Alexander Sack and the Mozilla Team are working on updated Firefox packages for Dapper, Edgy and Feisty releases and they need YOU to test them! To help you help them, a special QA report page has been created. This Firefox testing effort is a great way to contribute to Ubuntu and is important for helping Ubuntu to raise the quality of every release. Testing will take just a few minutes:

Feel free to contact any member of the Mozilla Team in the #ubuntu-mozillateam IRC channel on Freenode or on the ubuntu-mozillateam’s mailing list if you have additional questions or you are just interested in joining the team.

Jono Bacon is pleased to announce the availability of the very first Ubuntu Project Team Report - this is for September 2007. This report provides a summary of work for the following teams:

• Desktop Team
• Kernel Team
• Kubuntu
• MOTU
• Mythbuntu
• Screencast Team
• Server Team
• Ubuntu-IRC
• Ubuntu Women
• US LoCo Teams Project

The report provides a nice chunk of information about what the different teams have been working on and provides a one-stop-shop to see what the project as a whole is working on. This will help the project improve communication and make a better Ubuntu.

You can always read the monthly reports here on the 24th of every month.

Every Ubuntu team is encouraged to provide a summary of their work each month. To make this as easy as possible, each team can follow these simple instructions. Thanks so much to the teams who kicked off this new reporting infrastructure. We look forward to seeing more and more teams getting involved with the new reports.

Location: #ubuntu-meeting

Location: #ubuntu-meeting

Today, we received an update on the current activities of the Catalan LoCo team. The team meets every Sunday at 22:00 CET (20:00 UTC) on IRC (#ubuntu-cat). While it is not an official Ubuntu LoCo team yet, it is scheduled to appear in front of the Community Council at the next meeting (May 15) as another step in that direction.

On Sunday May 20th they will hold an install party in Barcelona. Other planned actitivies include attending the Jornades de Programari Lliure in Girona (July 4 to 7), helping with the Software Freedom Day in Barcelona (on September 15), and holding a GPG signing party for team members in June (date and location to be announced).

If you want more information about the team, please visit their Ubuntu Wiki page.

UW, aka the Ubuntu-Women project is a group of women (and men) who encourage women to contribute and volunteer in the Ubuntu-Linux community. If you have always wanted to actually contribute something to the free software community but never knew where to start or how to get involved in an existing project, then ask the UW team, who will gladly assist you with more information about our community, its projects and other cool stuff about Ubuntu.

They are having an open “meet-up day” to be held on Thursday, January 11, 2007 on IRC at the #ubuntu-women channel on irc.freenode.net. Be there to exchange ideas with other like-minded technically inclined women in the Ubuntu community. Please note that this event is not restricted on the basis of gender and everyone is welcome to join us.

Currently there are two scheduled sessions to try to cover various timezones and Elizabeth Bevilacqua is going to conduct a course : an introduction to IRC, for newer folks interested in learning to use Internet Relay Chat.

Check your timezones at the Ubuntu mailing list archives or at the Ubuntuforums thread where you can discuss or post any comments.

The Magazine poll to produce a name has now finished; a third of you loved “Ubuntu World”, 21% liked the plain name “Ubuntu Magazine” and almost one-in-six appreciated “Ubuntu Full Circle”. The magazine team are thankful for your vote and who knows, your name may come out on top.

For our new poll, kiko from the Launchpad.net team has asked for a hand and some feedback on what font/typeface style should be used for displaying bug reports.

The system has now been switched to to look plain-text email, so that when you visit a bug report, such as https://launchpad.net/bugs/1 the text is displayed without any wrapping like you get in a word-processor. The result may also look like more like other Bugzilla bugtrackers.

Changing the style from variable-width to fixed with probably has as many advantages as disadvantages, so you should vote and make your thoughts heard. You can also contact the team directly over at the Launchpad feedback page.

By the way, if you haven’t seen the famous Bug #1 before, be sure to check out the report and see if you can lend a hand to help!

The community surrounding Ubuntu is one of the things we’re most proud of.

Helpful to newcomers, brimming over with creativity and featuring some of free software’s most talented people. As a largely volunteer community, it’s important that we’re able to make the most of what people can offer.

Long-time free software advocate, LugRadio presenter and beardless wonder Jono Bacon has joined Canonical as Ubuntu Community Manager. So, what’s all that about? Mark Shuttleworth described it as:

“…created to help the huge Ubuntu community gain traction, creating structure where appropriate, identifying the folks who are making the best and most consistent contributions and empowering them to get more of their visions, ideas and aspirations delivered as part of Ubuntu - release by release.”

Congratulations Jono!

[Discuss this article on the Ubuntu forums]

The Ubuntu project has two exciting volunteer opportunities!

Localisation/Translation Team Leader

If you’re a whizz with Launchpad’s Rosetta translation tool, enjoy making sure things get done and have experience with localisation, get yourself to the next Community Council meeting.

If you’re the right person for the role, you’ll be keeping in touch with translation teams and coordinating with the Rosetta and language pack development teams. If you’re up to the job, step up at the next Community Council meeting.

Sound designer

The Ubuntu Art Team is looking for a sound designer. The rich log-in and event sounds are as much a part of Ubuntu’s human-friendly appeal, as its warm colours and easy to use interface.

If you can create meaning in a snatch of sound, without it becoming irritating, read more in Troy Sobotka’s post to the Art Team’s mailing list.

As an aside, prog-rock hero Robert Fripp has developed Windows Vista’s sound environment. Let’s hope he didn’t go for a twenty minute drum solo at start-up.

We’ve got two updates for you today, as Jane Weideman dutifully brings us the current development report for the Dapper Drake. Twenty-five specifications have been fully completed, as the core team continues to drive towards release in April.

The human status clock, Dennis Kaarsemaker, also brings us the latest status report from the Community Council. The Ubuntu team continues to swells is ranks, as Edward A. Robinson, Grant Galbraith, Naaman Campbell, Licio Fernando, Anthony Mercante, Manu Cornet, Hou Zhengpeng, and Ming Hua come on board as members of the team.

[Discuss]