Introducing Portal

By @sherif.eurosky.social

Credit - Sherif EA

Today we are releasing Portal, a simple interface to help people navigate the Atmosphere - a new generation of apps & services on the web developed by an ever-growing number of startups, developers & organisations.

What sets the Atmosphere apart is that all these apps & services work together. And at the center of it all are personal web accounts (technically called Personal Data Servers or PDS).

Each person's account holds their user identity, data and connections across all these apps. Every user controls their data and which apps can access it. They can move between apps that do similar functions at will. For example they can move from Bluesky to Blacksky for microblogging or from leaflet to pckt for long-from blogging. Their friends and followers carry across apps - no more fearing that leaving a platform means losing your connections.

Portal today - the v1

Portal is as the very start of its life. Our primary aim is for Eurosky users to see that their accounts are much bigger than just Bluesky - that they are their home in what we believe is the future of the web - the Atmosphere.

When you login today, you will see a curated list of apps you can use with your Eurosky account - these apps do everything from creating a professional profile (Sifa) to a personal web page (Blento) to streaming (Streamplace), photo-sharing (Flashes) & collaborative coding (Tangled).

You also have access to tools for managing your account, help pages, FAQs, & privacy information.

What's next

Now that we have this first version released, here is what we are working on next:

1. App integrations: we are working with other Atmosphere apps to provide a smoother experience across apps, starting wth faster login across apps & deeper product integration where it makes sense. The first of these collaborations is with our friends at Sifa ID.
2. Visual navigation of you data: Today your data lives on you PDS. It's your data but there is no way for you to see it easily. Developers have tools for this and apps can retrieve the data, but 99.9% of users don't have a good way of doing this. We're changing this. In the near future, you will be able to navigate the files (videos, images & other files) you shared in the Atmosphere directly in Portal. It's first step towards effective control over your data.

Then there are potential features we are exploring. At this stage, these are just ideas - they include:

1. End-to-end encrypted private messaging integration that work directly from Portal.
2. Personal public pages - a place where you can have a public page on the web tied to your web identity. Imagine your account - e. g. mine is sherif.eurosy.social being also a composable public page that I can use for anything form a list of links, to display my blogs, or my contact information or a mix of things.
3. Daily briefings on you favourite topics and issues you care about.
4. Unified notifications from cross Atmosphere apps so you know what you need to pay attention to at a glance.
5. Daily games and puzzles.

Some of these will happen, some may not. There are many other possibilities too.

We're excited about where Portal could go over the coming months.

Tell us in the comments: what would you like to see?

p.s. Thanks to everyone who made today's launch possible - particularly the amazing @thisismissem.social for all her work on Portal and to @baileytownsend.dev for all the upgrades to the PDS. And of course all the team @eurosky.social :)