Re: Thinking about adding a Twitter stream to the Ubuntu install slideshow
On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 4:13 PM, Colin Watson wrote: > On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 01:37:20PM -0800, Dane Mutters wrote: >> Colin Watson wrote: >> > Given our scale, I'd say that the neighbourly thing to do is for Ubuntu >> > installs to only touch Ubuntu network resources. However, that isn't to >> > say that an Ubuntu service couldn't deal with fetching a set of >> > per-language feeds of interesting content from somewhere else, and then >> > multiplex those out to clients installing Ubuntu (which would also allow >> > filtering, swapping in some entirely different feed later, etc.). >> > Perhaps talk with the Canonical sysadmins about the practicalities of >> >> What if we were to have this feed on Twitter, but instead of pulling >> content directly from Twitter to the installer, copy it to an Ubuntu server >> first, and pull it from the Ubuntu server to the installer? > > Yes, I think that's more or less what I meant. :-) I would suggest not > tying the implementation to a single social networking site; but having > it on an Ubuntu server should make it easy to change later. Thanks for all the positive feedback and the suggestions! They're all awesome and I'm fighting the urge to worry about all of them at once. For the no network access question, I was thinking of using the area typically reserved for a picture, on the right side of last slide. With no network connection the Twitter feed would be replaced by a screenshot of whatever the slide is about (support, at the moment), or maybe just a nice picture like it has in the first slide. (See http://people.ubuntu.com/~dylanmccall/ubiquity-slideshow-ubuntu/preview/). Now you mention it, it might work better to use a dedicated slide. My only mockup so far consists of a terrible drawing made with a pen that I think has hallucinogenic properties, because everything looks better to me while I'm using it. This'll be my weekend project, unless someone with good taste beats me to it :) Great point about it being easy to change if there's a proxy service we own. I do suspect it's a long shot that this could work for 5 years straight (given that Twitter was only launched in 2006), so that makes a lot of sense indeed. I posted a little question at https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/5148 about the bandwidth problem. I'd like to get _something_ in for alpha 2, so that'll likely be pulling straight from Twitter via some simple means. Should be helpful for testing! Then, I'd like to build something that mimics the search widget using a (simple) custom feed, grabbed from a web service that periodically runs (and caches) searches, which shouldn't be too hard to build (at least in the sense that it'll do what is asked of it). As well as being neighbourly, all the hacky bits could live there, saving a lot of worry and a bit of space. The tricky bit for me will be getting somewhere to put that fancy web service. I guess I can make a prototype on my own end, but it would not do to point the real thing at my personal web space. (For both monetary and ethical reasons. Especially ethical ones. Honest!). That can be fixed somehow, I'm sure :) Dylan PS: I seem to have gathered a laundry list of things that I need to wander over to Canonical IS and get their help with. Who should I talk to about that, anyway? :) -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Thinking about adding a Twitter stream to the Ubuntu install slideshow
On Thu, 2012-01-19 at 01:28 +, Colin Watson wrote: > Fetching something from the network and rendering it as part of the > slideshow is much easier Yes, technical problems. Pulling in the gwibber stack itself isn't really required, it's a matter of loading the service (dbus) and then hijacking the existing web frame space in the ui for the authentication page which is simply passing the token information back as json. But yes, I understand that making sure gwibber is running, making sure we're online, checking all the boxes for all the social and privacy concerns that are doubtless to arise would be something to do only when we're confident about the architecture and test suite available for ubiquity. I just thought I'd throw in an interesting target on a 2009 blueprint which paints this relatively tame idea in a contrasting light. Best Regards, Martin Owens -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Thinking about adding a Twitter stream to the Ubuntu install slideshow
