Subj : In the future..
To   : Nick Andre
From : August Abolins
Date : Sun Jun 07 2020 02:18 pm

Hello Nick!

** On Sunday 07.06.20 - 02:23, Nick Andre wrote to Black Panther:

NA> What would be really good is a mobile/tablet app that is so dumbed-
NA> down that it just focuses on messaging. Let the newcomer get their
NA> feet wet with that, and if they actually are techie or want a taste
NA> of nostalgia they can go ahead and experiment with mailers and BBS
NA> software.

What would such a thing actually look like to the user?

Would participation be feasible without an actual keyboard?

Tommi's sample screenshot of Hotdoged on his Samsung A50 looked insanely
small to work with.

Maybe something like a stipped-down interface like m.facebook.com.. but
adapted with menu commands for navigating echos, threads, searching
..could work.

Instead of:

Home Profile Messages Notifications(2) Chat(6) Friends(11) Pages(14)
Groups(3)

we have..

Home | Profile | Echos | Msgs | Chat | Favorites | BBSes | Othernets

The decluttered look of m.facebook.com is not a bad model.

Could FTN grow-up and allow sending attachments, pgp encoded messages,
etc?  What would the newcomer WANT?  Could FTN adapt to that?

MAYBE, FTN could comprise of a growing subset of BBSes that allow the
above to support their newcomers.


NA> That app would likely be just an extension of someone's BBS or Node,
NA> but could be promoted in a few ways to really give an alternative to
NA> Internet discussion forums. Aftershock is a nice app with potential
NA> but certainly not dumb enough.

Yes.. an app that can be configured with a minimum amount of fuss and
takes care of all the connection details behind the scenes.

I imagine an app that looks something like this:

 http://webring.fsxnet.nz/all.php  (something that fidonet.org could
offer too?)

Users can search/scroll for a specific BBS or tap on the one they
recognize visually, and the app takes it from there with a stripped-down
interface similar to m.facebook.com.

The subset of participating BBSes can announce what they support: gpg
encrypted messages, attachments, voice msgs, interbbs-chat, games, etc.



 ../|ug

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* Origin: The future is not what it used to be. (2:221/1.58)

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