Introducing the 2cloud Project

[Paddy Foran]

Hi everyone,

It finally happened. We finally refreshed our stale brand and lackluster graphics. We're no longer, as a brand, tied to one platform (Android) implicitly. We're free to make our project whatever it can be. We're very excited to introduce the 2cloud Project, complete with new icons and new websites.

The 2cloud Project is a new umbrella project. android2cloud will still exist, but now it pertains only to the Android client. The Chrome extension is now the 2cloud Project Chrome extension, or the Chrome client for the 2cloud Project. Whatever you prefer. We're working hard on improving these new clients, and we're working hard on adding some more clients to the list (*cough* a certain flaming mammal *cough*) as soon as possible.

We owe a big thank you to Dylan Staley (@dstaley on Twitter, or http://www.dstaley.me). Not only did he *volunteer* to make our icon pretty (and the new ones he came up with are drool-worthy), he also gave us our new tagline: Tap. Share. Anywhere. We'd like to take this opportunity to welcome Dylan as an official member of the team. He's graciously agreed to take on a position working on our UI and UX, and his first project (whenever he gets time) is to make our clients more intuitive and our interfaces prettier. He's got some pretty awesome ideas for both. We're really excited to have him.

We also owe a big thank you to Eternity. She created the designs for our 2cloud Project website (htttp://www.2cloudproject.com) and our android2cloud website (http://www.android2cloud.org), which are pretty awesome, if you ask me. She did this without asking for anything in return, but we've decided to list her amongst our sponsors anyways, because good design is not easy and is not quick, but she managed to pull these designs out for us in a matter of days. We're really grateful to her, and if you get a moment, you should check her website out: http://www.eternityonline.org.uk

As you may have noticed, we've switched up our discussion lists a bit. I've got them broken down for you below.

- Our androi...@googlegroups.com discussion list (which used to serve android2cloud announcements *and* discussion) has become 2cloud-announce. From now on, it will only be used to post content from our team members about new releases, server downtime, policy changes, and related things we think you should know.

- Our android2c...@googlegroups.com discussion list has become 2cloud-beta. It will serve the same purpose: discussion and bug reports around beta builds of the project.

- We created a new 2cloud-...@googlegroups.com discussion list. This is a mailing list for discussion surrounding the project.

- We also created a new 2clou...@googlegroups.com discussion list. This is a mailing list for discussion about developing for the project. Feel free to pop in there to ask about developing your own server or client, or to help us improve ours.

You may have noticed our help.android2cloud.org site stopped working. That's because Tender won't let us use two domains on the same Tender. The help site can now be found at http://help.2cloudproject.com. We'll be setting up a redirect for help.android2cloud.org shortly.

The blog is still located at http://blog.android2cloud.org. We may be launching another blog for the project as a whole. We may be renaming the current blog. We haven't really decided yet. We'll keep you informed. For now, though, nothing has changed.

We're also on Convore now. You can feel free to stop in at http://convore.com/2cloud-project/ and chat with us about the project. We'll try to make a point of being online in there as much as we can, so we can discuss things with you guys.

Our Twitter account, @android2cloud, will remain. It will serve to give announcements on the Android client, and probably announcements that relate. We have, however, established a new account, @2cloudproject, which will post announcements about the project as a whole. We recommend you follow at *least* the 2cloudproject account. The android2cloud account may go away in the future, or it may stay. We shall see.

I think that's pretty much everything. If you have any questions, you've got a rather lengthy email detailing different ways for you to get in touch with us, now, so I hope you'll use it. :)

We're really excited about this. We hope you are, too.

Thanks,

Paddy Foran

Lead Developer

The 2cloud Project