Ubuntu includes Europeana in top 100 services

Saucy Salamander, the new version of the Ubuntu operating system (OS), will be released this week and includes the ability to search Europeana straight from the OS.

Up until now, there has been a feature called 'Ubuntu Dash', which allowed users to search for things like applications, files and settings. This is now extended by the 'Smart Scopes' feature which broadens the search to include 100 external services. So now, users can search places like Amazon, Wikipedia, Flickr... and Europeana simultaneously. The user enters a keyword which Ubuntu uses to search all of these sources via a series of APIs. It then returns the results from all sources to the user as one results feed.

To tailor the service to their own tastes, users can enable or disable each of the 100 services, filter the results by categories and even search only for Europeana results by using the prefix 'Europeana:'. If you want more information about a Europeana result (Ubuntu shows you the title, image and data provider's name), just click on it to go to the full item page on the Europeana portal.

Péter Király, one of the developers responsible for the Europeana API, says, 'It's a really big thing for us that Ubuntu has included Europeana in its top 100 sources. And from a personal perspective, it's really exciting - this is the first time an operating system has contained my own handiwork!'

Read more about Europeana and Ubuntu on Péter's blog

If you're a Ubuntu user and you have feedback on this development, you can provide it on the project's Launchpad page.