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[Travis McCrea <me AT travismccrea.com>]

This is a topic that I have promoted a lot since my time in OpenNIC. I know 
that I am also supposed to be doing a better job of updating the twitter and 
Facebook pages. The problem is that we used to use hoot suite for twitter and 
really never got a suitable replacement since it went non-gratis.

I had first suggested Namebench when it first came out, some people looked 
into it… but then no one followed through with it.  I am not a programmer and 
am just learning python so i would not be able to do too much on this front 
but I am sure it can't be too hard to go from that to what we need. 

You can't write a FF or Chrome extension that does this (not without some 
hacking at least). This was the initial plan of the MAFFIAFIRE guys, but they 
couldn't achieve it so they use proxies and IPaddresses instead. The 
Maffiafire team has stated their support for OpenNIC and would help out if 
they can.

We need to do better branding thats for sure, especially because right now we 
are prime material to be the new standard for DNS on the internet… people 
want a free and uncensored root, and we can be that alternative to the 
primary internet roots. We need to stop looking at things as technicians 
though, and start looking at them like UI guys and start focusing on the 
"customer" not the technology. 

On 2012-02-19, at 6:42 PM, Andrew Norton wrote:

> I've been on this list for 14 months now, and I've seen a lot of stuff.
> Mostly it's been "new T2's".
> 
> What I have *NOT* seen, is anything for the real audience, the everyday
> user.
> 
> I'm a fairly techie guy (used to design robots for the nuclear industry,
> currently work for a tech news site, and on a distributed computing
> project that designs particle accelerators) and yet, I'm stuck with OpenNIC.
> 
> What few guides and documents there are, are geared towards the 1000
> (estimate only) that would like to run a T2. For someone like me, who
> has VERY limited knowledge about this topic, there's almost nothing.
> That's not good.
> 
> Imagine a car. It may have the BEST engine in the world, but if it's in
> the bodyshell, and with the controls of a Ford Model T, no-one will want
> one. You will get a few enthusiasts, but the mass market will say 'looks
> ugly, and too hard to use' and you will have effectively wasted most of
> your time.
> 
> It's the same problem linux had 15 years ago. It was designed for
> specialists in that field by other people in that field. It wasn't until
> the likes of Ubuntu, with its userfriendlyness that it started to become
> a viable alternative.
> 
> It's a VERY common failing with tech-groups. Everyone you see and talk
> to has a good knowledge on the subject, so you forget about the everyday
> person that knows nothing. Instead, because it's 'obvious', you ignore
> userfriendlyness, to focus on more cool new tech stuff.
> The number of groups I've been involved with over the years that has
> done this will astound you.
> 
> The best test is to, every now and then, step back and say "that woman a
> few doors away, could she use this, if she really wanted to, without
> leaving our site?"
> If the answer is no, you've got a userfriendlyness problem.
> 
> I brought this up in the IRC chan already, but I was advised to bung it
> here as well, so here it is.
> 
> - -- 
> Andrew Norton
> http://ktetch.co.uk
> Tel: +1(352)6-KTETCH [+1-352-658-3824]

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