Redecentralize Radar, our super picky usable app directory

[Francis Irving]

Hiya!

We're launching a new service, to notify when a decentralized app becomes good enough to use.

http://redecentralize.org/

It's super picky.

There's only three apps in so far to get it going at launch.  Each is classed "Try", "Use" or "Share" as described on the directory page here.

http://redecentralize.org/radar/

We'll add more, but only when they're usable enough!

Would love feedback, and also ideas of decentralized apps you can *actually use* - not just prototypes, or platforms without apps, or things without installers on major platforms.

Best wishes,

Francis

[adam.ierymenko]

Looks wonderful. It's like Product Hunt for dapps, which is badly needed.

You might have different categories of usable. There are things that are usable for developers and IT people and then things that are usable for end users.

How do we submit stuff? IPFS, BitTorrent, ZeroTier, and of course all the cryptocurrency stuff should be on there to the extent that it is usable.

[juh]

A category which should be taken into account is the question. "Do my
friends use it".


As more an more friends use Signal, I think it is worth trying.

Communication technology that nobody uses accept me is not yet worth trying.

juh

[Dominic Tarr]

Although I no one denies that it's usable, it seems you disagree with
it's creator about whether signal is decentralized
https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

Prehaps you ment to say matrix?

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[juh]

Hi Dominic,

Am 28.02.2017 um 20:52 schrieb Dominic Tarr:
> Although I no one denies that it's usable, it seems you disagree with
> it's creator about whether signal is decentralized
> https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

this is an interesting read.

It says that innovation needs some kind of centralization, because of
the pace of development.

All users like to have a fast development which improves the UX from
release to release.

Decentralized protocols are blockers for an agile development of services.

I am not experienced enough to judge whether this is true.

But it fosters my idea that we must talk about control, not about software.

If it is true that some services requires centralization, we have to
control the centralized infrastructure by appropriate means.

For example: In Germany the top level domain "de" is controlled by a
cooperative organisation, which is owned by its members.

(BTW the idea of cooperatives is now on the list of the intangible
cultural heritage of UNESCO.
http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/RL/idea-and-practice-of-organizing-shared-interests-in-cooperatives-01200
)

In the beginning television in Germany was organised under public law,
controlled by a board which consist of members from "relevant social
groups". Television in that time had a public mission. With the advent
of private television this system was forced into a niche and people
started to degenerate.

What I want to say is. There are means to control infrastructure

a. collectively
b. by a public board

so that the infrastructure is neither controlled by the state nor by
corporations.

Especially b. was and is criticized in Germany by special interest
groups that want to privatize the entire public sector. Their success is
undeniable. Germany today is nearly completely private property.

I think that this is the front line. We have to fight back private
interest in the net. And because this is contrary to the individualised
ethos of most western developers (I don't want to say libertarianism) it
is not happening. Instead things like bitcoin come up which fuel the
next decade of predator capitalism.

Instead I would propose, for example, to found an organisation under
public law to distribute literature like Amazon is doing with its
services. Not only literature from the public domain but also new
literature. But the central stock would be our literal heritage which is
only very slowly digitalized, in Germany at least.

This organisation would distribute public domain E-Books for free and
printed books from the public domain for a cost-covering fee. And it
would give authors and readers the possibility to sell and buy books
directly, just as Amazon and Createspace are doing now.

But nothing happens. German publishers complain about the mighty
position of Amazon and try to defend their position by lobbying the
parliament to make strange laws.

If you can read German this might entertain you.
http://www.sudelbuch.de/2014/08/15/nimm-doch-mal-wieder-das-pferd/

So. In one word. Let us discuss not only software but also alternative
means of common control.

Ciao!
juh

[Francis Irving]

Yes - will add categories as it grows.

Posting to here or emailing me, or chatting on #redecentralize:matrix.org
are all ways to submit stuff.

So take below as all submitted!

IPFS - my impression is it is a developer level tool. Are there any
end user apps / hosting services based on it you recommend?

BitTorrent - is very well known, and has its own very particular
use case for file sharing. So I'm not inclined to cover it. I am
looking at Resilio (BTSync). Any other torrent-related clients
that you recommend?

ZeroTier - yes! Is there a place that says the common use cases
people have for it now?

Francis

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[Francis Irving]

Yes!

For Radar, I'm not being quite that closed to network effects. If
something seems usable enough that I think it reaches the bar that
friends could adopt it, and otherwise is excellent, it'll still go in.

Otherwise we really would get nowhere...

But note the usability requirement! Which very few things pass.
Alas, not even Signal - in my experience it doesn't reliably deliver
messages.

Francis

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[Peter Rushforth]

Hi,

I think maps don't get enough recognition as a centralization story, but when you think about it, the objective of many map providers is centralization.

We in the Maps for HTML Community Group have been working on fixing by pushing maps as a standard for integration with HTML,  and we have developed what we think is a "Try" level offering.  Hopefully if

people try it out they might consider joining our group (strength in numbers) and commenting on any issues they find.  The objective is to become a "Share" level offering :-).

A demo page is here: https://www.webcomponents.org/element/Maps4HTML/Web-Map-Custom-Element 

I wrote a blog post talking about progressive web maps, which might give you an idea of our objectives.

The (custom element) client can be installed for your web site (if you have bower) with : "bower install web-map".

There are some map services available here: http://geogratis.gc.ca/mapml/en/ 

And server software is available on github OR for issues with the specs or the software: https://github.com/Maps4HTML 

Pleased to discuss here or in issues or any of the linked resources.

Good luck with re-decentralizing the Web and the Internet!

Cheers,

Peter

[Peter Wang]

Hi Francis,

This is a good and important effort.  I would encourage you to look at adding Dat (http://datproject.org) and Beaker Browser (https://beakerbrowser.com/) to this list.  There is good energy starting to emerge around these two projects.

Overall, I feel that the tech community is starting to approach a point of coherence around the need and importance of decentralization, and as the Early Adopter crowd floods into this space which is currently only inhabited by Innovators, they will need high-quality curated resources to show them how to get started, what is where, etc. etc.  There are many different tech communities emerging, many of which unfortunately over-rotate on blockchain and whatnot, and it is critical that sites like redecentralize.org (or something like it) provide a directory or newbie-dev friendly catalog of these things.

Cheers,

Peter