Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
One thing that has become very clear over the past years is that there is a lot of value in data about people. Of course, the most well known examples these days are advertising and spy agencies, but tracking data is useful for many more things. For example, when trying to build software that is intuitive and easy to use,…
fdroidserver UX Testing Report
We ran user tests of fdroidserver, the tools for developers to create and manage F-Droid repositories of apps and media. This test was set up to gather usability feedback about the tools themselves and the related documentation. These tests were put together and run by Seamus Tuohy/Prudent Innovation. Methodology Participants completed a pretest demographic/background information questionnaire. The facilitator then explained…
Announcing new libraries: F-Droid Update Channels
In many places in the world, it is very common to find Android apps via a multitude of sources: third party app stores, Bluetooth transfers, swapping SD cards, or directly downloaded from websites. As developers, we want to make sure that our users get secure and timely update no matter how they got our apps. We still recommend that people…
New research report on the challenges developers face
The Guardian Project has been working with the F-Droid community to make it a secure, streamlined, and verifiable app distribution channel for high-risk environments. While doing this we have started to become more aware of the challenges and risks facing software developers who build software in closed and closing spaces around the world. There are a wealth of resources available…
F-Droid User Testing, Round 2
by Hailey Still and Carrie Winfrey Here we outline the User Testing process and plan for the F-Droid app store for Android. The key aims of F-Droid are to provide users with a) a comprehensive catalogue of open-source apps, as well as b) provide users with the the ability to transfer any app from their phone to someone in close…