Me too.
A percentage of those caught in the current wave will probably figuer out Mt Gox, and that may take a few days to show up as bank transfers make their way through.

I think the main uncertainty is in legality; the people with the core capital and competencies  to establish a physical exchange would like to know the legal status of BTC before they dive in.

Good point. It did not seem that daunting to me to buy my first bitcoins. However, when I helped some non- tech friends get started i realized how many computer skills one must have. Even more if you want to understand the block chain, or get into security.

One good way for newcomers to get their first bitcoins is by earning them: sell something on biddingpond.com, provide a simple service, ...

This is an option that is almost never mentioned to newcomers, but I think it's a good one: it's fun, you learn a lot about bitcoin in the process, and it is almost easier than going through complex bank transactions. Plus, it's where bitcoin really shines!

Yes it is indeed rather hard to enter the bitcoin world atm. Currently you have to be tech-savvy, risk-loving, somewhat idealistic and have some money available to buy them (or at least stuff to sell). I think the sudden rise in value also put some potential newcomers off because they either think they have missed the train or they think it's a bubble/pyramid/scam/whatever.
It will surely help to have the fiat exchange rates to stabilize a bit because then both merchants and customers will gain more confidence using it like normal money and not viewing it as a high-risk speculative asset.

Mining bitcoins was a nice concept to get them distributed but with difficulty skyrocketing at current rates this will soon be a monopolized business and therefore we might have to think of new ways to distribute the coins to interested users.

Bounties are probably a good way, but chances are they are collected by the die-hard hoarders as well.
The faucet is a great thing but it has been abused and nowadays doesn't really offer you that much in return for a Google account.
Physical bitcoin-cards maybe a neat idea as a gift, but without explaining the concept (which can be a bit daunting for the average not-so-enthusiast) they are probably going to throw them away or just quickly selling them for $$.

A good idea is probably to have talks or booths at conventions where the concept could be properly introduced and people could get a small amount of bitcoins as starter-packs, maybe buy them at subsidized rates or better still: have some games with the chance to win bitcoins. This would be kind of a real-world faucet and could surely be funded by donations as well.

Another issue is the usability of the official client. I think the client needs much more work in terms of user-friendliness - it should ideally be self-explanatory, not only for its own usage but for the bitcoin system as a whole. Maybe even have something in the style of the "What is Bitcoin?"-video as a tutorial mode...

The other side of this issue is, that people will more likely want to overcome the difficulties to come aboard, if the incentives for using bitcoins were higher. Currently the great advantages of the bitcoin system are often not recognized by the average non-geek and I think we still have way to go in terms of using bitcoins to their full potential for the them.

One possibility would be to get them "one community at a time". Ok, right now we probably have a subset of the geeks, the gamers, the venture capitalists, the libertarians, the anarchists,... Anyone reading this who does not fit in, please stand up
But to go more mainstream we probably have to look at something like the music communities - bitcoins are a great method of payment for independent artists but we still need some good system for that. Micropayments are another thing which could be an incredibly well-suited use-case for bitcoins (given we sort out a few things regarding transaction-fees) and also used to get websites introducing their visitors to the coin.

I am sure bitcoins could be utilized to suit the needs of many different communities/interest groups and there is much work done but we're not there yet.

All in all, I'd say give it some time - let the market stabilize a bit, get more work done on the different online-platforms, improve the client-usability, sort out some legal issues for the merchants and work on new ways to incentivize users to come aboard. Sooner or later they sure will

It used to be hard, but now Dwolla - > MtGox is as easy as could be.

The only drawback is that it takes a few days for your funds transferred from your bank account to become available on Dwolla. But three days isn't that unreasonable.

Apparently it only works in the USA. Does anyone know if there are similar services from other countries?

Trust will be required in any exchange. The rest of your points stand.

How hard is it to acquire physical gold or cash? Now how hard is it to acquire Bitcoins? Remember, Bitcoins are non-refundable. Of course it’s a bit difficult to get them.

Hm. Paypal has banned currency exchange, but have they banned payment to sites that only facilitate currency exchange?

As in, I PayPal some dollars to Mt. Gox, "an e-wallet service". Then I exchange those dollars for bitcoins there. Does this count as using PayPal for currency exchange? I mean, banks do currency exchange, but I'm sure PayPal wouldn't stop Bank of America from opening an account as a convenience to its customers.

Not that Mt. Gox seems interested in accepting PayPal. But with their volume they probably could---the proportion of dishonest people is not that high.

I think there's a silver lining to all of this. Essentially, if someone wants bitcoins they can either (a) figure out the logistics of the financial markets and buy in, or (b) figure out some good or service that they can offer in exchange for bitcoins. When I was first turned onto btc, I bought a few, but buying them was complex enough that eof and I decided that it wouldn't be that much more work to set up a micro-business - and thus http://www.iusecoins.com was born . If others are driven by logic similar to ours, then the current state of affairs might actually be driving the growth of the real bitcoin economy (which I think we all prefer to massive speculative swings).