Friend is about to make a splash in the Blockchain space. It is a versatile cloud computing technology that builds on the concept of the application server but adds sophisticated resource and user session management to the mix. It can be used for backendless development, in that it unifies technologies and networks and exposes them through one API specification.

We describe the Friend Network as a virtual Cloud Computer network. Each user account is connected to a cluster of functionalities inherited from drivers, libraries, modules and applications. A Friend Cloud Computer emerges from these components as a whole, knit together by our servers and is accessed through a client — often in a web browser.

The system can be accessed using a command line interface, but the technology has advanced to a level where it has allowed for the creation of a fully fledged desktop environment that uses this API — and there are no missing ingredients.

Friend Workspaces are responsive, customisable desktop environments that hold applications and services in user accounts. From here, users can configure their cloud computers and work using apps and data in a browser tab.

As a global transaction processing computer, Ethereum solves the problem of putting logic into the Blockchain so that it is possible to knit together services while retaining strong control over ownership and identity. This enables us to build autonomous software infrastructure when coupled with decentralised server networks that offer storage and execution of anonymous application requests.

Friend has come far since its humble beginnings. At the moment, more than 2.000 testers have proven that our server technology works and is reaching solid stability. Our Javascript APIs cover our entire server specification and gives developers powerful tools on which to base decentralised client-side applications. Our server infrastructure has only begun to proliferate into the hands of users on the internet at large. Having released version 1.0.0, we have decided to move on to phase two — we are redesigning Friend to become an emergent and truly autonomous operating environment and service network.

Decentralisation of Friend requires work on three core aspects of our technology; interfacing with a database, storage and request processing using our API. We have found that BigChainDB meets our database requirements. For storage, we’ve considered IPFS. For request processing, Golem seems a very good match — and we’ve started the process of getting our server up and running on Golem nodes to prove that it works. Our Friend Network will provide us with our own node network on which to spread handling of network requests from client-side applications and cloud desktop environments.

Friend connects to external resources and services, abstracting them through its own API specification and allows developers to focus on high level functionality while all the server magic is done at the bottom of the stack.

Friend can in many ways be seen as an API server as well as an API transcoder. It connects to services on the internet and translates functionality to conform to Friend’s own API. This makes it easy for Javascript developers, in that they can change their service provider setup and switch components in their infrastructure configuration without having to change their code.

On the server, developers can build modules that implement functionality that process data or execute calls using their own services. Right now, we are implementing modules for the many Blockchain technologies that have become available in the past few years and months. Through our standardised APIs, we give developers an easy to use interface stack on which to base new apps and high level functionalities.

Friend will be the first open source operating environment for Ethereum that has all the bells and whistles of a real operating system. This will open up a space for interacting with Blockchain technologies using a human interface. It will help developers standardise their build stacks and enable them to rapidly build applications on top of customisable components that can be designed to use different drivers on the back-end, while keeping things nice and stable on the front-end.

Friend Workspaces are versatile, and allows advanced users to set up their application environments with themes, folder structures, preferred service providers and even build and modify their applications online.

Users will see great new apps that they can collect in web based Friend Workspaces, simplifying access by placing these applications in an «application wallet» — similar to how they are used to handle their crypto currency or browser bookmarks. We believe that this will accelerate adoption of Blockchain based applications as developers swiftly distribute on the Friend Network and users connect and register software in their decentralised operating environment — their Friend Cloud Computer.

Help from our friends

Over the course of the last three years, the Friend project has picked up senior engineers, entrepreneurs, managers and advisors from around the world with great track records. These individuals have been able to open doors and solve challenges that would be difficult for a normal start-up. This has allowed us to access funding and build a platform with the combined knowledge of insiders from the tech industry going back multiple decades in history. Likewise, it has equipped us with business development experience and acumen that has made it possible to enter the marketplace and harvest insights from real world use cases where actual problems are solved, triggering the development of specific features that everyone may benefit from.

Friend was presenting at NTNU (Technical University of Trondheim, Norway) and met with excited liquid software engineers that used to work for Nokia. Liquid software is integral to Friend’s software philosophy —moving apps.

