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Listen to Pandora in your terminal via Pianobar
I constantly listen to Pandora (even while I sleep). However one thing I’ve always disliked about Pandora was that it required Flash. You remember Flash, it’s that enormous resource hog that’s constantly crashing. Then I discovered Pianobar, the open-source Pandora client that runs in your terminal. Pianobar is chock full of features:
- play and manage (create, add more music, delete, rename, …) your stations
- rate played songs and let Pandora explain why they have been selected
- show upcoming songs/song history
- configure keybindings
- last.fm scrobbling support (external application)
- proxy support for listeners outside the USA
Ubuntu 11.04 and Unity
On April 28th, Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) will be released. 11.04 is slated to be the first Ubuntu release that will use Unity, in place of GNOME, as the default desktop shell.
What is Unity?
Unity is a shell interface for the GNOME desktop environment developed for Ubuntu. Ubuntu 11.04 will still be based on GNOME 3 – the underlying infrastructure, applications, etc will not change; Unity just defines what your desktop looks like (similar to Windows Explorer). Unity was originally designed for netbooks, but over the last few months has shown that it is suitable for desktops as well. Unity puts major emphasis on screen space; every pixel is utilized.
Unity is much more then just a few menu/window tweaks though. Unity is part of a larger project called Ayatana, which adds things like:
MetroTwit: an elegant, simple and free Twitter client
Note: This is Windows only. 
MetroTwit is a new twitter client with a user interface inspired by Windows Phone 7. Anyone who has used TweetDeck will instantly be familiar with the UI, but while TweetDeck is meant to be a one stop shop for all your social needs, MetroTwit takes the opposite approach, focusing only on Twitter and the need for a clean UI.
MetroTwit has all the features you’ve come to expect in a twitter client. Infinite scrolling, auto complete for usernames and hashtags, and even customizable themes. Did I mention that MetroTwit is ad free? (See update) Though the best feature MetroTwit has to to offer is something I like to call “Secret Following”.