Internal Memo at Fon on the Fonera 2.0 improvements

I wrote this memo to Fon employees. I edited a few parts that I can´t publish yet and I share it in my blog.

Fonera is now a Computer in a Network:

The Fonera now shows up as a COMPUTER in a PC or Mac. So while you cannot send files to the fonera via wifi using Firefox yet, you CAN send foneras via WiFi by copy and pasting files accessing the hard drive of the Fonera. Soon the Fonera will be able to receive files via WiFi and if you send them to a folder called Youtube it will automatically cue them and send them to Youtube. This is a dream functionality, a real buffer, you have files, you send them via WiFi and they are sent later by the Fonera. No need to use pen drives and actually walk to the Fonera.

Javi is working on a Fontastic Firefox Plug In:

Today I saw the demo of a GREAT Firefox plug in that allows you to choose ANY link on the net, bittorrent, megaupload, rapidshare and http (probably soon ftp) and when you click on it you get a choice to download to your computer or download to the Fonera. It is an intelligent plug in to the point that if you cut and paste a lot of text that is not instructions to download stuff it will decipher the instructions in the long text and do all sorts of different things without you telling it. So it will go to megaupload when it detects a megaupload link, to a direct download when it detects a direct download, to rapidshare, to bittorrent. It is very SMART as it ignores the garbage part of the text. This makes it SO MUCH EASIER than going through the dashboard! Also it has a status bar that tells you what the Fonera is doing while its doing it.

Marketing Inconsistency in the Fonera:

I realized that we have a marketing inconsistency at Fon. In our boxes called our router LA FONERA but the router calls itself FONSPOT. All involved please change this. Fonera has to say FONera not FONspot. Or change the Fon logo to read Fonera but we can´t call it Fonspot anymore. Indeed we should not use the world Fonspot anymore at Fon. Products with two names confuse the hell out of search engines like Google and new search engines like Facebook or Twitter. We don´t have any money to advertise ourselves. We can´t confuse people calling the Fonera a Fonspot. Also let´s drop La Fonera and make it simply Fonera.

Direct Downloads must be Explained:

The Fonera can download ANY FILE on the internet. Not just bittorrent, megaupload and rapidshare. I did not know this and many of you may not know it either. For example if you put below link in the download manager the fonera will get you the latest version of Ubuntu. Pls test this functionality however because it may not work well it is still in beta mode.

http://ubuntu.cs.utah.edu/releases/jaunty/ubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso

Now this is HUGE. Because there are a LOT of direct downloads on the Internet. There is a lot of content, software for example, that people want you to have and they give you download links. The fonera works very well for all uploads and all downloads except torrents which go slowly and only one at a time. But what works about the Fonera is a lot, let´s communicate it well while we improve the Bittorrent functionality. If you look carefully this IS explained in the Download Manager in the fonera. But you have to be pretty geeky to realize that http means that you can download any direct link over the internet. Marketing should find a better way to communicate this feature and Development should explain this in the firmware as well as it now explains for example how to send files to Youtube.