There’s something new in Launchpad this week: mentoring.

The Ubuntu community is proof that free software works best when we work together. It’s not always easy for new participants to get started, though.

Launchpad’s new mentoring framework is a simple way to help new community members learn the ropes. With it you can:

• Offer to mentor people who want to fix a bug or implement a blueprint.
• Provide a list of items that are relevant to your project and for which mentorship is available.
• Provide a list of items that would be a good starting point for someone who wants to join one of your teams
• See what mentorship offers individuals are currently making.

Anyone who is a member of at least one Launchpad team can offer mentorship and there’s no admin for project or team leaders as it’s entirely based on commitments made by individuals.

You can find out more in the Launchpad guide to mentoring management.

The Launchpad team have been busy elsewhere, too! With three new code release recently, there’s a whole load of new features and bug fixes. Full details are in the release notes.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that the beta of Launchpad 1.0 went public today!

As you’re reading The Fridge, you’re probably pretty familiar with Launchpad. You know, of course, that it makes it easier for individuals and communities to collaborate on free software projects, right? And it goes without saying that Zope, Silva CMS, Jokosher, Creative Commons, WengoPhone and PledgeBank are just some of the users other than Ubuntu.

So, what’s new in 1.0?

• Brand new interface: it’s now easier to find your way round and man is it pretty.
• Brandable: projects, teams and individuals - you can all put your logo or mugshot on relevant Launchpad pages.
• Track people’s work: everyone’s Launchpad profile now shows the projects they’re most active in and the sort of work they’ve done.

As well as changes to the interface, the Launchpad team have also taken the opportunity to make some improvements to the underlying code.

Mark Shuttleworth has more to say on the subject. If you’ve got any feedback about Launchpad, come join us in #launchpad on irc.freenode.net or sign up to the launchpad-users mailing list!

Put your questions to the Launchpad team!

Agenda at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaunchpadUserMeeting/2007-04-11

Another chance for Launchpad users to talk directly to the Launchpad team.

Post your questions in the meeting agenda or just turn up in the channel!

Come join members of the Launchpad team in #launchpad, to put your questions, suggestions and comments.

Add you item to the agenda at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaunchpadUserMeeting/2007-03-21

Another chance to put your Launchpad questions and gripes.

The first Launchpad Users Meeting is on Wednesday 7th March at 17:00 UTC in #launchpad.

Come and join us for your chance to ask Launchpad developers questions or to put forward your ideas for Launchpad.

Add your questions to the meeting agenda, or just come along and join in on the day.

Christian Robottom Reis, who heads up the Launchpad team has been busy over the weekend and prepared the Launchpad report for the start of October.

Launchpad is the central focal point for many K/Ubuntu activities, providing the bug tracking system known as Malone, a complete specification management system and the Rosetta web-based translation interface. Many developers spend several hours per day working with the bugtracker and when the Developer Summit: Mountain View begins this weekend in Californa, the specification system will receive an equal workout.

Inside this latest Launchpad report, you will find an excellent introduction and detailed description of that specification management system.

If you’re a fan of Bazaar version control you will get the low-down on the new way to work with Bazaar branches using Launchpad. There’s further coverage of the Bazaar/Launchpad integration work from James Henstridge’s.

As previously covered in the Ubuntu Weekly News, Launchpad has gained mirror management interface. This improved system is for Ubuntu mirror administrators to manage and announce their FTP servers to the Ubuntu community. There’s no overall mirror page but you can access the individual pages for CD, archive mirrors, or add a new one.

Launchpad also gained many enhancements to the bug tracking system, particularly in the handling for coping with bug report duplicates, where the same, or similar issue has been reported multiple times.

The full report for the first two weeks of October, including a detailed changlog and much extra information on all Launchpad improvements or changes is available in the mailing list archives. Head over and grab the complete Launchpad News from the Launchpad Users’ mailing list.

It’s been another busy couple of weeks for the Launchpad team, with work focused on polishing existing features.

• Improved bug watch integration with upstream: it is now possible to specify a remote bug tracker for a specific upstream product.
• New optimised CVE report format.
• Several distribution management enhancements: improved mirror listing format, significantly optimised code and more
• Product series can now have Bazaar branches linked to them.

Read the full version of the latest Launchpad news and the small update to it.

We look forward to seeing you on the Launchpad users mailing list!

It’s been a busy three weeks for Launchpad! The latest Launchpad news is available at:

• https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/launchpad-users/2006-September/000606.html

Highlights include:

• Bug tracking: new features include three new filtering options.
• Translations: Edgy translations have now opened in Rosetta, based on a billion uploaded templates and translations!
• Translations: Rosetta now records the name of the most recent person to update a translated string, making reviews and feedback much easier.
• Support: Improved searching and sorting of support tickets, one of the top requested features for the support tracker.
• Support: New support requests now go through a guided process, which first tries to locate similar reports—avoiding duplicates and helping users get their answers faster.
• Other news: The official URL for the Blueprint specification tracker has been changed to http://features.launchpad.net/

Don’t forget that the launchpad-users mailing list which is shared between developers and users of Launchpad, you can sign-up at:

• https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/launchpad-users

Come and help the team define what Launchpad should become!