…I am willing to do *stupid things* in exchange for money while [fund-raising for my charity](https://www.justgiving.com/jonobaconmarathon) at our [24 hour Ubuntu marathon](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/2012/09/26/get-ready-for-the-24-hour-horsemen-marathon/) on Thursday. We have raised *£1515.95* but we need *more*!

[DONATE HERE](https://www.justgiving.com/jonobaconmarathon) and suggestions welcome in the comments!

The other day I announced our [24-hour horsemen marathon](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/2012/09/26/get-ready-for-the-24-hour-horsemen-marathon/). In a nutshell, we in the Canonical Community Team are going to work for a continuous 24-hour session on Thursday next week. Each of us has picked a charity that we are going to support and I wanted to share some words on why I picked mine…[Homeless International](https://www.homeless-international.org/).

A few years ago Erica and I were driving through a city and we saw an old guy, bleeding, with no coat, walking along the street in the rain, clearly exhibiting schizophrenia. We both immediately stopped the car and I got out to go and help the guy. I got chatting to him. He was a veteran, he had a son that he had lost touch with, and that day he had given his coat to a lady so she wouldn’t get wet in the rain.

Shortly after I got chatting to a family friend who works with the homeless and he started telling me the true extent of the problems with homelessness and poverty all over the world (he organizes charity events to help the homeless here in the Bay Area). I started looking online more and more into the issue and became more and more passionate about the issue.

Most importantly, homelessness and poverty doesn’t just affect *other people*. Mental illness, health problems, disability, family issues, escalating drug/alcohol problems and other issues are often the causes of why someone ends up on the streets. It could affect you, your family, or your friends.

[Homeless International](https://www.homeless-international.org/) work to provide support and help to the homeless and poverty stricken all over the world. They do wonderful work in many countries, and they work to provide housing, resources, aid, and other support. They are a truly valuable cause and I am proud to be supporting them.

For more information on the marathon and why you should donate your money to my charity, see the video:

*Can’t see the video? Watch it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhXOhKJZ3pw)!*

[CLICK HERE TO DONATE](https://www.justgiving.com/jonobaconmarathon)*.

If you donate you will have love, success, and and unlimited supply of bacon (despite the global shortage) in your life. Who could argue with that?

This photo taken when we toured with Justin Bieber.

See that motley crew above? That is my team, the *Community Team* at Canonical. I am blessed to have such a wonderful team; not only are they all fantastic community leaders, but they are just a fun bunch of guys in general to be around.

A while ago I suggested to the team that we do something for charity. We spent some time brainstorming, and exploring ideas from the sublime to the *ridiculous*. We then hit on something we were all fans of…an idea in which lots of Ubuntu work will be done, charities will benefit from, and should be fun and entertaining…

…we are going to have a **24-hour work marathon, streamed live online for your morbid pleasure and amusement**.

## How It Will Work

In a nutshell, each of us is going to work for a solid 24-hour block, taking breaks where needed (no, a break can’t include an 8-hour nap). Each of us will log on and our entire day will be streamed live on [Ubuntu On Air](https://marathon.ubuntuonair.com/).

In this 24-hour period we will work collaboratively on projects, discuss our work on the stream, answer questions from the community, give tutorials, and more. We are open to ideas of things we can do throughout the day that might be interesting to the community (such as topics for tutorials, discussion topics, work we should do etc). Feel free to share your ideas [on this wiki page](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HorsemenMarathonIdeas).

Anyone who knows us knows that we like to have fun. As such we will all try to bring a little something from our personal lives to the marathon too, after all, you are stuck with us for a full day. As an example, I fully plan on smoking a few racks of ribs while I am working, so you can join me for the cook. I am sure that Daniel will make a Tofu sandwich or something. 🙂

The reason why we are putting ourselves through this is to raise money for charity. We couldn’t pick a single charity, so each of us have picked a charity that we care about, and we are frankly going to turn this into a flat-out competition for who can make the most money. As we progress though the marathon we plan on having some bets and forfeits if we can outdo each other with our charities. It should be a lot of fun. 🙂

