Tim Ferriss has video interview of how the famous Robert Scoble reads such a large number of feeds on a daily basis using Google Reader. The keyboard shortcuts and “river of news” (which most news readers provide) make it easy to scan through so many feeds.

To catch Robert’s attention, he does a quick mental check: good headlines are a necessity and the content should be link heavy. Link density shows that research has been done and hopefully there is some analysis and an unique point of view. Images are helpful because the readers slow down to look at them. Sites like TechCrunch have gotten popular for including graphics in every post.It’s an interesting conversation of balance between reading lots of different bloggers and other blogs who aggregate and filter for their readers. In a way this is related to the new planet.ubuntu-us.org that has gone live recently. Right now it’s set up to read feeds from sites of approved LoCos, but should it take in blogs of community members of those LoCos who are not CC approved members yet? Does that open up a can of worms? What would happen if a post is made violating the Code of Conduct? Does opening up the planet create an administration nightmare? Or should non-members use other planets like ubuntuweblogs.org?

The Direct2Dell blog has a post about what will and will not be included in the upcoming Linux machines from Dell.

I found this particularly interesting:

For hardware options not offered with this release, we are working with the vendors of those devices to improve the maturity and stability of their associated Linux drivers. While this may not happen overnight, we do expect to have a broader range of hardware support with Linux over time.

This is good news. More driver support for Linux, fewer issues for new users to deal with. And Dell gets to sell a few more computers too.

Last night on the Georgia US Team IRC channel, #ubuntu-georgia, the topic of swap came up. A user had initally installed Ubuntu, thinking they wouldn’t use it for it long, so no swap partition was set up. After using Ubuntu full-time for some time, the lack of swap space was causing some sluggishness, so he was thinking about reinstalling Ubuntu from scratch and setting up the partitions properly.

Another user provided a link to the awesome SwapFaq on the documentation site. It had a section on the exact question we were looking for: Should I reinstall with more swap? I bring all this up because I was pretty impressed to see how thoroughly the help documentation covered what most users would ever care about: what is it, how much do I need, and how do I add more. No frills, nothing fancy, just concise questions and answers. Users can quickly find what they are looking for and move on. Perfect.

BTW, the answer to the question is that there is no reason to reinstall to add swap space. Any file can be used for swap, and the SwapFaq provides instructions on creating it. While a swap partition may provide slightly better performance, its not reason enough to rebuild an otherwise working system.

Yes, like many before me have done, this is my inaugural planet post. At the Community Council meeting Tuesday morning (for me), I was granted membership. Thanks to the Council members who thought I made significant contributions, I hope to keep doing so.

This may seem like a speech for winning an Academy Award, but bear with me, because there are a few people I need to thank.

At the beginning of the year, I was trying to figure out how to set up the online resources for the Georgia US Team. I logged into Freenode, looking around some the Ubuntu channels. Someone going by the nickname Vorian popped up and helped me set up #ubuntu-georgia, then pointed me to Launchpad. We’ll come back to Vorian later.

Once John Von Hollen and I got some of the online things for the Georgia US Team figured out, I looked for other things that I could help out on. I came across the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter and joined #ubuntu-marketing to see if there was anything I could do. Immediately, beuno (Martin Albisetti), along with Jenda Vančura, put me to work! Its been two months plugging away at the UWN and its been fun. Its awesome to find all the great press Ubuntu has been getting, plus the wonderful reviews from the blogosphere. With the release of Feisty, the accolades just keep on coming. It was Corey Burger’s idea for me to go up for membership and I’m glad I did.

Christer Edwards was in town a couple of weeks ago and I got to have dinner with him along with a couple of fellow Georgia LoCo members. Christer gave us some great advice on how to get the word out and I hope the Georgia US Team will continue growing and get approved in the coming months.

Back to this morning. I pinged Vorian, prodding him to add a testimonial on my wiki page as the Community Council meeting was starting. He did much better than that. Vorian went around to different channels, telling everyone to join my fan club. Christer, Eric Lake, Richard Johnson, and Aaron Toponce all came out to support me and the rest is history.

I just wanted to say a special thanks to Stephen Stalcup, I couldn’t have done this without you!

Thus ends my speech.

Some highlights:

Ubuntu Studio released
Arizona LoCo Team growth
New Ubuntu Central American Team
Lots of media coverage
MOTU Team
Security Updates

Check it out here (wiki) or here (ubuntu forums).

