finally got around to publishing our checkin lexicon (and the like and comment one) lexicon.garden/lexicon/did:... it's been a while since I actually changed anything in it so seems ok to officially release this v1 of sorts.

Two cool projects I learned about this week, both building Foursquare-esque location based experiences on ATProto: @beaconbits.app and @dropanchor.app

Love that people are working on geo-based apps built on atproto. Plenty of cool possibilities here, and a reminder of why all sorts of new apps should be building on atproto to have instant identity and social layers.

So cool! You don’t only own your data but you can bring it along to create new use cases in other apps.

We're not asking for 'all the permissions' anymore when you login.

I caved and got rid of the admittedly quite jarring pink background and redesigned the overall look to be more 'standard feed social'. Feels a bit more calm now at least if a bit less original 😉

If you happen to have a Foursquare/Swarm checkout lying around somewhere you can now take those checkins and publish them on #atproto as Anchor checkin records. I made a little Golang cli app that should make it super easy (and takes rate limits into account) tangled.org/tijs.org/fsq...

In one of those 'you can just build it' moments @dropanchor.app now support @beaconbits.app checkins on your feed. All your beacons will be shown in your anchor feed (marked with the bb logo) and link back to the original checkin on beacon bits. Enjoy!

Noice! More mad folk making checkin apps on atproto 🫶

Still seeing issues with check-ins failing once your session is expired. If you get a 500 error when checking in please logout and back in again for now. Sorry for the inconvenience. Will look into this after our holiday ☺️ bsky.app/profile/tijs...

New atproto app just dropped 🐔

Build 25 adds the like count to the timeline and detail views in the app. A checkin you share can be liked by other logged in users on the checkins page on the web.

Build 24 is now out! This fixes the share url to use the new checkin detail page url format.

Anchor might be for personal logging but that doesn't mean we can't be social on the checkins you share beyond your personal timeline. We now support likes ❤️ on the checkins! (comments coming soon) dropanchor.app/checkins/tij...

Build 22: Makes the settings screen options functional, but also introduces an option to choose your own location provider. Starting simple for now but eventually will likely do a bring your own api key setup. I believe the target audience for this is nerdy enough that I can get away with this 😛

Build 21 is now available in TestFlight! It brings beautiful photo checkins to the app making it useful for both travel logging as well as food logging, and probably many more use cases. Also the timeline and detail views have been cleaned up and we brought the delete button to the iOS app as well

The dropanchor.app web client now supports image uploads! 🌁 this should make your checkins much more interesting. iOS coming soon! "remember this image from 9 years ago" feature maybe coming someday? dropanchor.app/checkins/tij...

The new mission for Anchor, focusing on personal location log instead of Swarm clone, has now also been implemented in the iOS app. The latest TestFlight build should now work again with the updated backend. But please logout and back in to get a new session. Bonus: nearby places is faster too.

Since 5 mins ago @dropanchor.app also support checking in from the website directly. This allows you to use drop anchor on any platform. Also it should keep you busy while I overhaul the iOS app to be more in line with the new personal location logger mission. Enjoy! dropanchor.app/checkin/did:...

I’m reworking Anchor to be a personal location logger more than a swarm clone. This allows me to rework the appview as a very thin layer on the PDS where it only needs to do some API endpoints and auth checking. While I’m working on this the site/app will likely be more down than up.

Whenever I'm looking at feature set and scope for Anchor I come back to personal location logger more so than Swarm clone. This would allow the app to rely purely on the locations in your pwn PDS for storage. No need for fancy follower graph logic (nor a need to store/cache that). Features follow..

Build 19 is now on TestFlight (and plenty spots still open). This one fixes some UI issues but mostly adds the timeline and following feed to the app. testflight.apple.com/join/gmSQv4Gh

I'm adding the following feed to the mobile app together with your personal timeline feed. I probably want to get rid of the global feed completely since that's not really something you'd want to have in the long term. So also likely taking that out in the web frontend. What do you think?

Build 18 is now out on Testflight! This release adds a new search feature in the checkin flow, for when the nearby places do not include your location. This search tab will allow you to search Nominatim directly for matching places. + Also includes your actual checkin text when sharing

Dropanchor's backend is now using @bad-example.com's Slingshot! Simplify all the things. github.com/dropanchorap...

Build 13 is out. This one moves all the categories to an API endpoint so we don't have duplicates but also since that will make it easier to move to other POI services/datasets in the future... These are our current categories if you're curious: dropanchor.app/api/places/c...