On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 08:16:32PM -0500, Martin Owens wrote: > One marketing idea was to put gwibber dbus bindings into ubiquity so > people could post to twitter that they were installing Ubuntu. > > A sort of "Hey tell you friends" type idea. It didn't happen I thinkf or > technical reasons. I'd strongly prefer not to pull that kind of substantial stack into ubiquity; it's big and sprawling enough as it is, never mind any of the issues around authentication, making sure if you do that that the user doesn't have to reauthenticate in the target system, etc. It seems like a clear potential source of bugs in a component that already has more than enough of them. Fetching something from the network and rendering it as part of the slideshow is much easier (although that doesn't mean I'm volunteering to do it). -- Colin Watson [cjwat...@ubuntu.com] -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Thinking about adding a Twitter stream to the Ubuntu install slideshow
On Wed, 2012-01-18 at 13:37 -0800, Dane Mutters wrote: > and have it propagate wherever it's needed > without bombarding Twitter with installer traffic. One marketing idea was to put gwibber dbus bindings into ubiquity so people could post to twitter that they were installing Ubuntu. A sort of "Hey tell you friends" type idea. It didn't happen I thinkf or technical reasons. Martin, -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Thinking about adding a Twitter stream to the Ubuntu install slideshow
On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 01:37:20PM -0800, Dane Mutters wrote: > Colin Watson wrote: > > Given our scale, I'd say that the neighbourly thing to do is for Ubuntu > > installs to only touch Ubuntu network resources. However, that isn't to > > say that an Ubuntu service couldn't deal with fetching a set of > > per-language feeds of interesting content from somewhere else, and then > > multiplex those out to clients installing Ubuntu (which would also allow > > filtering, swapping in some entirely different feed later, etc.). > > Perhaps talk with the Canonical sysadmins about the practicalities of > > What if we were to have this feed on Twitter, but instead of pulling > content directly from Twitter to the installer, copy it to an Ubuntu server > first, and pull it from the Ubuntu server to the installer? Yes, I think that's more or less what I meant. :-) I would suggest not tying the implementation to a single social networking site; but having it on an Ubuntu server should make it easy to change later. -- Colin Watson [cjwat...@ubuntu.com] -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Thinking about adding a Twitter stream to the Ubuntu install slideshow
> > I share this concern; our sysadmins had some visualisations of 11.10 > installs hitting the Ubuntu geoip service around release time, and > although I forget the numbers the spike was pretty huge. > > Given our scale, I'd say that the neighbourly thing to do is for Ubuntu > installs to only touch Ubuntu network resources. However, that isn't to > say that an Ubuntu service couldn't deal with fetching a set of > per-language feeds of interesting content from somewhere else, and then > multiplex those out to clients installing Ubuntu (which would also allow > filtering, swapping in some entirely different feed later, etc.). > Perhaps talk with the Canonical sysadmins about the practicalities of > What if we were to have this feed on Twitter, but instead of pulling content directly from Twitter to the installer, copy it to an Ubuntu server first, and pull it from the Ubuntu server to the installer? This would eliminate the (potential) problem of being "un-neighborly) to Twitter, without sacrificing the desired functionality, or the exposure of having this stream on such a popular site (for those who wish to see it via a web browser or similar). This would also allow Ubuntu to post this feed to just one place (Twitter), and have it propagate wherever it's needed without bombarding Twitter with installer traffic. --Dane -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Thinking about adding a Twitter stream to the Ubuntu install slideshow
On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 03:15:42PM -0500, Jeff Lane wrote: > One question would be whether Twitter would be happy with us or not > for adding who knows how many new clients at once (thinking of > number of installs done within the first 2 weeks of a release) > that's a huge hit to Twitter's service twice a year... wonder if it > could be considered a DOS of sorts? Just wondering there, I'm really > not sure how that side of Twitter's service works, but it seems that > the potential for a million new clients hitting the twitter service > in one day may be problematic? I share this concern; our sysadmins had some visualisations of 11.10 installs hitting the Ubuntu geoip service around release time, and although I forget the numbers the spike was pretty huge. Given our scale, I'd say that the neighbourly thing to do is for Ubuntu installs to only touch Ubuntu network resources. However, that isn't to say that an Ubuntu service couldn't deal with fetching a set of per-language feeds of interesting content from somewhere else, and then multiplex those out to clients installing Ubuntu (which would also allow filtering, swapping in some entirely different feed later, etc.). Perhaps talk with the Canonical sysadmins about the practicalities of this? -- Colin Watson [cjwat...@ubuntu.com] -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Thinking about adding a Twitter stream to the Ubuntu install slideshow