This Tuesday, the Ubuntu Community Council will be holding their usual meeting on IRC. And I’m for Ubuntu membership. What exactly is an Ubuntu member?

A member is someone who’s made a substantial contribution to the Ubuntu community — of any type — and who has explicitly agreed to the code of conduct.

So what does it get you?

Members play an essential role in Ubuntu governance and confirm, by vote, all nominations to the Ubuntu Community Council. They may also be called upon to vote on resolutions put to the members by the Community Council. As a Member you will get an email address @ubuntu.com and the right to carry Ubuntu business cards too, if you want them! (We’ll supply the artwork, you print your own cards.) A list of Ubuntu Members can be found online.

Not to sound shallow, but I would love an @ubuntu.com email address!

I’ve starting beefing up my wiki page. My contributions have been four fold: 1) Ubuntu Weekly Newletter (UWN); 2) Georgia LoCo; 3) LoCo-related wiki pages; and 4) LoCo Hosting Admin team.

I considered doing some packaging and going down the MOTU path. I even started setting up an environment on my desktop to do all that. Frankly, after programming all day for my day job, I wasn’t keen on spending my nights and weekends doing any coding or packaging. So I went looking for something different.

Thats when I stumbled on the UWN. I joined the #ubuntu-marketing channel and asked if I could help out. Two months later, I’m still pounding away at it. I tend to write big chunks of the In The Press and In the Blogosphere sections of the UWN. I enjoy reading what others write about Ubuntu and letting others know about it. Plus I fill out any of the other sections that Corey Burger and Martin Albisetti need me to. Its quite fun. It lets me work the other side of my brain.

The Georgia US LoCo has been coming along. We have the usual online presence set up, including the mailing list, launchpad team, subforum on Ubuntu Forums, wiki page, and irc channel. We’ve had a Feisty release party and an additional face to face gathering recently (see pictures here). We have very constructive weekly meetings on IRC and quite a few members hang out there all the time. There is one project under way at the moment, which will help us spread the Ubuntu gospel! I think once that project is complete, the Georgia LoCo should go up for approval.

When I started looking around how to help out Ubuntu earlier this year, I got involved the LoCo Doc’s Day. Basically, it was a 24 hour project to help create and update a lot of the wiki pages related to what LoCos can do. It was my first major involvement with the Ubuntu coomunity and I learned a lot.

I’ve recently joined the LoCo Hosting Admin team. Basically, the team is responsible for administering LoCo websites and anything related to it. You can read more about it here. I haven’t done much work yet since everything is still getting set up, but hopefully LoCos will get their hosting needs filled much quicker with the creation of this team.

So thats what I’ve been doing to help out the Ubuntu community in recent months. I’m hoping it shows some level of dedication and worthwhile contributions. We’ll see!

Some highlights:

Ubuntu launches Mobile and Embedded Initiative
Launchpad’s new mentoring framework
Launchpad’s new mentoring framework
Ubuntu Education Summit in Sevilla Concluded

Check it out here (wiki) or here (ubuntu forums).

Saturday afternoon, the Georgia LoCo held a meeting at the Vortex in Little Five Points. If you haven’t been to the Vortex, you are missing the best burgers in Atlanta! Of course, planning a meetup on Cinco de Mayo wasn’t the best idea in terms of parking.

The meetup wasn’t big, about eight people, but some of the usual characters on the #ubuntu-georgia IRC channel showed up and we finally got to put faces to the nicknames. B-rad, Corvix, and fignew were there, along with some folks of the Ubuntu Document Storage Facility (UDSF) and Ubuntu Gamers Arena (UGA).

Wish I had taken more pictures, but there are a few on flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ubuntugeorgia/

Hopefully we can swing a get-together in Atlanta once a month, so if you are interested, try to join us next time.

Time: Saturday, May 5th, 2007

Location: Vortex (in L5P), map

Send me an email if you have any questions: boredandblogging [remove] @ gmail dot com.

Be there or be square.

Christer Edwards (aka Zelut) of Ubuntu and ubuntu-tutorials.com fame was in town this week. A couple of fellow Ubuntu Georgia LoCo guys and I met Christer for dinner tonight. It was great picking Christer’s brain since he has been involved with Ubuntu for a long time (relatively in terms of the Linux world). He not only founded the Utah LoCo, and also co-founded the US teams project.

Hope you get to see more of Atlanta next time, Christer!