What is Prism? Well, it’s created by Mozilla, the guys that make Firefox. Basically it is a dedicated window for a site. What is neat is that it runs off your desktop just like a program. So if you use Gmail for your email, then you could create a gmail prism thingy (not sure if I should call it a “program” or “shortcut”, because it is both and neither…I think), and when you launch it Gmail is opened up, in it’s own window. Now, if you combine that with gmail’s offline mode, you pretty much have the official gmail on your computer (not controlled by another program like Thunderbird or Evolution).

There is a Firefox Prism add-on which enables you to make any website you desire into an “application”. I’m nto too sure how effective this is. But, never fear, in Ubuntu there are several repo packages already created for specific prism setups. Just open up a terminal window and start with the classic install line:

sudo apt-get install

then follow it with whichever of the packages you want:

• prism-facebook
• prism-google-analytics
• prism-google -calendar
• prism-google-docs
• prism-google-groups
• prism-google-mail [basically gmail]
• prism-google-reader
• prism-google-talk [or google chat]
• prism-twitter

I installed both the gmail and chat ones, and they work great, and I think I’ll probably be adding calendar and docs (at least) as well. If you want to install it all, just string ‘em all together after the install command like this:

sudo apt-get install prism-facebook prism-google-analytics prism-google-calendar prism-google-docs prism-google-groups prism-google-mail prism-google-reader prism-google-talk prism-twitter

Enjoy!

Okay, I just stumbled across this. I haven’t had a chance to really try it out yet, but it looks pretty solid. Mozilla has been cooking up a calendar program. It’s cross-platform, and I think it interfaces with Google Calendar. Anyways, lots of of potential there. Definitely worth checking out, I say. I think it’s in the regular repos (I didn’t have to add any to install it…), but make sure you’ve got your multiverse repos activated, just in case. Then it’s a simple terminal command:

sudo apt-get install sunbird

That’s it! Enjoy. If I actually start using it more, I may post some more info on it…lemme know if you have any suggestions or comments about it as well!