I’ve not notice this site earlier. The site contains a huge countdown timer for the latest Ubuntu release (right now it is showing the count down for the upcoming release Oneiric Ocelot aka Ubuntu 11.10). Seems a cool initiative to promote Ubuntu. The site is created by the Ubuntu-Adverts team (I am not sure whether they are an official part of Canonical or not). And the site has cool tag line too –
A whole new world. A whole new computer.
Well … the downside of the site is, there are no clues on what Ubuntu is or what the new release will bring – neither in the body nor in the site title. I hope that with that kind of tag line, the non-Linux users may take notice.
For whatever reason, this countdown is not accurate. According to the release schedule, https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OneiricReleaseSchedule, Ubuntu 11.10 will release on October 13, but according to this countdown site, it will release October 11. Maybe it is actually a marketing ploy by one of the web sites determined to make the announcement “first”?
The site is a project by the Ubuntu Adverts team as stated in the article. I don’t really follow much of what they do but I believe they’re a community effort rather than a Canonical-endorsed one.
I’ve googled Ubuntu Adverts team, got some LP, wiki, site links, but none of those sites depict Canonical’s name. Like Joey, I also think that they are a community effort. And they are doing good job actually. In their wiki they have some really good scripts to make some adverts. Hope to see those in action pretty soon.