Build 12 is out. Simplifies the checkin flow, fixes an issue where you geo location would not update, more refactoring and fixes for oauth flow (should be much less error prone now) testflight.apple.com/join/gmSQv4Gh

Build 10 is now in TestFlight which should keep you logged in longer and show more places in the Nearby view when checking in.

Added a new detail page for check-ins to the website so you have something to share on.. well Bluesky of course! The latest TestFlight makes the share button for your check-ins functional so you can show off to your friends 🤝

Latest TestFlight build fixes an issue with timestamp parsing (check-ins are in the correct order again) and now should correctly save your personal pds url too also when logging in via the app. testflight.apple.com/join/gmSQv4Gh

you can now view your timeline and your followers and global feeds on dropanchor.app as well (yeah i know the design needs work). Just login with oauth to see your existing checkins or make an account. We did lose some (older format) checkins during the migration but i warned for that right? alpha ⚠️

trying out a new look & feel for #dropanchor. nautical but nice?

her talk is here and very very good xoxofest.com/2024/videos/...

The Anchor project started at about the same time the #atgeo discussion on how to deal with places on this network started to gain some steam. This is both a blessing as we get to experiment with first drafts of the future of locations on this network, and a curse because we will be throwing away..

Build 5 is now available on testflight. This latest build uses the checkin author profile information now retrieved and cached on the backend. So when loading feeds we don't have to fetch that data in the app, which sometimes fails.

We seem to be having some issues resolving the profile details for a checkin. Will look into this, but it’s a known issue.

Allright folks, approved and ready to go! And just to make it all a bit more exclusive this first version is iOS 26 only 😁 testflight.apple.com/join/gmSQv4Gh remember; very alpha, data loss is possible ⚠️

The very first (Testflight) release of the @dropanchor.app iOS social checkins app is now waiting for review! Maybe also the first @bsky.app social checkins app? I'm not sure if i will even make a full production backend for this but i'm having fun experimenting with #atproto and #atgeo for sure.

Haha I’m not actually out there doing sports but hey it’s fine for a demo! 𝑎𝑡 𝑬𝒙𝒆𝒓𝒄𝒊𝒔𝒆 🏋️‍♂️ #checkin #dropanchor

So i got a basic mechanism working for doing social checkins on #atproto. The flow is now; 1. app posts checkin record + #atgeo address record to the users PDS 2. Anchor appview fetches new records from the firehose (via jetstream) every 15 minutes 3. and makes them available as a (global) feed

Lunch is on 𝑎𝑡 𝑨𝒍𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒕 𝑯𝒆𝒊𝒋𝒏 🛒 #checkin #dropanchor

And one more which does include the social post as well. 𝑎𝑡 𝑱𝑱'𝒔 𝑲𝒊𝒕𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒏 🍽️ #checkin #dropanchor

Just testing my new check-in records 𝑎𝑡 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒌 '𝒕 𝑳𝒐𝒐 🌳 #checkin #dropanchor

Gotta love this site. Got some solid feedback on the pros/cons of this custom PDS and it's pretty clear i need to go back to the drawing board on this one. "people bring their own storage" was honestly the best description of why i should not do this. So archiving this attempt and trying again 🪦

Updated the website a bit to talk about the custom #atgeo checkin record I made for Anchor dropanchor.app the latest app version uses a very lightweight custom pds to store these check-ins and serve them to clients.

Ok it’s a bit corny but it has a nice retro vibe at the same time so i’m going for it. 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑑 ⚓ 𝑎𝑡 𝑺𝒏𝒂𝒄𝒌𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒑 𝑫𝒆 𝑺𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓 🍽️ #checkin #dropanchor

If you are wondering why I started with a menu bar app; it’s the simplest UI beyond a CLI. But you can no longer get the user location from a CLI app (since Mac OS 14 I think?) so it had to be the next best thing. I do intend to make something for iOS at some point when the idea works

Current state of the UI. Work in progress for sure but you can checkin and it will show up on your feed which is a win 📍#buildinpublic

Wrote up something on the current state of location sharing and the AT Protocol (a.k.a. Bluesky). Very early days still but all the pieces are coming in place to make a fully federated Foursquare like app (or more likely many apps) that you can use with your Bluesky login medium.com/@_tijs/the-m...

Let’s see if we can still checkin when we create a separate checkin record and then embed it in our main post record. Dropped ⚓ at Echt Sterk Crossfit #checkin #dropanchor