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Beluga for iOS — Twitter-like app that uses S3-compatible services as backend
Beluga publishes your posts to a JSON/RSS feed and a simple static site on the open Web. Publish your "tweet-like" content to your preferred S3-compatible service directly from your phone.
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Replies
Lauren Proctor
This is amazing. Congrats on launch.
I am a big fan of something similar called OmniTweet. It's a WordPress plugin that syndicates your tweets to a website. The goal is to take ownership away from Twitter and "own" your feed. Here's the link, if you're interested. The creator, Chris Pearson, always inspires me to be a better thinker: https://diythemes.com/focus/omni...
I love what you're doing with Beluga even more, because it takes Twitter out of the equation and gives the creator full ownership. This is something I'd always hoped for with OmniTweet.
I'm going to spin up a feed now and look forward to multi-device support!
Share
Hi friends.
Beluga is a reaction to all the Twitter craziness. I've been thinking about this idea for a long time and finally decided to build the app a few months back.
The idea is straightforward. Can we build a Twitter-like experience without central servers or a single point of failure? RSS was my point of reference, and that's why Beluga is essentially a feed reader/writer.
When you publish a post, Beluga will create a beluga.json and upload it to your S3-compatible server. Other users can follow you and get updates by fetching that file. The beluga.json file is JSON Feed compatible to maximize interoperability. The app also publishes a beluga.xml which is a standard RSS feed. Users can follow your Beluga feed from the app or from their favorite RSS reader.
To make the app even more accessible, a static mini-site is generated and published to your S3-compatible online storage.
Here's the mini-site of my feed: https://beluga.gcollazo.com
Please give the app a try. Setting up an S3 bucket might be difficult, so feel free to reach out to me, and I will help you support @ beluga.social.
Upcoming features:
- Easy publish without setting your own S3 bucket
- Read-only mode
- Multiple device sync
- Support for more S3 compatible providers
- Support for GitHub pages
- Mastodon interoperability
Top Hunter
@gcollazo curious why you chose JSON Feed rather than ActivityPub? Mastodon could really use a slick iOS client and Beluga looks like a great start!
Also, do you participate in the Indieweb community?
@chrismessina I want to enable as many clients as possible for the feed. The app currently produces JSON/RSS feeds and a website. I will soon add basic compatibility to allow Mastodon users to follow Beluga feeds from their favorite servers/apps.
My main issue with ActivityPub is that it requires "expert" hosting. A Mastodon server is a complex and hard-to-scale collection of services, including a database. The approach I went with uses "dumb storage" in the form of S3 buckets, shared web hosting via SFTP during the beta process, and very soon, Github Pages and more.
Hosting and scaling a file on the web is a lot simpler, but it has many limitations, some of which can be solved with optional central servers, a model very common in the podcasting world.
This is awesome. I'm hoping you'll add GitHub Pages support soon. I'm not sure, but you might be able to add support for Vercel/Netlify hosting.
This is REALLY neat!
Being able to host/post off GitHub will definitely solve for all regular users who do not hold a server account themselves. Hopefully in the works?
Fantastic initiative.
RSS Simplicity?
I absolutely love everything about this.
Congrats on the launch! This is a product I've been waiting on for a while, so excited to see it here.
I love this concept! I've been looking for twitter alternatives and this seems like a valid solution. How does following work? I just tried to click "follow" on your link and it didn't do anything.
I love how this is based on open standards! Really hope it gains traction.
One of in interesting product in today's list. A video on landing page could be more helpful. Any plans for android? Congratulations on the launch!
@naveed_rehman I know of someone currently working on an Android version but no ETA. I will work on a video as soon as possible.
