.