ubuntu-advertising team mailing list archive

["danteashton@xxxxxxxxx" <danteashton@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 26 December 2010 20:57, Tarek Said <tarek.said.info@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> While once again I agree with you, I maintain my point of view that this is
> not what our team must do. Our goal is to make and ad for Ubuntu. I'm not
> saying that we shouldn't improve the information available and help solving
> issues Ubuntu users face, but for that we need to do it individually or find
> a group that does that.
>

Good heavens, I'm not suggesting we fix Ubuntu single-handedly, but we can
identify issues and explain our reasoning, and leave it to the engineering
teams to fix. Basically I'd like to apply Linux's "Many eyes mean less bugs"
approach to Marketing :)


> Please note that I'm NOT saying "if you want to do this, leave the team"
> (we can do it simultaneously), I'm just saying that it would be like
> a marketing team trying to fix the product's bugs in order to advertise it
> better.
>

We wouldn't be breaking new ground there...remember Microsoft Office's
Clippy? Engineering wise it was perfect...then Marketing got it's hands all
over it and made it pop up so much (just so they could advertise it) that it
annoyed the crap out of anyone who used it. We need to identify faults which
your average Linux user does not see as an issue, but to your standard, run
of the mill Windows user, are show-stoppers.


>
> Regards,
> Tarek.
>
> 2010/12/26 danteashton@xxxxxxxxx <danteashton@xxxxxxxxx>
>
>>
>>
>> On 26 December 2010 11:52, Barry Drake <b.drake@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, 2010-12-25 at 19:02 +0000, danteashton@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>> > Whereas Banshee, which Ubuntu is shipping out of the box with in
>>> > 11.04, can do it by default, me thinks.
>>>
>>> Arrgh!  This makes the problem worse!  Technically it's wonderful
>>> but ....
>>>
>>> This is the scenario: You have seen the advertising, or maybe you are
>>> being told by a friend that Ubuntu is the best thing since sliced bread.
>>> Naturally you are VERY suspicious.  You know Windows, and you know that
>>> it is the only reliable system (Oh, there's the Mac, but that's a bit of
>>> a niche market isn't it?).
>>>
>>
>> Actually the Mac is growing in popularity. Since the iPhone came out Mac
>> adverts have been everywhere.
>>
>>>
>>> But you do go on the website and take a look around Ubuntu.  You do a
>>> site-search for iTunes and what you see is daunting!  Right at the top
>>> is an article about Virtual Box ....  maybe you've been put off already.
>>> A bit further down is something about Rhythmbox, but it only describes a
>>> music player and says nothing about whether or not you can use your iPod
>>> - which is what you really want to know.  Right at the bottom of the
>>> searches you do see that Rhythmbox can work with iPods.  Did you get
>>> that far?
>>>
>>> Again, another problem; Linux (and Ubuntu entire) comes from a very
>> technical background.
>>
>>
>>> If you do a search for iPod you do get some far more helpful results,
>>> but I think something on the front page taking you straight to something
>>> like
>>> https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/switching/C/applications-equivalents.html
>>> would solve a lot of problems.  That page maybe needs a bit of an
>>> update, but it's really helpful and needs to be very prominent.
>>>
>>
>> Agreed.
>>
>>>
>>> This scenario gets far far worse if you use your favourite search engine
>>> to try something like 'iTunes Ubuntu' on the web.  You end up looking at
>>> masses of bewildering mostly out-of-date stuff including a lot of
>>> commandline instructions.  You won't ever look at Ubuntu again.  Just
>>> what you'd always thought - Linux is strictly for Geeks!!!
>>>
>>> Agreed again.
>>
>>
>>> Let me give a further illustration.  My sister is very new to Ubuntu.
>>> Her ..... (this is complicated) Alex is my sister's partner's daughter,
>>> so I'll just call her Alex.  Alex is highly computer literate - on
>>> Windows.  She and her partner bought my sister a webcam for Christmas.
>>> She wouldn't buy a Microsoft one that was offered because she assumed it
>>> needed Windows.  She got a Connexant one because Google told her it
>>> would be compatible.  She phoned me - I wasn't at my computer at the
>>> time - how could she test it?  I said use the Software Centre to get
>>> Cheese - that will test it.  If I'd looked at the 'Software
>>> Centre' (which I've never used) I wouldn't have told her that.  She
>>> ended up looking for drivers for the Connexant using Google and found a
>>> bewildering array of stuff about Linux commandline instructions.
>>
>>
>>   Many will argue that commandline instructions are the simplest way to do
>> something in Ubuntu; that's true, but it's not really user friendly...
>>
>>
>>>  She
>>> has never used the commandline in Windows so this was a foreign language
>>> to her.  She left a message on my answering machine, and when I phoned
>>> back she had gone home, and I got my sister, who knew nothing about what
>>> Alex had tried.
>>>
>>> I made things worse by not being at my keyboard again.  I quickly talked
>>> my sister through firing up the terminal and doing 'sudo apt-get install
>>> cheese' and then 'cheese'.  As you would expect, the webcam worked out
>>> of the box.  But of course when Alex came back and my sister told her
>>> what she had done Alex said 'I'd never have been able to do that!'
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> The thing is, Cheese fails to come up as an installable in the Software
>>> Centre (on 10.04) when you search for cheese (why?).  We need to do
>>> something about that and maybe lots of other things!  I know this seems
>>> trivial - to Alex and my sister it was not!
>>
>>
>> It isn't trivial, this is exactly the kind of problem we need to address;
>> your average programmer/console jocky considers it a minor annoyance at
>> best, but to the average end-user, the computer might as well blow up.
>>
>>
>>>  Maybe some kind of webcam
>>> app needs to be pre-installed on Ubuntu by default ...  Searching the
>>> Ubuntu website for 'webcam' gives all the instructions ...  the very
>>> first page tells you to test using Cheese.  It tells you the obvious way
>>> to get Cheese ....  commandline!!!  Now how good is that for the newbie
>>> coming from Windows?
>>>
>>> I would suggest tar and feathering whomever wrote that.
>>
>>
>>> Another time, I had to get my sister's Canon camera working.  F-Spot is
>>> fine - but you need to install gphoto2 ....  How would a newbie get that
>>> far?  I don't know the answer to questions like that.
>>>
>>
>> Shotwell should deal with it...
>>
>>>
>>> I hope you've had the patience to work this through to the end, but I
>>> think all of us need to be getting into the shoes of the average Windows
>>> user.  Danté, you accused me of being geeky the other day - and you were
>>> right!
>>
>>
>> Naturally; I'm never wrong ;)
>>
>>
>>>  I'm trying hard to leave my geekiness behind and I'm fast
>>> finding that much of the online documentation is very geeky.
>>>
>>
>> Good! Look at not only documention, but EVERYTHING through the eyes of the
>> simple Windows user; from the interface to descriptions in the software
>> centre.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Regards,                Barry
>>> --
>>> What do you see when you use your Computer? Same old thing?
>>> ...There IS a Better Way!  Ubuntu!
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> -Danté Ashton
>>
>> Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici
>>
>>
>> Sent from Ubuntu
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-advertising
>> Post to     : ubuntu-advertising@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-advertising
>> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>>
>>
>


-- 

-Danté Ashton

Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici


Sent from Ubuntu