It is humbling to see the effect the project has had on experienced industry veterans. For many, Friend is the answer to a dream that was once dreamed by Unix specialists in the 70s and 80s. Before the Internet Age, there was no technological solution to distribute thin-clients and connect them to mainframes on a large scale. We have gone through a transition period for more than two decades before this has even been technologically feasible. Personal computers have been offline machines lacking the bandwidth to transmit the quantities of data required to process large files and handle complex functionality. Internet service providers used to be and generally still is centralised. After the bandwidth and processing power increased, few could have imagined that decentralisation would be the missing ingredient that would enable a mainframe like server network to work globally.

Building our base technology has been incredibly rewarding, but very challenging. Being in the lucky position where we could combine great insights from minds who have worked in the industry since its inception has helped a lot. This has translated to being able to rapidly iterate on the technology in development based on strong and educated feedback. And it has allowed us to design an organisational architecture that can carry Friend onto the world stage where we can unleash its full potential.

Friend delivering medical applications and device integration, adhering to high standards in the medical industry.

The Five Pillars of Friend

Friend tries to attain the value of five words. Freedom. Intelligence. Empowerment. Privacy. Integration. These values are found in the very soul of the platform — all read in the perspective of the platform as your Friend.

Freedom is the driving force of peace. Freedom of choice. Freedom of movement. Freedom of thought. Freedom to innovate. Freedom to speak and communicate. Our project seeks to protect these freedoms by spreading Friend far and wide, turning over the ownership of the technology to the users themselves. The platform offers all users a choice in tools that are available anywhere they travel. Tools to conceptualise ideas. They can build their own apps online and distribute them in seconds. They can communicate using powerful instant messaging and peer-to-peer video conferencing software available to anyone on the internet. And they can do all of this on any computer with an internet connection, untied from any single device.

Working in an international team of programmers is easy using the Friend Platform. We are now bringing the freedom of movement that we developed to everyone by utilizing blockchain technologies.

Intelligence is fundamental to personal growth. It protects our freedom by allowing us to solve problems and make informed decisions. We want to help advance people’s personal development by enriching their intelligence through access to data. Intelligence through access to data processing. Through access to applications. Through accessible and easy to use services that can automate mundane tasks. Friend is a platform that will stand by your side and help you get more insight into your life.

Empowerment is the distribution of opportunity through capability. By making Friend free and open, anyone from all over the world gets access to powerful tools and vast storage space. It helps distribute increased access to education, employment opportunities and upward mobility. Friend users are powerful. And they get unrestricted access to build their future without needing to pay for the service — lowering the bar for personal empowerment all over the world.

Arne Peder Blix and Hogne Titlestad, evangelising Friend’s benefits to technologists at iPark, Stavanger, Norway.

Privacy is important to achieve a functioning democracy. The ability to keep secrets is not only good for the individual, but it is good for protecting others from raw unarticulated information that can be wielded to seed false narratives and misunderstandings. Privacy also protects the individual from structural or corporate abuse, where your data is sought for money and control. In Friend, we work vigorously to protect users’ privacy. By encrypting on the user’s own device, we protect the data before it is stored on the server. By allowing anonymous access to the Friend Network, we allow the user to choose if, how and when to expose his or her identity.

Integration is a way to simplify. Digital structures are getting increasingly complex, and by integrating data, devices and services, we try to organise the complexity in simpler forms. By aggregating a user’s piece of the internet pie into a Workspace, it can clean up the information into disks, directories and applications — it allows a user to clean up the internet like you would clean up a room in book shelves, drawers, devices, furniture and ornamentation. And it allows a user to integrate his or her digital life.

Friend is a humanitarian project. It was built on the dream of a truly free and future proof operating environment protected from corporate interests, financial limitations and enforced paradigms. It is built as an emergent and internet embedded infrastructure that seeks to distribute opportunity and capability to anyone with no discrimination. Just like Ethereum. And it’s here today — open to your participation. Help us accelerate the process of decentralising the internet so that we can build the future together and invite everyone to the party.

Using Friend to establish a global community that has direct access to each other, on technology that is self-proliferating, autonomous and free — developed and owned by the users.

To read more about Friend, please visit https://friendup.cloud

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