Lantern

Joshua Bronson added a comment - 09/Feb/11 2:21 PM "Lantern is currently in private beta and will be available publicly soon." Should we also have something like: "Enter your email if you'd like to be notified of future updates: ______" ?

Adam Fisk added a comment - 09/Feb/11 3:08 PM Yes -- great idea Josh. I'm not quite sure what the best way to do it might be. Maybe you can look into that? I use iContact for LittleShoot, but I haven't investigated the options in awhile. We could just store them ourselves too. The one nice thing about things like iContact is they do analysis of your e-mails and give them a spam score -- so you can make sure your e-mails won't get marked as spam. Also, we could add just a Facebook Like button. Here's the code if you want to put that in: <iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bravenewsoftware.org&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=80" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:80px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>

Adam Fisk added a comment - 09/Feb/11 3:10 PM Oh, also, we actually got a $25 donation! Kind of a shocker =).

Joshua Bronson added a comment - 09/Feb/11 3:48 PM I was thinking of creating a lantern-announce mailing list and hooking up the form to google groups' subscribe API. It would be set so only admins could post messages so spam wouldn't be an issue. Never used iContact-- would that be better? re: donation, awesome! It wasn't from my parents, was it? =)

Adam Fisk added a comment - 09/Feb/11 7:20 PM That's a cool idea, Josh. I don't know that API and can't seem to find anything on it. Can you point me to anything?

Adam Fisk added a comment - 09/Feb/11 7:37 PM OK, guys, I went ahead and wrote up a quick Lantern description for the site: Lantern is a new tool for circumventing censors in countries where authoritarian regimes place controls on the Internet, a handy light to guide you on your way. It uses our background at LimeWire and LittleShoot to create a cooperative peer-to-peer (P2P) system for accessing sites that are blocked. If you're concerned about encroachments on freedom of expression online, as we've seen in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, and China, Lantern offers an easy way to help. When you install Lantern, you contribute a small part of your bandwidth and computing power to your peers around the world who are living under authoritarian regimes. Don't worry, though, Lantern is lightweight and won't bog down your system! If you live in a censored country, you can install Lantern to access sites you previously couldn't. Like many peer-to-peer systems, Lantern works better as more people use it. So please lend a hand and tell your friends!

Adam Fisk added a comment - 09/Feb/11 7:38 PM It's also in the attached file. Feel free to take a whack at it. We should probably also include outgoing links to LimeWire and LittleShoot.

Joshua Bronson added a comment - 09/Feb/11 11:24 PM Updated the /lantern page with the new copy (with the outbound links) and deployed to the preview site. I noticed the LimeWire site now has a big scary legal notice on the front page and none of the other pages are accessible. Do we still want to link to it? I'll get on the "sign up for lantern updates" form posthaste.

Mi Lee added a comment - 10/Feb/11 10:24 PM Hi, guys. That's great about the donation--how exciting! :) I liked the Lantern language, Adam, but thought it would be good to differentiate a little more clearly between the two audiences/users--those in "closed"/censored countries, and those in "open"/uncensored ones. I think the site design and copy ought to be clear to both groups. So I tweaked your original language a bit, to read like this, just a suggestion: Lantern is a new tool for circumventing censors in countries where authoritarian regimes place controls on the Internet, a handy light to guide censored citizens on their way to the open web. It uses our backgrounds at LimeWire and LittleShoot to create a cooperative peer-to-peer (P2P) system for accessing sites that are blocked. If you're concerned about encroachments on freedom of expression online, as we've seen in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, and China, Lantern offers an easy way to help. When you as an open Internet user install Lantern, you contribute a small part of your bandwidth and computing power to your peers around the world who are living under authoritarian regimes. Don't worry though, Lantern is lightweight and won't bog down your system! It also comes with the strictest privacy controls. If you live in a censored country, you can install Lantern to access sites you previously couldn't. Your identity is similarly protected by our cutting-edge security, and you will be able to access and send information incredibly quickly and efficiently. Finally, like many peer-to-peer systems, Lantern works better as more people use it. So please lend a hand and tell your friends!

Mi Lee added a comment - 10/Feb/11 10:25 PM I did the track changes thing on the original lantern description doc and uploaded here also, jic. If this sort of thing just clutters though, let me know....

Joshua Bronson added a comment - 11/Feb/11 1:14 AM I like your edits, Mi, awesome. One comment on both versions: At the very end we say: "Finally, like many peer-to-peer systems, Lantern works better as more people use it. So please lend a hand and tell your friends!" But Lantern isn't available publicly yet. Is there some other way people can get involved before then? If not, let's change it to something like "Enter your email and we'll drop you a line when Lantern is ready for your help".

Joshua Bronson added a comment - 11/Feb/11 8:00 PM Yosef's design includes Facebook and Twitter chrome. Doesn't look like we have a Twitter account yet. I tried creating @bravenewsoftware but the last letter got cut off because it exceeded the max character limit. Incredibly, all of the following were already taken too: @bns, @bnstweets, @bravenewtweets. Any other ideas? Looks like Adam already made us a Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brave-New-Software-Project-Inc/200158456664630. Just "like"d it. :) I tried getting the code snippet for a badge for it (so people could "like" us from wherever we embed it), but Facebook wouldn't give it to me since I'm not an admin of the page. Would it be a good idea to email bns-ops with any usernames and passwords for shared accounts?

Joshua Bronson added a comment - 12/Feb/11 8:19 PM https://github.com/jab/bravenewsoftware.org/commit/f27295a90ab1724326581e49cab12c20d44aba8e Made us twitter account @followbns, emailed credentials to bns-ops, linked to it and to our facebook page from /who, added signup form for lantern-announce list to /what and /lantern, deployed to our preview server.

Adam Fisk added a comment - 14/Feb/11 12:17 AM Good stuff Josh -- thanks. Just added you as an admin on the Facebook page.

Mi Lee added a comment - 26/Jul/11 1:39 AM interesting to revisit earlier descriptions we drafted. in any case--do we need to update this site in any way before lantern launches? (since we link out to it--and for that matter, littleshoot--from the project page.) at least, maybe hyperlink "Lantern" in the copy where it's mentioned?

Adam Fisk added a comment - 26/Jul/11 5:53 AM Yeah sure -- we should definitely link to Lantern.

Joshua Bronson added a comment - 16/Aug/11 7:07 PM see latest update to bravenewsoftware.org will keep it up to date as appropriate