I'd like to chime in and agree that this sounds like a really neat idea--especially if those running the feed were to include info about critical updates or bugs that need to be dealt with as soon as the install is finished (assuming the user doesn't have the installer download all this stuff during the installation). Aside from that, I, too, would enjoy seeing aspects of the thriving Ubuntu community show up during "hour 1" of using the OS. This could go a long way to encourage new users to participate in the community. It might also be cool (if it's not already there--I don't recall at the moment) to have short links handy to places like ubuntuforums.org, etc., just to let new users know where to go if they get stuck. In any case, whatever ultimately goes into this feed, I think it's a good idea. :-) --Dane -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Thinking about adding a Twitter stream to the Ubuntu install slideshow
On 01/16/2012 07:11 PM, Dylan McCall wrote: I wonder if there would be any opposition to a live Twitter stream in that screenshot's place, where available, showing tweets containing #ubuntu? This would be on the last page of the slideshow. (By "Twitter stream" I'm talking about this thing, or something like it, styled to look pretty: https://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets/widget_search). I know Twitter is a proprietary service, but with my initial poking at the idea, there's a very diverse crowd represented in that search. I think it would be a neat way to quietly showcase the Ubuntu community as a living, breathing thing that exists right now, and it would say “see? you're not alone!”. And, hopefully, (most likely), the tweets will all be positive and welcoming. One question would be whether Twitter would be happy with us or not for adding who knows how many new clients at once (thinking of number of installs done within the first 2 weeks of a release) that's a huge hit to Twitter's service twice a year... wonder if it could be considered a DOS of sorts? Just wondering there, I'm really not sure how that side of Twitter's service works, but it seems that the potential for a million new clients hitting the twitter service in one day may be problematic? I like your idea in theory, I just wonder how that would work out in practice. There is the issue that this stream needs to live (and be consistent) for five years, and I think that can be handled by some defensive js code, which we'll already need for the event that there's no Internet connection. It's also going on the assumption that, in five year's time, Twitter's stream for #ubuntu will still be nice to read, but I think that's a likely enough assumption. Additionally, what for those installs that don't have network access? Would that "slide" get automatically dropped? Maybe replaced by a static slide? or would they get a blank app with no happy tweets? We can make the search language-specific (search Twitter with lang:zh, for example), though I worry that could make it a little sparse in some cases. We _might_ want to filter against negative language, in which case the search query would need to be localized. I think that can be done, too. Another question: how difficut/trivial would it be to do this? From the way I read this, you'd be filtering twitter for Spanish tweets when the Spanish language is chosen, German for the German locale, etc. Would any content filtering also need to extend to catching things considered "negative" or non-family-friendly in each of the supported installation languages? I'm just throwing the idea around. Any other thoughts? Anyway, as I said, I think this is a neat idea and it sounds like it would make the installer slide show feel a lot more "connected" and dynamic than just a static slide show. Even better, how about a means for the user to actually tweet from the slideshow? Or would that be carrying it too far? :) -- Jeff Lane - Hardware Certification Engineer and Test Tools Developer Ubuntu Ham: W4KDH Freenode IRC: bladernr or bladernr_ gpg: 1024D/3A14B2DD 8C88 B076 0DD7 B404 1417 C466 4ABD 3635 3A14 B2DD -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Thinking about adding a Twitter stream to the Ubuntu install slideshow
