App.net Passport for Android now available, Passport for iOS updated

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This is a big week for App.net Passport, the easiest way to create a free App.net account, find friends, and browse the App.net directory. Passport for Android is now available, and Passport for iOS has been updated with our new onboarding tools. Our Passport apps are an important part of making the “out-of-the-box” experience smooth and simple for App.net users.

With this release, an Android user has a simple way to create an App.net account, find friends, and discover the great apps available on Android. Both versions of Passport feature our revamped onboarding tools for finding friends and verification, like address-book matching and profile search. You can also invite friends via text and email.

(Note: a minor phone number validation bug made it into the latest version Passport for iOS. A fix is being submitted to Apple for approval ASAP.)

 

App.net Passport Download Links:

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Information for Developers

Passport for iOS and Android are both built with the help of open source libraries. We have been contributing bug fixes and functionality to libraries on both platforms.

The App.net library for iOS is called ADNKit. The App.net library for Android is called ADNLib. ADNKit and ADNLib make the “out-of-the-box” experience for new App.net developers as smooth as possible, and hopefully our usage of them in Passport demonstrate how powerful and useful they are.

Additionally, we suggest that 3rd-party developers enable single sign on via Passport in into their applications. Open source SDKs for integrating Passport into your application are available for Android and iOS.

Thanks,

The App.net Team

This Week’s RecApp

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Developers have been busy so we have new batch of apps to share with you all. There is some good variety here and some apps that look to provide a new ADN experience, but file management does seem to be a popular theme among this group of apps. Get cozy with these apps and feel free to ask the developers if you have any questions. These apps and hundreds of others can be found in the App.net Directory.

 

orbitOrbit for iOS - iPhone - The best way to manage your files on App.net. • View files, file size, upload date • upload files • share images • share file URLs • delete files • toggle files public & private.  Created by @orbit

 

 

 

pastePaste - Web Client - Paste allows you to create and view short text clippings using app.net. Each paste has a public link that can be viewed without logging in to app.net, but an app.net account is required to create pastes. Logged-in users also see a list of their own recent pastes.  Created by @mcdemarco

 

 

 

dossierDossier - Mac - Dossier is a file browser and uploader for Mac OS 10.8+. • Upload any type of file to ADN • Automatic thumbnails for images • Clipboard uploading (great for screenshots) • URLs copied to clipboard after upload • Upload progress animation in status icon.  Created by @bluetoo

 

 

iftttIFTTT for iPhone - iPhone - IFTTT is a service that lets you create powerful connections with one simple statement: if this then that. Using the App.net Channel, you can create and share IFTTT Recipes that automate posts, sync content, archive data, and much more.  Created by @ifttt

 

 

filappFilapp - iPhone & iPad - Filapp for App.net is an iOS client for managing files uploaded to App.net on your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It’s simple to use with a beautifully designed interface offering these key features: • File directory • view file info • share/modify/delete files • upload files • view your account profile.  Created by @ffried

 

 

searchSearchADN.net - Search & Discovery - A dedicated web app for searching posts on app.net using the ADN Search API which was released July 24 2013. It gives you an easy interface to search posts using keywords, usernames, hashtags. Clicking the advanced link opens up a whole bunch of interesting query and filter options.  Created by @ludolphus

 

 

menereMeneré - Windows - Meneré is a Windows Desktop app to access RSS aggregation services like Feedly or Fever and sync them with a complete desktop app. You can send any item to your App.net account (you can authorize multiple and choose) which will send a post with the link added as link entity.  Created by @lighun

 

 

Please note: The app descriptions here are from the developers; edited slightly for formatting and length. 

Photo highlights from @hand_picd

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Here is another collection of fantastic photos shared on App.net by our creative members. We scan the global ‘Photos’ explore stream to find the most interesting images and then repost them with the @hand_picd account.

The photos below were the ones that stood out to us the most over the last couple weeks so we give them a little extra attention here.

If you’re a photo buff and want us to consider your shots just post your images with the #hand_picd hashtag and we’ll be sure to see them.

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We are just getting started

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cakeIt’s now the one year anniversary of App.net. Over the past year we have been making a transition from getting the basics of a social API up and running to supporting a vibrant community of 3rd party applications. So far, so good.

We are proud of the progress that we have made thus far, but we are just scratching the surface of our goals for the platform. In year two, as our focus expands from simply trying to deliver basic “1.0″ versions of our API, our overall mission remains the same: building a social platform with better aligned incentives with both users and developers.

A few highlights from the past year:

Looking forward

As part of this expansion in scope, and in light of overall progress we have made, we have raised ~$2.5MM of additional capital. The money has come from our existing investors, who have been partners in the business from the beginning. We raised money under good terms, from people that we trust, and that have been on our team from the very beginning.

Why did we choose to raise this money? We are just starting to realize the potential of what App.net can be, and we want our developer and member community to be confident that App.net is on strong financial ground and here to stay. This financing gives us an additional cushion and resources to manage and support the infrastructure and staff that run App.net. Our team, including our investors, are 100% committed to App.net’s services-based business model where our customers are our users, not advertisers.

A small preview of what’s to come:

  • Continue to build a strong foundation what we do best. For developers, we will continue to ship new APIs and broaden our social graph to provide you the best tools for innovation; for users, we will make it easier to create an account, find your friends, and discover new apps. The potential kinds of apps that can be built are just beginning to be realized, so expect to see new interesting apps and more users having novel interactions and experiences.
  • Expect updates to Passport for iOS with some often-requested features and the first release of Passport for Android.
  • As we quietly announced a few days ago, we’re responding to feedback on the Messages API and raising the character limit for PMs and Patter rooms from 256 to 2048.
  • We’ll be expanding the reach of the search API by allowing more things to be searched, like PMs, chats and files.
  • We will support developers as they build apps for iOS 7 and Patter, integrate with Ohai, and release the first App.net game.
  • And of course, we’ve got some exciting new APIs and lots of enhancements to our existing APIs on the way.

