Doesn’t it feel like we’ve been too quiet for too long?
The team’s been very busy, indeed mostly with other things. But, today, we’re releasing a big update to Dérive app. The backend is completely being replaced and the biggest consequence is that you will have to download a new release from your App Store to keep using Dérive app. Typically, this happens automatically.
Here’s what’s new:
- When you start exploring using Dérive app, you can choose your dérive to be ‘open’, or you can join an existing ‘open’ dérive. An ‘open’ dérive is where you join others in exploring the world, remotely, together. While doing so, you can exchange notes and images with all participants.
- You can now open up your own groups without requiring us to intervene. This means your decks are now much easier to find, as other users can find your group by searching.
- Decks can now be set to ‘public’, by us. Public decks are available to everyone, without having to join your group.
- Groups can now be set to ‘featured’ by us, which makes them available, by default, to users of Dérive app.
- Cards can now be associated with a location and a radius. These cards are triggered when the user enters the area defined by a radius around a point. Users can temporarily ‘snooze’ these cards.
Location-based cards can only be played once in each dérive. - You can now leave notes and images when you are experiencing a dérive.
- ‘Hosted’ dérives are now called ‘curated’ dérives. You can auto-generate the cards in a curated dérive, and you can completely curate it yourself.
- The admin interface, where you can create groups, decks, and cards, has been moved from the app to a web-based interface. You log in with the same credentials, but you *have* to associate an email address with your account to do so.
- All dérives, and participant contributions, that are part of a curated dérive, or an open dérive, can now be viewed in one place, on one map.
- The steps of individual dérives can be downloaded as CSVs (comma separated files). This applies to your own dérives, dérives which have their location set to ‘public’, and, when your dérive is part of a curated or open dérive, for other participants.
- The interface of the app is now multilingual. We’re starting with English and Portuguese.
- Translations can now be added to cards. We’re starting with allowing for Portuguese, Dutch, French, German, and Russian.
