[Freedombox-discuss] Iomega iConnect lessons for FreedomBox

[Les Orchard]

On 3/24/11 8:56 AM, James Vasile wrote:
>  Tremendously helpful writeup. Thanks, John.
>
>  "One thing well" should be our mantra. It's guidance I try to follow
>  in my own life. Even when the box grows more functions, it's good
>  advice-- when using it as a NAS, users shouldn't have to compromise
>  on interface or experience because the thing is also a tor node.

Something I think is interesting here, comparing on-the-shelf gadgets 
with a Debian distribution:

Commercial gadgets are very good at hiding the guts, even when they 
happen to be Linux-based. Occasionally, they tolerate some tinkering, 
but only in rare celebrated cases (eg. the Linksys WRT54g)

In our case, we're working from the opposite direction. That is, we have 
a pile of Debian-based ingredients from which to tinker and build a 
FreedomBox, but we'll at some point need a unified umbrella of user 
interface and convention to tie together disparate parts. That seems to 
go against the grain a bit, I think, but needs to be addressed in some way.

At Mozilla, we have a UX design team: http://planet.firefox.com/ux/

Their decisions are sometimes controversial, but there are at least 
people considering the issues overall and making the decisions.

>  Bulletproofing is important but can only take us so far. We have to
>  think hard about end-user support. The usual "Find us in IRC and
>  hope nobody insults you." isn't sufficient here.

+1

>  I'd love to hear ideas on how we support end users and prevent
>  early-adoption failure.

FWIW, we have this at Mozilla: http://support.mozilla.com/

That combines wiki pages, question/answer forums, and an occasionally 
open live chat - mostly driven by volunteers. The software behind it 
(named Kitsune) is all open source as a Django web app, though it's not 
well-packaged by any means.

I'm not sure whether this particular software is appropriate for the 
FreedomBox, but it's working pretty well for Firefox

-- 
l.m.orchard at pobox.com
http://decafbad.com
{web,mad,computer} scientist

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