Thanks,

-Dalton

Response to Brennan Novak, part II

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On August 10, 2012, I published a blogpost entitled “A response to Brennan Novak”. In that post, I stated that App.net would support a number of interoperable web technologies.

As the one-year anniversary of my blogpost approaches, I’d like to highlight how App.net supports those technologies.

Line-by-line discussion of what was promised:

  • “Activitystrea.ms Atom & JSON feeds, as well as RSS feeds, of public posts for individual users, hashtags, etc.”

RSS feeds for public posts on user accounts & hashtags have been available for quite some time.

Activitystrea.ms support for JSON feeds was just released. This is what the output looks like. Our webfinger API returns a link to the appropriate Activitystream. (In the year that has passed it appears that community support for Atom activity streams has waned).

  • “Pubsubhubbub (PuSH) support (as a publisher, initially)”

You can view our PuSH publishing support in action here.

Consumption of PuSH was natively supported once we launched PourOver, an open source syndication tool.

  • “Exposing user identities with Webfinger”

Webfinger support was just added. Here is an example of Webfinger in action.

  • “Commitment to coordinate between internal and external parties to create and support open-source ‘lightweight’ clients in as many flavors as we can, ala Stripe”

There are open source libraries available in a wide variety of languages, for example: Objective-C, JavaScript, Scala, Python, Ruby, Erlang, Go, PHP, Clojure. There are several more open source libraries available, this is just a sample.

  • “Commit to enabling and supporting users in building inbound and outbound syndication to and from App.net”

3rd-party syndication apps such as IFTTT, Buffer, Zapier, Twitterfeed and more have been available and working for quite some time. Additionally, we have built and open sourced the aforementioned first-party syndication tool, PourOver.

I am happy to say that we now have fully supported all of the promised technologies. We have also added a few additional standards that were not mentioned in the original blogpost:

Looking Forward

We are looking forward to seeing developer adoption of these technologies.

Also, we believe that the work we have done on PourOver so far will be beneficial on a long-term basis. For example, if a new syndication format is released in the future, PourOver can be modified by us or the community to consume the new format without much difficulty. The fact PourOver is open source, is real-time (because it natively consumes PuSH), and can process a wide variety of inbound formats makes it quite a useful building block for future development.

Thanks,

-Dalton Caldwell

 

What is photo-app?

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photoapp 2For all you photographers out there, hobbyists and professionals alike, there is a new app in the Directory created by @taglia for you to help share your wonderful pics to ADN.  photo-app allows you to upload your photos and then schedule them to be shared on your ADN profile. This is a great tool for those who want to share a large number of photos without overloading your friends’ feeds with a bunch of posts all at once. Screen Shot 2013-07-19 at 5.32.50 PM

Each post to ADN will include a link to your other photos posted via the app so it gives you a chance to create a gallery of your photos so others can see all your glorious images.

You are able to upload a bunch of photos to photo-app and then individually edit each photo’s post date, choose a posting frequency or just let the app randomly choose which photo to post.

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The app lets you customize the post text that goes along with your posts and gives you the option to include the #photoapp hashtag to let your followers know what app you’re using. The @photoapp account will also automatically repost your photos shared through the app to give your photos a little extra attention.

photo-app has some other great features like the ‘Best‘ view which shows you the most popular photos shared through the app and the ‘Leaderboard‘ view which shows you who has posted the most photos via photo-app. You can also view the ‘Latest‘ (most recent) photos shared.

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We at App.net love photos and we embrace all the progress being made to improve the photo sharing experience on ADN. Keep it up!

Photo highlights from @hand_picd

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It’s been a couple weeks since we’ve highlighted the fantastic photos from App.net in a blog post so this one will be a little larger than usual. All of these photos have been reposted by ADN’s own @hand_picd account, which manually curates a collection of great shots that we see posted on the service.

If you think your pics deserve a little highlighting, use the #hand_picd hashtag when sharing them and we’ll be sure to see them.

Photos have become an increasingly important part of sharing on App.net and we’re seeing more and more photo related apps being built to support this sharing. Many of the regular clients have supported photo sharing for some time but we’ve recently seen more apps that were specifically designed to share photos built for and integrated with App.net.

Here are just some of the photo sharing apps we’re referring to, give them a try and find the one that works best for you: Sprinter, Photolicious, PanoPerfect, Pixter, Twentysecs, and photo-app.

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What is Rory Jr.?

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We would like to introduce you all to Rory Jr., the first native Android private messaging client for App.net. Rory Jr. is the latest dedicated private messaging app we’ve seen pop up and it appears that PMs are and increasing trend among ADN members and developers alike.

 

Rory Jr. is the little brother of Project Rory, the desktop private messaging client for Windows 7 and 8. Both were built by @fam and support Patter rooms. Rory Jr. also has integrated the App.net web signup flow so that non-ADN members who download Rory Jr. can create a free App.net account within the app.

We certainly love seeing the Android portion of the Directory getting filled out with quality products like Rory Jr. and other great apps. Rory Jr. is available in the Google Play store for $.99. If you have any questions about Rory Jr. contact @projectrory on App.net.

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