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Ubuntu 14.04 Release Party

We had the Trusty Tahr Release Party today at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), Dhaka. It was the official Ubuntu 14.04 release party of Ubuntu Bangladesh LoCo team in cooperation with “ULAB Computer Programming Club”. This time, we did it within two days of the release of Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr). To arrange the party successfully, we had to arrange several meetings with the members and the volunteers. We got an overwhelming participants responses for this party. More than 150 people confirmed to attend the party via Facebook and other online means. A volunteer team of 20 people helped us tremendously to manage this party. 

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We are for Tahsin and we need you with us too!

Please manage some your time to read the below article. A very little contribution from you can save the little girl in the picture.

Tahsin Zahra (8 years old), the daughter of Imtiaz Anwar Sajal (Nokia Siemens Networks, Islamic University of Technology 2001, Notre Dame College, Dhaka 1996, Jessore Zilla School, Khulna zilla school 1994) is suffering from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia from last 8 months. Tahsin is currently admitted to TATA memorial hospital, Mumbai, India. She is going through chemo-therapy process now, very tough for an 8 years old little girl, which costing around BDT 20 lakhs in a week or so. She requires Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) immediately. Total of around BDT 3 crore will be needed for this including complex post transplant treatment. Please contribute generously to save this young life.

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Ubuntu 12.04 Release Party

We, had the Precise Pangolin party today at Shroma Palace, Dhanmondi, Dhaka. It was the official Ubuntu 12.04 release party of Ubuntu Bangladesh LoCo team. You must be surprised – why on earth the release party was delayed two weeks! Well … we have some political unrest situations here in Bangladesh, which forced us to arrange the party after two weeks of the actual release date.

We’re almost 10 people there. Well… theoretically there should be more than 50 people, at least our facebook event announcement page showed that kind of figure. But unfortunately there are less than that. In the evening we have some light storm (locally known as the Kalboishakhi) out there, may be that is the reason behind that low scoring crowd.

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The Ubuntu Countdown Site

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.

Ubuntu Count Down Site

Dr. Alam, a Fulbright Scholar is coming to IUT for research

Dr. S Kaisar Alam, a research-staff member of Riverside Research’s Lizzi Center for Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to lecture and perform research at the Islamic University of Technology (IUT) during the 2011-2012 academic year. With this award, Dr. Alam becomes the first Riverside Research employee selected as a Fulbright Scholar. Dr. Alam said:

I am really honored to receive this prestigious award. This will give our group an opportunity to establish collaboration outside of our typical collaborator pool. I’m also glad for the opportunity to give back to the country where I was born and received my high-school education.

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R.I.P Shipit

Finally Shipit, Canonical‘s free CD delivering process has been declared to be discontinued for the individual request. It’s been a long time (since 2005) that Canonical used to put the operating system into the hands of developers and end users. The service stops with Ubuntu 11.04 later this month. Once the code (currently in beta) is finished, end users will no longer be able apply for a free CD via Canonical’s web site.

So why did Canonical take this decision? According to Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu Community Manager:

… a few reasons. Firstly, CD distribution is not really as effective as it used to be, and it is expensive. These days, particularly with the availability of low cost hi-speed Internet growing across the world, more and more people are simply downloading the ISO images and burning them to a CD or installing from a USB stick. Canonical felt like it would make better sense to reduce the investment in snail-mail CD distribution and focus it more on LoCo Teams and use those savings to invest in other areas of the project.

What’ll be the next move to reach the end users? It seems that Canonical is now planning a free online trial for Ubuntu by utilizing the cloud which marketing manager Gerry Carr promised would be a “great first step for Windows users in particular” to wet their toes on the Linux desktop.

But, don’t be disheartened, Canonical has not abandoned the project completely. The Approved LoCo team will still get the CDs from Canonical. As Jono Bacon mentioned:

… we will continue to provide Approved LoCo teams with CDs that they can use for this advocacy work. As before, we encourage these CDs to be shared and re-used …

I got my first Ubuntu CD with this program and I am a proud Ubuntu user still now for that great project. To be frankly, I ordered the CD (EdgyEft, if I could remember correctly) just out of curiosity, because it was free. But I fell in love with Ubuntu so much that, now I download it via torrent. My personal experiences tell me that, lots of people just take the advantages of the ShipIt project, get the CD and actually do nothing with that CD. A huge loss of money actually. But nevertheless, ShipIt gave lots of bumps to increase the popularity of Ubuntu. I personally think, this project should be available exclusively for the Africa and the South Asia, where the term “broadband” is still a fairy tale for the majority computer users! People there still rely on the ShipIt for collect the latest release of Ubuntu. So abandoning ShipIt could be a sudden blow to them. On the other hand, now it is a great opportunity for the LoCo teams to get more active and earn the respect from Canonical to be eligible to get the CDs for distributing. So we can expect more activities from those LoCo teams particularly.

So… Goodbye ShipIt… Thanks a lot for introducing me a wonderful world of Ubuntu. I am missing you … already!

Prothom Alo Blog: Another New Bangla Blogging Platform

Well… another Bangla blogging platform has appeared in Bangla Blogosphere. The name of the newborn is ProthomAlo Blog, a sister concern of renowned Bangladeshi daily newspaper Prothom Alo. This blog is developed by Hasin, Mahbub Morshed, Emran Hasan and Omi Azad; there may be others but I am aware of only these four guys. Congrats to them for making this blogging platform.

When I got the news that Prothom Alo has published a blog, I then and then hit the address. But when I went to register myself as a blogger there I got the first shock. I’ve to need an invitation code to join there! And they do not mention how to manage one! I don’t have any friends or family working in Prothom Alo, so I really don’t know how to manage the invitation code. Another thing that confuses me is their TOS. There are too many rules and regulations! Those rules are obviously good and reasonable but their quantity is huge. It would be better if two or more rules can be marched together. This would keep the compact summary of the rules same as the previous but in a less space. By the way, I have send them an email requesting for an invitation code, but didnot get any answers from them till now! Well… if anyone knows how to register in this blog please let me know.

This is the first time in Bangladesh that any newspaper starts its own Blogging platform. Obviously this is a new milestone in both Bangla Blogosphere and history of Bangla newspapers. We can hope that from now general readers can express their statements on any issue from different perspective angles. This will really enhance the information field of Bangladesh vigorously, if the blog admins are remain unbiased. And we hope that they will be unbiased till the end. Otherwise this whole thing will be messed up. Another fact is that, we can now expect that other newspapers will also publish their own blog for interacting with the readers.

It seems that Bangla Blogosphere is enriching day by day. Now a days Bangla Blogosphere has reached in a standard through Somewhere in blog and Sachalayatan. And there are other Bangla blogging platform also. And if the personal/individual Bangla blogs of WordPress and Blogspot is considered then one have to admit that Bangla Blogosphere is really big. With numerous blogs of an ever increasing rate Bangla Blogosphere is expanding day by day. We hope that Prothom Alo Blog will take this Blogosphere to a higher level.

  • See the list of Bangladeshi blogs in Blogosphere HERE.
  • Visit the Prothom Alo Blog HERE.

UPDATE: To get the invitation code registration in Prothom-Alo Blog group in Facebook is necessary. I got mine in this way. If you have any problem then it is better to email Mr. Mahbub Morshed (as only his email is shown in that group).