I read through since I posted it, but has there been any discussion on my idea of colored coins as a way to make the coin more understandable in its division, or if this is how Taco wanted to approach it?
I think its very important that such a convention is implemented so that people can easily numerate between fractions of the currency, in the event that it becomes very large. That way, we're not dealing with the issue of there being "Just X million coins", as the interface will readily show that there are in fact "X quadrillion coins of the basic color/naming convention"
I thought about your idea and I personally like it. Such a system could actually be implemented as a sort of "convention", instead of hardcoding the ledger system/protocol factoring in these different coin denominations. So for instance, let's say that there are 11million netcoins in existance. The highest denomination would be a "gold" netcoin, each of which is equal to 1 whole netcoin. Then, you have silver netcoins which are 1/10th of a netcoin each, and bronze netcoins which are 1/100th. If you have 3.4563 netcoins, the client could display that automatically broken out as gold, silver and bronze, while the ledger still tracked it as 3.4563. Instead of having to track multiple types of coins, it' simply becomes a convention. As cliche as it sounds, I'd advocate working more with the "gold", "silver" and "bronze" denominations, or something that holds intrinsic meaning to folks, instead of arbitrary colors (why is a "red" netcoin worth more than a "blue" one?). "Large", "medium" and "small" could work too...e.g. I have 1 large netcoin, 5 mediums and 15 smalls.
EDIT: After thinking some more about the "display hack" method of denominating coins, I think it's probably too leaky an abstraction (e.g. exchanges would most likely continue to work with the whole coins and use decimals...cryptogeeks as well). The other method (using colored coins of some sort) would not be such a leaky abstraction, but could have its own issues when talking about things such as:
* how does a user easily convert between coins (e.g. from silver to gold)
* would you have separate exchanges for each coin type, or one exchange for one coin type and force people to that type to trade?
* etc.
Some more general comments: From my reading on these forums, my opinion is that people have a bias against low numbers of coins (higher numbers of coins and especially WHOLE coins are seen as "better" and "more desirable". Total float and per-coin valuation is almost secondary to most folks TO AN EXTENT -- not talking about BBQCoin levels here, but definitely avoiding bitbar levels at all costs). I think it's an intrinsic human property that is much older than currency itself. The first question is always "how many?", not "what is the conversation rate?" or "how many are outstanding total?"
Also, most people tend to hate working with decimal spaces. I think a lot can be done to drive coin adoption and innovation via harnessing our own collective observations about how people view and think about unit value of any kind of currency. Splitting the currency across 3 or 4 denominations to reduce decimal bloat has very pertinent corollaries in meat-space currency (both of a fiat and non-fiat nature) and I think most folks would take to it like ducks to water.
I've been designing and developing software for awhile now. What I've learned is that you can NEVER underestimate simplicity and a strong visual impact. Our company has had offerings that had a ton of technical chops around them, but at the end of the day the kinds of things that really jazz our clients up are the simpler things, such as the simplicity of the UI, or real-time dashboards where the info is all in one place. Emotions and excitement arise most around what the eye can see and the mind can quickly understand. These things can be just as important to general adoption as the technical chops, and should not be discounted. There is a certain kind of inherent complexity with cryptocurrencies (at least at this point in the game), but I think a lot can still be done without investing millions on hardware wallets, P2P payment networks, etc.
A good rule of thumb for me is if I witness trends like this on the forums (where most people tend to be computer savvy, investment savvy, or both), then the effect will like be magnified greatly once you start involving the general population. Us geeks have a tendency to write factors like this off as trivial, but we are living in a fishbowl when we do. Go ask enough people on the street and your assumptions will likely change. Many of those same people could become netcoin users if/when this does take off.
Sorry about the spam! There's been a lot around lately. 