## The Charities

So which charities are we going to be raising money for? Take a look below…

Nick Skaggs is supporting WaterAid and he says “Water has always played a role in my life. I grew up on the Great Lakes, which are huge reservoirs of fresh water. The lakes, rivers and streams I grew up near at one time were quite polluted — the town I was born in had several dysentery outbreaks in it’s early history. It’s sad to see such waste of fresh water. Water to me is beautiful, and my favorite beverage 😉 There’s nothing like a glass of water to quench your thirst. Provided of course, that water is clean. WaterAid has a mission to deliver long-term sustainable drinking water to the world, via wells and better sanitation efforts to keep local water sources pure. Water is crucial to life, ourselves and nature is highly dependent upon it. Access to clean drinking water is the most basic of all human survival needs. We can go for days with food, get by without shelter, but we cannot survive long without water“.	I am supporting Homeless International and because “I have always been aware of homelessness and poverty but it never really touched me until I saw an old man, bleeding, clearly exhibiting schizophrenia, walking through a city street in the rain. Many homeless and those in poverty are our elderly, our veterans, and our sick and vulnerable. No-one is immune to homelessness and poverty…many become homeless or fall into poverty due to health and trauma problems. Homeless International is a wonderful organization who helps provide shelter, aid, and support homeless people across the world. Your donation will provide help the elderly, sick and vulnerable to have shelter. Thanks for your donations!“.	David Planella is supporting Greenpeace and he says “Having grown in an environment very close to nature has made me appreciate how big a gift and how fragile this planet we live in is. I’ve chosen to support Greenpeace as an organization whose core values are to “change attitudes and behaviour, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote peace”, with which I very much identify. Help me support an NGO that gives voice and acts to protect the place we all share and spend our lives in“.
Daniel Holbach is supporting Oxfam and he says “Oxfam puts lots of hard work into ending poverty and injustice as part of a global movement for change. Oxfam deeply understand that we all live in this world together and that problems need to be solved holistically. I’ve been supporting them for years and some of my friends have volunteered for them as well“.	Jorge Castro is supporting Little Kids Rock! and he says “In Junior and High Schools I played trumpet, tuba, Sousaphone, electric bass, and a double bass. I made lots of friends, got to do great things like play festivals, and expanded my mind by learning to appreciate everything from jazz to classical to rock and roll. I can’t imagine growing up without playing music, and every kid should have the opportunity to do so. Little Kids Rock helps not only by providing disadvantaged schools with instruments, but with a curriculum that’s modern and not boring. Instead of sitting in a room playing scales all day, the students are taught popular songs and are encouraged to learn by just playing together“.	Michael Hall is supporting Autism Research Trust and he says “Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorders are developmental disorders that affect a large number of us in the open source community, our friends and our families. Despite it being wide-spread, very little is know about it’s cause, and the only proven treatment is early detection and intervention. The Autism Research Trust funds the ongoing scientific research at Cambridge University into the cause and interventions for Autism“.

Thanks to the team for picking a wonderful range of charities, all of which are great causes!

## When, Where, and How

The *24-hour Horsemen Marathon* will take place on **Thu 4th Oct 2012**. We will start the marathon at **3am Pacific / 6am Eastern / 10am UTC / 11am UK / 12pm Europe** and finish at the same time the following day.

Be sure to come and join us and provide your support and input. This is an interactive event and we are looking to our community to suggest things we can do, chat to us while the marathon is taking place, and take part. You can do this via the chat and social media facilities that are on our marathon page. Let’s make some epic coin for our charities!

**[Watch, interact, and donate right from here!](https://marathon.ubuntuonair.com/)**

Also, please spread the word about the marathon on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere. Use the `#ubuntumarathon` hashtag and be sure to link to [https://marathon.ubuntuonair.com/](https://marathon.ubuntuonair.com/) – thanks!

I haven’t done a video Q+A for a while and I would like to start them up again this week. As such on **Wed 26th Sep 2012** at **11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern / 6pm UTC / 7pm UK / 8pm Europe** I will be streaming live on [Ubuntu On Air](https://ubuntuonair.com/). Be sure to join me there and bring your questions; anything and everything is welcome!

