Looking at the Linux.com Roadmap

It’s Friday, a day reserved for examining the week just passed and figuring out what got accomplished. It is also a day for eyeing the weekend ahead–I just stepped outside Linux.com HQ, and let me tell you, with weather this gorgeous, I am seriously distracted by the weekend to come.

Ahem, back to the topic at hand. What did we get done this week? The big technical change was the addition of the capability to run podcasts directly on Linux.com, as well as video. You saw this manifested in the hosting of the latest installment of the Open Voices series, an interview with IBM’s Bob Sutor. I invite you to go have a listen, in case you haven’t listened to it yet.

Some of you may have noticed the addition of the new Media Library section, too. Once we got the video functionality set up, we wanted to start out with the presentations from the 2009 Collaboration Summit, but we are open to more videos. We will be adding training and tutorial videos in the near future, and like all other parts of the site, if you have a video you’d like to share with Linux.com readers, I’d like to take a look. Use you Linux.com/Linux Foundation ID and post the video on our Video site, then drop me a line to request the video be on Linux.com.¬†

This isn’t just for videos, by the way. If you have a podcast you’d like us to link to, tell us about that, too.¬†

Meanwhile, I’m looking at what’s coming up on the features roadmap, and I’m pretty excited. We’ll soon be making it easier to submit articles to all parts of Linux.com (and awarding of serious Guru points for doing so).We will also be working on building a more centralized directory of software, hardware, and distributions.

On that last feature set, I wanted to put to the community a query: what information do you think would be ideal in a central directory of software? We’ll have links to documentation and download sites, plus screenshots and descriptions. But what else would be useful? Version information? Security advisories? Cross references with distros the app is included? What would make such a Directory the most useful for Linux users of all levels of expertise? Toss in your comments, and let me know soon.

Have a great weekend!