You may have already read about it, heck you may have already heard it yourself! The Minnesota (USA) LoCo team went about contacting local media outlets and agencies to inform them about the recent Ubuntu 8.04 release, the Loco Team’s release party, and the exciting possibilities of using an open source operating system. Jon Gordon of National Public Radio (NPR) hosts a daily segment called Future Tense which brings its listeners the latest technology topics in daily five-minute capsules. Future Tense is heard in the United States during broadcasts of the CBC’s As It Happens. Gordon contacted our very own Tony Yarusso for an interview which was sent over the airwaves this mid last week.

Tony wrote on his blog:

Apparently it went well, as he decided to run it, so without further ado I’m happy to announce that I was on the radio, talking about Ubuntu! So, I got the double-whammy of getting myself personally on the news, plus getting an Ubuntu story in mainstream media (and a quite large, respected outlet of such at that). Nifty.

The premise of the five minute sound bite asks: Is Ubuntu ready for the mainstream?

You can hear Tony’s answer by visiting the show’s archive at Future Tense. MP3, RealAudio, and AAC formats provided.

Kudos and congratulations to Tony and the rest of the Minnesota (USA) LoCo team for their awesome job.

Want to get involved in advocating Ubuntu? You can see this kind of success too! Visit the advocacy page and LoCo Team knowledge base on the Ubuntu wiki for more information, tips, and hints on advocating as a team and as an individual.

Help spread the great news and be sure to pat Tony on the back the next time you see him!

Dell has produced a cool video with some of the people involved with getting Ubuntu ready for shipment. Check it out:

For more details on Dell shipping desktops and laptops with Ubuntu check out these Dell websites:

• Dell Linux Engineering Web
• Dell and Linux
• Dell Ubuntu Site

Ubuntu Schwag

Our fantastic friends at the Linux Emporium are providing UK Ubuntu fans with the opportunity to get their hands on the legendary Ubuntu Stickers that so many other users have been getting their hands on. If you want some free Powered By Ubuntu stickers for your computer, you just seen to send a Stamped Addressed Envelope (SAE) to the Linux Emporium.

For details of how to get a strip of 4 free stickers, see this page.

Once again, thanks to System 76 for creating the stickers, and thanks to the excellent Linux Emporium for helping the community get stickers!

Openoffice.org wants your templates

The OpenOffice.org documentation project has announced a Template & Clipart Contest.

The total prize money is to the tune of $5000 sponsored by WorldLabel, which has long been a strong champion of OpenOffice.org.

The goal is to increase the trove of templates and clipart. The current collection of template samples leaves a huge gap that needs to be filled. Step up and fill that gap. Winners will also have the option of including their winning entries in the OpenOffice.org installation sets available from the site.

If you are interested, visit the Documentation Project for more information. Everyone is eligible and everyone is encouraged to participate. The contest officially starts this week and ends 13
October 2006. Winning entries will be judged by a panel of three and winners will be announced 1 November 2006.

For those of who want to get started here are a few guides to openoffice.org template design:
1. Instructions to create OO.org templates from openoffice.blogs.com
2. A .sxw openoffice.org document describing how to create and use templates.

Join the KDE Akademy Konference

Over at Dot.KDE the KDE developers have been getting excited and prepared for their annual Akademy Konference (yes, in Germany ‘Konference’ really is spelt with a ‘K’!).

The final schedule is now up and if you’re wondering how to get there, it’s in Dublin at Trinity College. Dublin is of course the home of Guinness, that most healthy of beers and noted favorite of a gentleman called Linus Torvalds.

We’ve found out that Kubuntu helped out with the sponsorship for Akademy this year and that in 2007 the event is due to be held somewhere in Great Britain. Some of the best information about what’s going to be happening comes from Kubuntu’s Jonathan Riddell who gives us a run-down of the conference:

The Birds of a Feather sessions are filling up fast, including sessions on Strigi the exciting new desktop search framework, Kubuntu with Mark Shuttleworth, GPL v3 with the Free Software Foundation Europe, a beginners Qt Tutorial from Mirko Böhm, the HCI day on Wednesday and many more.

See if you can get yourself there to join in. Akademy starts this weekend and runs until the following Saturday.

We’ve all seen how cool technologies - such as Ruby on Rails - have wowed people through video.

Ubuntu Video is a new blog that can do the same for our favourite operating system. John Little, the site’s creator, hunts down Ubuntu-related movies and links to them using YouTube.

He told The Fridge what motivated him to get the site online:

Video allows us to dispel the old Linux myths: that it’s difficult, command line driven, there are no games for it, that sort of thing. I want Ubuntu users to flood the internet with videos that demonstrate the truth!

John’s even running a competition to find the best in Ubuntu Video. He’s offering $100 to the winner and makes some suggestions as to what you might make:

1. Record your own Ubuntu commercial.
2. Show us how you use Ubuntu in a unique way or place.
3. Record an instructive screencast.
4. Make a mini documentary about free software.
5. Go to a major retailer and ask to by a PC with Ubuntu pre-installed. Take your camera.
6. Show us your linux gaming rig.

Enter the competition at UbuntuVideo.com or get involved in this and similar projects by joining the Ubuntu Marketing mailing list.