Install Mozilla Raindrop In Ubuntu Karmic

When Google firstly presented it's Google Wave, everybody though it was going to be a web client to integrate email, Twitter, RSS and basically... everything. If you are using Google Wave, you found out on your own that Google Wave is not for that.

But Mozilla created a client which is what many people though Google Wave was. It's called Raindrop, it's still pre-alpha and this guide will tell you how to install it in Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10. Why only for Ubuntu Karmic? Because probably some packages are too old to run Mozilla Raindrop and also, since I use Ubuntu Karmic, I cannot test it in older Ubuntu versions.

Raindrop is a Web service designed to collate, filter, and present content from disparate messaging services. It currently comes with support for Twitter, GMail, IMAP e-mail, RSS and Skype. One of the key goals is to use smarter filtering methodology to increase the visibility of important messages and reduce the amount of noise that tends to bog down Internet communication. Raindrop is built with a strong emphasis on extensibility, making it trivially easy to customize and enhance with new capabilities.

1. Installing all dependencies and additional tools we will need:

sudo apt-get install python-twisted python-twitter python-feedparser python-openssl python-skype python-twitter python-setuptools mercurial couchdb

2. Download Paisley and extract it to your home folder:

wget http://launchpad.net/paisley/0.1/0.1/+download/paisley-0.1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf paisley-0.1.tar.gz

3. Download Raindrop and create the config file

Download Raindrop:

hg clone -r 0.1 http://hg.mozilla.org/labs/raindrop

Important! Create a file called .raindrop in your home folder and paste the following:

-most important, must be placed inside this file:

[couch-local]
host=localhost
port=5984

Services:

- for gmail:

[account-gmail-username]
proto=imap
kind=gmail
username=YOUR_GMAIL_USERNAME@gmail.com
password=YOUR_GMAIL_PASSWORD
ssl=True

-for Twitter:

[account-twitter-username]
proto=twitter
kind=twitter
username=YOUR_TWITTER_USERNAME
password=YOUR_TWITTER_PASSWORD

-for Skype:

[account-skype-username]
proto=skype
kind=skype
username=YOUR_SKYPE_USERNAME
password=YOUR_SKYPE_PASSWORD

-for any IMAP email account:

[account-imap-username]
proto=imap
kind=imap
host=imap.YOURSERVER.COM
port=993
username=YOUR_USERNAME
password=YOUR_PASSWORD
ssl=True

-for RSS feeds:

[account-rss-feed]
proto=rss
uri=http://YOUR_RSS/rss.xml

Obviously, edit the details for your accounts.

Yes, the passwords will be stored in plain text, complain to Mozilla about that.

4. Running Mozilla Raindrop:

Open a terminal in your home folder and paste this:

cd /raindrop/server/python

Then run the following command to make sure you have all the dependencies installed:

./check-raindrop.py

If you don't get an error like this:

ERROR: The 'setuptools' package is not installed.

You can start Mozilla Raindrop using the following command (while in ~/raindrop/server/python and assuming that the paisley-0.1 folder is in your home directory like I told you):

PYTHONPATH=~/paisley-0.1 ./run-raindrop.py sync-messages --max-age=1day

The number of days to retrieve messages can be changed, for instance, you can replace --max-age=1day with --max-age=5days

Now you can open Mozilla Raindrop in a web browser using this link:
http://localhost:5984/raindrop/inflow/index.html


Please remember that Mozilla Raindrop is still at version 0.1 so it's not fully functional yet. Expect bugs and limited functionality!


Resources:

TechCrunch article about Raindrop
Mozilla: Installing Raindrop
FreeSoftwareMagazine: Installing and Configuring Mozilla Raindrop