[gNewSense-art] Making the Lemote YeeLoong a highly visible portable advocacy tool - stickers & website

[Daniel Clark]

(1) I recently bartered for a Lemote YeeLoong (thanks, Graziano! :-) and
it strikes me that unlike say the OLPC XO its physical appearance
doesn't scream "I'm different", so perhaps it could use some
gnewsense-art help.

(1a) My idea is to create a pretty sticker that would take up a good bit
of the real estate on the top cover of the system; however I don't
really have the artistic skills to create such a sticker. (I would
however be happy to pay for a first run once we have a graphic.)

(1b) The sticker would point at a companion website that would explain
to the layperson why the yeeloong + gnewsense is important / a first in
the world. For more information, see:

http://FirstFreeLaptop.com/wiki?name=planning

(Current text also included below at [1] - but the site also has
pictures of the current suboptimal sticker I made etc.)

If you are at all interested in working on this, send me a private,
preferably GnuPG-encrypted email with your preferred username and
password an I'll give you access to the above site.

(2) It also might be good to create a gNewSense-specific sticker, for
more generic use on any laptop; I looked at the existing graphics but I
don't think there are any that would lead someone looking at it to say
to themselves "Gee, I should go check out http://gNewSense.org !" -
since "gNewSense.org" is less self-explanatory than
"FirstFreeLaptop.com", perhaps there should also be text like "Free as
in Freedom" or something like that.

Note that these are both my personal ideas as a member of the gNewSense
community, not things I am doing on behalf of my employer, the FSF;
however I think there would be a good chance my employer would be
interested in selling / giving away at events any stickers the gNewSense
community would come up with, and the website might be synergistic with
future campaigns.

Happy New Year and Happy Hacking,
-- 
Daniel JB Clark   | Sys Admin, Free Software Foundation
pobox.com/~dclark | http://www.fsf.org/about/staff#danny


[1] FirstFreeLaptop.com: planning
http://FirstFreeLaptop.com/wiki?name=planning

Idea is to have an easy-to-remember website aimed at people who are
interested in the yeeloong in general but for whom existing sites may be
lacking / too full of information they don't need at first.

Nice-looking "brochureware" site that clearly gets across 4 points in
the simplest possible way, with nice graphics:

  1.  The yeeloong hardware supports being used by free as in freedom
software, and why this is good and a first in the world (mention some
things that were almost there, like the OLPC XO).
  2.  You can purchase a yeeloong now from anywhere in the world - nicer
form of [http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Projects/Lemote#toc81|gNewSense:
Lemote: Availability & commercialization]
  3.  Why you should run gNewSense metad GNU/Linux on your yeeloong.
  4.  You can get involved in the FaiF Yeeloong community (links to
everything).

Should also put some of the standard FSF website widgets on site (eg
become a member, member drive).

Marketing:

  1.  Make nice, <b>vinyl</b> stickers people can put on their
yeeloongs, prominently featuring in large type visible from far away
"http://FirstFreeLaptop.com";. (Examples: <a
href="doc/tip/www/images/djbclark/1-top.jpg">top</a>, <a
href="doc/tip/www/images/djbclark/2-bottom.jpg ">bottom</a>, <a
href="doc/tip/www/images/djbclark/3-case-front.jpg">case-front</a>, <a
href="doc/tip/www/images/djbclark/4-case-back.jpg">case-back</a>, <a
href="doc/tip/www/images/djbclark/5-open-front.jpg">open-front</a>, <a
href="doc/tip/www/images/djbclark/6-open-back.jpg">open-back</a>).
Should feature gNewSense and maybe Lemote logos (the second maybe as
Lemote is already on the front cover, but perhaps people will put these
stickers other places as well.) Use [http://websticker.com/|WebSticker]
as vendor.
  2.  Encourage people to take pictures of themselves with their
yeeloongs and their stickers / submit somehow, and to partake in the
FSF's video testimonial program with their yeeloongs / stickers visable.
  3.  Possibly offer free dynamic dns service for the yeeloongs of the
first X people to do one of the above things
(yourcomputer.firstfreelaptop.com).

Technical details:

This should all just be HTML and CSS, stored in Fossil SCM version
control. (Note that file named "index.html" checked into a "www"
directory in fossil would be available as
[http://FirstFreeLaptop.com/doc/tip/www/index.html])

Besides keeping it simple, this will also allow people to easily grab
the entire website for viewing / showing to other people when offline,
which is often the case with laptops. (For an example of this, see
[http://www.fsf.org/membercard])