...for end-users

Most of us rely on websites and email in our daily lives. They have greatly enhanced our lives. Surprisingly, there are many more technologies that are ready to be rolled out. However, due to the way the Internet is funded, it is not getting introduced. We want to change that.

What we are offering

If you known any hardcore technical people, you must have noticed how much more they get out of the Internet. They will have email addresses such as firstname@lastname. org and may have mentioned that they have worldwide chat and free telephony on the same address. They can do this by using their own domain name, and by running their own services. This also means that their privacy is better protected -- it runs on their systems, and not on a large popular site that can only exist if user profiles are sold to advertising companies.

It is not difficult to acquire your own domain name. It is not difficult to find a so-called hosting party that will run a web and email for that domain name. These come as standard package deals. Go and get yourself a domain name, and you don't need to be Einstein to have a website up and running in two days.

What is difficult however, is to get all those newer developments going under your domain -worldwide chat, free telephony, the best standards in privacy and security. The problem here is that hosting providers generally lack the funds to get this started; and if they did, it would still be pretty useless if not all the providers took part in the same initiative.

What we are doing is bringing hosting providers, as well as speclalised companies who integrate Internet standards together, by creating an infrastructure based on plugins. You get your domain hosted, select a plugin that does something that your hosting party is not offering yet, and you plug it in.

We realise that this is a big change. It is big for us as well. So what we aim to do is take you a step at a time, from your current situation to a new one where you are in charge of what you do online.

What we are asking

Educate yourself. Decide what you think of your online privacy, how important security is to you and whether you want to have more control over rolling out new internet technologies. How do you feel about using various chatty networks without being able to crossover from one to another? Finally, would you find it useful to focus on interests, and have a separate external identity for each of them? Discuss these topics with your friends. Chances are you will be ready to change as a group, and that is easier than doing it on your own.

Act accordingly. Start liberating yourself from those services that are not in line with your wishes. Do this by setting up alternatives, preferrably under your own domain name. Start by publishing your information on your own website and switch to an email address under your domain. Then add chat and telephony.

Put your money where your mouth is. To get services that treat you as a full citizen of the Internet, you are invariably going to have to pay them. It is incredibly cheap to run Internet technology, these will be modest investments, but what you can get out of it will be startling. The trick is simply that you pay a provider to act according to your interests, rather than forcing a free service provider to find creative ways of covering their bills.

Profit as much as you can. When something new is offered, by all means go and try it. There is a lot of technology lurking in the wings, but it can only be a success if it is actually going to be used. We will aim for standards compliance, so you are never locked in to a particular provider; we also aim to make things run under your domain name, using identities such as you@domain.name, so you can always remove one provider and replace it with another. We are here to see that you get all the Internet that you deserve.

Concrete steps

1. You should get your own domain name. Think about what you want to put after the @ sign and go for it! Anything before the @ sign is going to be your territory -- you could have a domain for yourself, your family or your friends, whatever you like.
2. Domain names are visible all over the Internet, and these names are not shared. Chances are that your preferred name is already taken. Try another name, and another, until you have one you like that hasn't been taken yet. This effort is the price for acquiring a unique corner on the world. Names are registered first-come, first-served, so your chances are exactly the same as those of a large corporation's! Existing domain names are renewed once a year, or otherwise freed up and recycled.
3. To register your domain name, go and find yourself a hosting party. Many hosting parties currently limit themselves to web and email, and perhaps a number of packages running within the web server. Those will probably join our forward-moving efforts later on, but you should probably pick a provider that is already onboard today.
4. When choosing a hosting package, be sure to get you onboard with our forward movment. Most providers provide an optional donation to us to do this, on top of their existing hosting packages. Without selecting this, we still cannot pull you forward. Chances are you can also switch to this option after you acquired your standard hosting package.