[LAU] ANN: Channel Linux "BETA"

Hi, Some of you might be interested in my new project. It's been a few years in the making http://channellinux.com We have big plans for this new project. Please let me know if you come across anything that you think would be interesting for the viewing audience and please link to the site everywhere you have an opportunity. If you help me to grow the traffic and keep the content coming it will pay back to the community tenfold. Please refrain from replying to this post with content links or feedback on the site. I'm sure everyone knows my position by now so I will refrain from commenting on replies to this post too :-) TECHNICAL I have created two separate threads for this on each list so if people want to navel gaze and politic, please refrain from doing that on LAD ;-) The site is designed to work on all screen sizes but has only been tested on Firefox and Chrome. I am not interested in testing on other browsers. The ones that don't work are either broken or do not have a large enough user base to justify my time. I am interested in results on small screen mobile devices. Not because I don't know what will happen but because I would like to hear some more ideas for how to tweak the layout to work more effectively. If you have any ideas for that please start a new thread or send me a direct email. Ideas for UX improvements on usability or additional media types like livecast, radio and audio streaming will also be very helpful. As above please send me a seperate email or start a new thread for that. I know some of you on this list have many years of experience in the industry so your ideas will be taken seriously and implemented with gusto. If you do want to start a new thread please consider if it is a technical issue or not and direct to LAD if it is something that requires advanced technical discussion. Due to the "BETA" mode this is not a finished product. I am posting here as a preliminary announcement to get some usability testing and feedback results from a wider pool of knowledgable technical users. At a later date I will push for an official release announcement. ADVERTISING The long term plan for this project is to generate income from advertising just like a regular TV/Radio station and feed that back to the community by paying people to create content. During the Beta period I am offering free advertising to interested companies to allow me to test and iron out the usability for a new format of internet advertising across multiple devices. This is still fresh ground so no one has really nailed it yet. I have several companies already participating but I am still working out the display mechanism for the various ads that have been provided to me across all devices and screen sizes. BACKGROUND Linux Audio and Multimedia has a large and thriving community of developers, creators, artists and users. FLOSS and GNU/Linux has an even larger global community of people who are passionate about their OS of choice and wear the badge of FLOSS and GNU/Linux proudly whenever they have the chance. One thing has been missing. A dedicated Channel for all things Linux Multimedia. Sure, there are lots of news sites out there and many communities and people that produce digital content but no one has really taken on the task of collating all the various media spread out across the internet into a one stop and easy access portal. But why stop there? GNU/Linux is the dominant operating system on the planet and enables or creates billions of dollars in revenue for some of the largest companies on the planet. As a global community we effectively power the internet, create the worlds best movies, participate in and drive scientific progress at the highest level, power the next generation of green technology, send rockets into space, enable governments to operate efficiently and even feed and power the world. Why not take things to the next level and create a truly cross device experience for mobile, desktop and TV? We have the knowledge to make it happen. However there is also a problem facing the global pool of artists and developers who dedicate their time to FLOSS multimedia. We don't get the kind of financial support that we deserve for all our efforts. The big companies barely spend a fraction of their wealth on supporting and growing the FLOSS multimedia tools that enable us to entertain the world. What can we do about that? We don't have to sit here crying into our milk. We can generate our own income and feed that back into the community by promoting and marketing to the global community of people interested in FLOSS and GNU/Linux. It doesn't mean we have sold out. It just means we are using what we have got to make things better. Channel Linux is in Beta mode and it might stay like that for some time. The first step is growing the traffic to the site. The next step is taking that traffic and making it work for us. Companies are prepared to pay serious cash if they have a guaranteed way to reach their target market. So what does it all mean? We need content, lots of it. We need constructive feedback and suggestions for making the site really hit the sweet spot of usability and entertainment. And we need your links, tweets, facebook likes and passionate evangelism to help us grow the traffic to the kind of numbers that companies with serious cash are prepared to spend their money on. We have the capacity if we choose to use it. I hope you are prepared for the ride :-) -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Digital / Boost Hardware Ltd