Recently there has been some concerns about the privacy of the [new feature](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/2012/09/23/on-the-recent-dash-improvements/) we recently added to the dash in which it can query external resources to provide related results. I just wanted to follow up with some further details about how these searches are performed, the privacy protections that are put in place, and further work going on.

I reached out to *John Lenton*, who is the *Senior Engineering Manager* in the *Online Services* team at Canonical. He was responsible for building the technology that handles the searches from the dash. He says:

> When performing a search, you expose no more information to Canonical than the originating IP of your request, the search terms you enter, and the result you click on (if any). We don’t perform any kind of “tracking”; there is nothing really user-identifyable there…the IP address is unreliable for this, and isn’t relied on other than for collapsing multiple searches into one in the reporting, and even this is after passing it through a one-way hash.

> Searches are currently performed over plain HTTP to our servers in a data-centre in either London or the USA, and then forwarded to the upstream providers appropriate to the originating request’s geolocation. The only potentially identifying bit of information, the IP address of the originating request, is not forwarded unless explicitly required to perform the search (so far, only one of 20+ upstream providers requires this: the Headweb video source for scandinavian countries needs to do its own geoip).

> We appreciate some of the community concerns about these searches operating unencrypted and **we are currently working to encrypt these dash searches ready for the release of this feature in Ubuntu 12.10**. This should resolve most of the concerns shared about unencrypted traffic.

> In terms of logging, the raw `httpd` logs are only visible to a small group of people whose job requires that they have access and who are trained in respecting people’s privacy in accordance to European law on this matter. The searches themselves, stripped of the IP addresses (replacing them with a one-way hash) are made available to a slightly larger group of people to enable statistical reporting. Because not only the search but also clicking on a result reaches our server (where it is redirected to whatever is appropriate), we will be able to infer what search results people want when searching for particular terms, and at some point in the future this will be used to help us provide better, more relevant results. This statistical gathering of a mapping of search terms to clicked search results is not done yet but will be done soon”.

Please feel free to follow up with any further questions, and we will try to get them answered.

In the last few days there has been some discussion in the community about some improvements that have been added to the dash in Ubuntu 12.10. I wanted to take a few minutes to share some thoughts about these improvements and some of the concerns raised.

If you are anything like me, you are both a *producer* and *consumer*. At work and in your hobbies you are likely *producing* content, and Ubuntu and the many Open Source and commercial applications in the *Ubuntu Software Center* have long provided plenty of choice for producing great content. In recent years we at Canonical have also invested extensively in adding features in Unity to help make *creating things* as simple and effective as possible. In Ubuntu 12.04, a good example of this was the HUD, something that I used with the *Gimp* to produce this blog entry:

The HUD puts *search* at your fingertips to make operating your productivity applications and your desktop more efficient. Search is a core value in Ubuntu with Unity, and another core goal is that our users should be able to put the dash at the center of their world in being able to find content.

For the *producers* among you, Unity has long done this. Unity will search your computer and find documents, presentations, applications, and other content and the applications used to create and manage this content.

But we are not just *producers*. We are all *consumers* too. I love *Breaking Bad*, *The West Wing*, *Mission Impossible*, and *The Allman Brothers*. I love watching shows, listening to music, and watching content on YouTube and elsewhere. I enjoy being a consumer, and I want my desktop to be at the heart of where I not only work, but also where I also play.

The new features that have been added to the dash help to expand it’s functionality to not only searching your computer but also online too. The result of these improvements is that Ubuntu has now been improved to provide quick access to a wealth of consumer content available to me. Let’s take a quick look.

As an example, I have a lot of music on my computer and I listen to it with Rhythmbox, but there is *a lot more* music that I don’t have. On Friday night I went to see the awesome *Gov’t Mule*, and they remind me a lot of the *Allman Brothers*. So, I get back from the show and I want to listen them and maybe buy some Allman brothers music too. By searching in the dash I can find all the music I own but also see other albums that might interest me:

The *More suggestions* section at the bottom is part of the new feature that landed in the dash. I can now see content that relates to my search. This is not advertising: this is content related directly to something I am interested in.