I wouldn't be horribly opposed to seeing this. It'd be a nice way to showcase the community aspect of the OS. That being said, the main thing to consider here is exactly what content you would want to show in there. On the one hand, filtering out negative commentary would shed the best possible light on Ubuntu (important for the first-time installer), but it feels slightly disingenuous to me. On the other hand, being fully open with it allows for trolls to hijack the stream and fill Ubiquity with a bunch of garbage nobody wants to deal with. Perhaps splitting the difference and simply filtering out obscene and inflammatory language could curb some of that and keep the shown discourse a bit more civil? Regarding localization, it might be cool to script it so that the shown tweets are locale-centric, but not entirely limited to the user's language. I'm not sure how technically feasible it is, but what about culling *most* of the tweets from the user's own language and tossing in a smattering of comments from all over the place - for example, if the user is on English, they'd see a bunch of stuff in English with a bit of "Ich liebe Ubuntu!" here and there. This might further drive home the breadth and scope of the Ubuntu community, no? On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 7:11 PM, Dylan McCall wrote: > The Ubuntu install slideshow for Precise should be a pretty ordinary > little copy update, I think, so it'll just kind of happen little by > little in the next couple months, as it does. Might be nice to tinker > with it in Q, but that's the future, and the future can go jump in a > lake for all I care :b > > One thing I would like to do is fix the last of the very > English-looking pictures: the Ask Ubuntu one. (Well, especially very > English-looking), and that is why I'm subjecting this list to a large > and rambly email. > > I wonder if there would be any opposition to a live Twitter stream in > that screenshot's place, where available, showing tweets containing > #ubuntu? This would be on the last page of the slideshow. > (By "Twitter stream" I'm talking about this thing, or something like > it, styled to look pretty: > https://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets/widget_search). > > I know Twitter is a proprietary service, but with my initial poking at > the idea, there's a very diverse crowd represented in that search. I > think it would be a neat way to quietly showcase the Ubuntu community > as a living, breathing thing that exists right now, and it would say > “see? you're not alone!”. And, hopefully, (most likely), the tweets > will all be positive and welcoming. > > There is the issue that this stream needs to live (and be consistent) > for five years, and I think that can be handled by some defensive js > code, which we'll already need for the event that there's no Internet > connection. It's also going on the assumption that, in five year's > time, Twitter's stream for #ubuntu will still be nice to read, but I > think that's a likely enough assumption. > > We can make the search language-specific (search Twitter with lang:zh, > for example), though I worry that could make it a little sparse in > some cases. We _might_ want to filter against negative language, in > which case the search query would need to be localized. I think that > can be done, too. > > I'm just throwing the idea around. Any other thoughts? > > Dylan > > -- > Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list > Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss > -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Thinking about adding a Twitter stream to the Ubuntu install slideshow
The Ubuntu install slideshow for Precise should be a pretty ordinary little copy update, I think, so it'll just kind of happen little by little in the next couple months, as it does. Might be nice to tinker with it in Q, but that's the future, and the future can go jump in a lake for all I care :b One thing I would like to do is fix the last of the very English-looking pictures: the Ask Ubuntu one. (Well, especially very English-looking), and that is why I'm subjecting this list to a large and rambly email. I wonder if there would be any opposition to a live Twitter stream in that screenshot's place, where available, showing tweets containing #ubuntu? This would be on the last page of the slideshow. (By "Twitter stream" I'm talking about this thing, or something like it, styled to look pretty: https://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets/widget_search). I know Twitter is a proprietary service, but with my initial poking at the idea, there's a very diverse crowd represented in that search. I think it would be a neat way to quietly showcase the Ubuntu community as a living, breathing thing that exists right now, and it would say “see? you're not alone!”. And, hopefully, (most likely), the tweets will all be positive and welcoming. There is the issue that this stream needs to live (and be consistent) for five years, and I think that can be handled by some defensive js code, which we'll already need for the event that there's no Internet connection. It's also going on the assumption that, in five year's time, Twitter's stream for #ubuntu will still be nice to read, but I think that's a likely enough assumption. We can make the search language-specific (search Twitter with lang:zh, for example), though I worry that could make it a little sparse in some cases. We _might_ want to filter against negative language, in which case the search query would need to be localized. I think that can be done, too. I'm just throwing the idea around. Any other thoughts? Dylan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
