Greetings everyone! Following the energetic last couple of weeks, filled with hard work and emotions, we bring you a new AKASHA release named Seeking Whispers. The latest 0.5 version contains multiple bug fixes and introduces new features such as Whisper based searching, easy identity backup, mentions and ... drums in the background ... GIF support!

Among the bugs fixed we also squashed the famous "link of death" bug which was stopping users from publishing and saving drafts containing embedded links (sorry about that one -_-;)

The Whisper search experiment featured in this release is very interesting since it enables truly private searches by not revealing the identity of the person making the request. As far as I am aware, we might be the first ones using Whisper for this purpose and from our experience it seems like there's real potential here for enhancing user privacy online - big kudos go to Marius for the idea and implementation.

Following the initial results of this searching experiment we plan to expand it also for people and the rest of the sections that will be rolled out in the near-mid future.

Whispers everywhere - shh!

On another note, we reached a historical milestone over 1000 entries published in a completely decentralized fashion using smart contracts+IPFS as we are rapidly approaching 2000 identities created on AKASHA. Yaaay!

\o/ \o/ \o/ \o/ \o/ \o/ \o/ \o/ \o/ \o/

All in all, it feels like we are gaining momentum and we'd like to thank you, the Community, for this! All your support and encouraging words motivate us and really brings out the best in us!

Moving on, you can find a few screenshots exemplifying the latest features bellow:

Whisper based search

Mentions in entries and comments (chat coming soon)

Identity backup

Profile hover card from chat for easy tipping

GIFs, GIFs, GIFs

Without further ado, we bring to you the latest download links:

Instructions For Windows Pioneers:

Download the .exe installer or the .zip archive from our official alpha GitHub repo

Run the installer or extract the files contained in the .zip file

Open the AKASHA dapp and synchronize with the network

Create an AKASHA identity (profile)

Log in and enjoy AKASHA

Instructions For Mac Pioneers:

Download the .dmg installer or the .zip archive from our official alpha GitHub repo

Run the installer or extract the files contained in the .zip file

Open the AKASHA dapp and synchronize with the network

Create an AKASHA identity

Log in and enjoy AKASHA

Instructions For Linux Pioneers:

Download the .deb installer or the .zip archive from our official alpha GitHub repo

Run the installer or extract the files contained in the .zip file

Open the AKASHA dapp and synchronize with the network

Create an AKASHA identity

Log in and enjoy AKASHA

Just as with the last releases, the general rule of thumb for is "If something breaks, refresh the dapp." Since it is an alpha, it comes with all the instability associated with early experiments - just as the first flight attempts were not necessarily safe or comfortable.

We're looking forward to hearing your thoughts and we hope you will enjoy this release!

Please note that following this release we want to focus on refactoring the code and prepare things for the next stage leading to open sourcing AKASHA. That being said, expect a slow down in new features added in the coming weeks but be sure that it will be worth it in the long run.

Thank you for your understanding! ^_^

And to conclude, this is a short video covering our journey to EDCON in Paris while development on this release was taking place in our Bucharest hacklab - BIG UP for the amazing work done by this amazing team! The trip was inspiring and marked our first conference at which we presented AKASHA - many thanks, again, to everyone for the warm welcome!

The full recording of the AKASHA presentation can be found here

See you on AKASHA!

*Note that the downloading links have been updated with the latest 0.5.2 release, Continued Mendings (March 10th 2017)