Project Cubby

I’d like to give a little update about our homemade media messaging service and where the project is now.

Thinking of You

Our last update was on the first revitalization of the concept back in June 2020. That post marked a big change of pace that eventually created a working Android and web interface that served in “alpha” capacity since July that year. Over the next year and a half the project functioned, but was slow to meet many of our more ambitious goals for the service. iOS never really materialized and changes to the server capabilities were difficult due to some poor design choices of the API and database. Specifically administration and user control was not easy to work with when the people you want to on-board are not in the same house or state. However, the ux was stable and the service itself was reliable even with a few quirks here and there.

The Next phase

I wanted to get more self-service capabilities into the application, so that users could authenticate themselves, setup their profile and settings, and generally make it easier to administrate and expand in the future. However, doing that was very difficult while maintaining backwards compatibility. And so I set out to create a new implementation that would be able to hit those goals without breaking the running service. That new service I called “Cubby”.

Cubby

Cubby is a media messaging api over http and a web app for interacting with the service. The web app allows for a base line level of access that’s accessible for any user. Client applications can be considered enhancements and curators of a more streamlined UX. The API is in many ways the same as TofU’s but with some incompatible changes. Some improvements are

• Easier media upload api
• flexible authentication
• async, self-service on-boarding via invitations
• web app that can be used without javascript

This new implementation is still in the testing phase, but simplifying the api and data models should make adjustments and extensions easier now than ever.

Native Clients still need work

As before and so again, we will need more work to get native mobile apps up and running for this. The android app will just need a work of it’s backend and a few adjustments for authentication. iOS is still up in the air. I have the hardware to work on it, I’m just not much of an Apple ecosystem expert.

Looking forward to continuing the project

The base implementation may be different now, but I’m still looking forward to continuing to improve the project. Our earlier efforts with TofU showed that if we could get the application into a receptive circle of friend, that it would be used and achieve it’s mission of providing quite, patient, sharing of everyday experience with friends and family.