Re-Public Weekly: iOS Update Coming Soon
We're close to releasing a new and improved version of the iOS app, as well as beginning a cadence of more frequent updates.
It's been a relatively quiet build week so I'll keep this update short. And first I want to get a little meta and discuss these updates themselves.
Why weekly updates? At this point we don't expect most of you to be involved in our Discord server or follow our Twitter account very closely, so this update is a way to keep a finger on the pulse of Re-Public via email, which is the easiest way for most people.
Also, as a member of JournoDAO I've seen their weekly updates on the blog be pretty successful so I thought I'd try them out here as well.
Reminder: Town Halls every Friday at 10am PT (UTC -7). Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
YouTube Channel
We now have a Re-Public YouTube channel and our first and only video is the recording of last week's Town Hall.
Mobile App Development
Most of my time this week was spent revisiting the iOS app and getting a new version out to testers. For those who are interested in the technical details, the app is built using a framework called React Native. This allows us to use the same code for the Android app and the iOS app. Theoretically.
In practice, building the app for one platform creates bugs and crashes that didn't exist in the other platform. So when I'm focused on the Android app and get that to the Play Store, when I go back to build and publish the iOS app, all sorts of new problems come up.
I believe we're pretty close to getting those issues sorted and so look for an updated iOS app shortly.
At a higher level I hope this marks the beginning of frequent updates to both apps since they've been languishing for months. Help me stick to it!
Re-Public on Urbit
Since this update is pretty light, I'll take the opportunity to mention Urbit. It's a company and community that's very much aligned with the Re-Public mission, and I'd encourage anyone who's interested to learn more.
They are trying to build a version of the internet with no central servers, just a peer-to-peer computer network. Your identity on the network is baked into your Urbit computer and all data is only shared between each computer as needed. No stores of your personal data sitting on servers somewhere. No surveillance capitalism. It's the internet as we would build it today if we could go back in time and start over.
But its peer-to-peer nature also means that you can't access the Urbit network from outside the Urbit network. To see what is going on there, you need to setup a computer or virtual machine that runs the Urbit operating system and access the network through the Urbit OS. Personally I pay for a hosted Urbit computer at UrbitHost so that I can just login to it through my web browser and I don't have to deal with any of the setup. So it's like tunneling into my Urbit computer through a web browser.
Once inside the Urbit network, there is a large community of people who actually care and understand the Re-Public mission, even if they don't know about Re-Public yet. It's really quite something. If you're curious, check out their Getting Started guide. If you do make it in, search for the Re-Public group and say hi. I can't link to it because it's on a different internet!
Have a good week everyone. Hope to see you in the Town Hall!