I can now *right-click* an album and see more information:

Here I can see the songs that are on the album with a single click. If I hover over the songs I can click them and hear a quick snippet of the music.

Here Ubuntu has helped me find interesting and new content without having to perform countless Google searches, navigate through various music websites and all their advertising and other such nonsense. It was all integrated right into the Ubuntu desktop.

This also applies to videos, TV shows, and movies. I love to watch shows, and I can search for shows right within the video lens. As an example, I love *Mission Impossible*, and I can find related content right within the dash:

Again, this not only searches content on my computer, but also multiple online resources. As such I can see YouTube videos as well as paid content that I can purchase from Amazon. Once again, the content is related to whatever I am interested in and searching for. Again, if I right click an item I can see more information:

Both of these features are integrating content that I care about as a consumer right into my desktop. Speaking personally, I love this. This is helping me to browse and consume content more easily than ever before.

One aspect of this new feature that some folks have found a little controversial is that the dash also exposes content from Amazon in the home screen. As an example, as I have [written about previously](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/2012/08/13/my-barbecue-adventure/), I am getting really into BBQ right now. If I perform a search in my dash for BBQ I now see the following content:

Here you can see that the dash shows content on my computer (such as the photos I took of my recent cooks), but it also provides some recommendations of products that might relate to my search. Once again this allows the dash to provide visibility on the world both on my computer and outside it.

If any of you are like me and my wife, Amazon is *part of our life*. We buy products from there all the time (particularly with Amazon Prime), and as such, I often find myself browsing Amazon for products that I am interested in. We even get our coffee regularly shipped to us from Amazon. Now these products are integrated into my regular workflow and I can see products that might help me with the content or topics I am searching for in the dash. Of course, in many cases these products won’t be of interest, but you can simply ignore them; the dash is not intrusive and does not prioritize the product searches over your local content, it merely provides some suggestions of things you might be interested in.

All in all, I personally feel these features add a lot of value to Ubuntu; I feel they make the dash a lot more useful and interesting, and they save me time in finding the content I am interested in both on and offline.

Now, some folks have expressed some concerns about the fact that products are appearing in the dash. It is no secret that for each product *sold* (not searched) from Amazon or the Ubuntu One Music Store, Canonical takes a small cut. This affiliate revenue is a useful way in which we can generate revenue that we can continue to invest into the Ubuntu project to build new features, maintain our infrastructure, and improve Ubuntu.

Importantly, these music, video, and product suggestions are *not advertising*, they are search results that relate directly to the content you are searching for in the dash, and these results are presented in a non-intrusive manner.

Now, some of you may have a fundamental objection to Canonical making money from Ubuntu. When I hear this feedback, I usually translate it in my mind to “*I have an objection to a company abusing a Free Software Operating System with revenue-generating content*”. While I am certainly sympathetic to us not abusing Ubuntu and filling it with adware, bloatware, and crapware, I don’t think there is anything wrong with providing services and content that is strongly related to the needs and interests of Ubuntu users and that can generate revenue to continue the investment in Ubuntu.

If we are going to continue to pay the salaries of hundreds of developers to build new features, continue to maintain and improve Ubuntu, and provide the infrastructure, support, security updates and other content, we need to find ways of making the project self-sustaining from a revenue perspective. Making money is *not a bug*, abusing Ubuntu with crass irrelevant revenue-generating crap-ware *is*, and this is why we feel these new features are appropriate: they provide related content and opportunity for our users to acquire those products and help support the project.

I can understand some of the concerns from our community about these features, but I would encourage you to try Ubuntu 12.10 before you make your mind up. These features are neatly and unobtrusively integrated into the dash, and they not only provide a more useful and comprehensive dash in giving you visibility on this content, but it also generates revenue to help continue to grow and improve Ubuntu. 🙂

**UPDATE**: For more details on the privacy side of this feature, see [this post](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/2012/09/25/more-information-about-online-dash-search-privacy/).