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We did it! And one more app...

By Kenton Varda - 28 Aug 2014

Thanks to you, we’ve reached our funding goal with four days to spare. We are honored to have been pushed past the goal by renowned Free Software developer Audrey Tang, who among many other things is one of the core developers of EtherCalc, an app which has been ported to Sandstorm. Audrey becomes our second Key Individual Sponsor. We were also helped immensely by our second Corporate Sponsor, HumanWeb Networks. (A third Corporate Sponsor came in this morning; details coming soon.)

We are still accepting contributions! Now through Sunday is your last chance to pick up one of our campaign perks and get yourself listed in our credits. Go grab a t-shirt and a sticker pack (featuring the Sand Cat), preorder Sandstorm hosting, or grab one of the four remaining LAN Party Invites, or become one of our key sponsors. Go to the campaign »

One More App: MediaWiki

We’ve just released our last app port of the campaign: MediaWiki. This is the very software that powers Wikipedia, packaged as a Sandstorm app. You can use MediaWiki on Sandstorm to host a private wiki for you and your friends or teammates. Go install it from the app list now, either on your own Sandstorm server or on our demo.

MediaWiki screenshot

Meet the Sand Cat

By Kenton Varda - 27 Aug 2014

Allow me to introduce Sandstorm’s new mascot, the Sand Cat. Based on the adorable desert animal who can go for weeks without drinking by using only the water from its prey, the Sand Cat is the handiwork of talented illustrator Néna Nguyen.

Sand cat illustration #2

The Sand Cat’s story will begin to unfold over the coming weeks, but we wanted to give you a sneak peek so that we could let you know that we’ll be adding Sand Cat stickers to every sticker pack sold as part of our Indiegogo campaign. So, if you haven’t had a chance yet, grab a sticker pack for $8 or a t-shirt plus sticker pack for $32.

Sand cat illustration #1 Sand cat illustration #3

Streaming Music with Groove Basin

By David Renshaw - 26 Aug 2014

Today we are releasing our port of Groove Basin, the ongoing product of Andrew Kelley’s three year quest to build the ultimate music player.

Groove Basin Screenshot

With the Groove Basin app, you can upload music to a Sandstorm grain and listen to it from anywhere. Groove Basin provides loudness compensation, gapless playback, and support for a wide range of codecs, including all of the common ones like mp3, flac, ogg, m4a, aif, wav, and wma.

As befits a Sandstorm app, Groove Basin also has some interesting sharing features. You can connect one client to speakers and let other clients act as remote controls, with the ability to control playback and upload new music. Alternatively, you can set up a long distance listening party, where geographically dispersed listeners share a playback stream. We’ve integrated Groove Basin’s permissions system with Sandstorm’s, so only the instance owner is allowed to perform destructive actions like deleting tracks or editing tags.

I highly recommend that you give it a spin, either on your personal Sandstorm server or on the demo.

Nominate Apps for Sandstorm

By Jade Wang - 25 Aug 2014

What app would YOU like to see on Sandstorm?

We’d love to hear from you. From now until the end of the campaign, you can tweet in your favorite apps to our app survey. Just nominate them with a tweet, and they’ll make the short-list for the App Committee to consider. For instance: “I’d love to see @joindiaspora on @SandstormIO! http://igg.me/at/sandstorm”

Example tweet screenshot.

The apps will be presented in a list to the App Committee with the number of votes (tweets) it received, starting with the most highly requested. The App Committee will then decide what makes sense to work on first.

How it works:

We’re in the home stretch, 83% of our way there, with just one more week left in the campaign! We need your help to make Sandstorm happen.

P.S. Of course, you can always port the app yourself rather than wait for us. Please drop us a line if you do. :)

Campaign Recap

By Kenton Varda - 22 Aug 2014

There are just under 10 days left in our campaign. As of this writing, we are 78% funded. If you haven’t contributed yet, now is the time! Go to Ingiegogo »

Let’s take this moment to recap everything that’s happened over the campaign so far. But first, some brief announcements.

Quick Announcements

App committee seats are sold out. We had been doubling the price for every 10 seats sold, but we’re all out of perk slots on Indiegogo, so we’ve stopped at 30. However, you can still get a seat on the committee by becoming a Key Individual Sponsor ($2048 includes-everything perk) or by being our top referrer (see referral program, below).

Heading for the playa? We know a lot of you San Francisco geeks might not have internet for the next week. Don’t forget to contribute before you leave, because the campaign will be over when you get back!

We finally added an RSS feed. The Sandstorm blog now has an RSS feed. Looking for an RSS reader? Try TinyTinyRSS on Sandstorm. :)

Our Core Sponsors

Our first Key Individual Sponsor ($2048 level) is Roger Wagner. Roger is known for many things, including having written the first book on Apple II programming and creating HyperStudio. As a sponsor, he’ll be featured along side our own team on our web site and in our credits. Thanks, Roger!

Our first Corporate Sponsor ($4096 level) is draw.io, a powerful web-based diagramming tool. As a sponsor, their logo will be displayed on our site and in our credits, and we’ll be helping them get draw.io on the Sandstorm app store. Thanks, draw.io!

Would you or your company like to become a core sponsor? Consider that your contribution alone could increase our funding level by four or eight percentage points, and we’ll feature you name and picture/logo on our web site and credits for at least two years. Thinking about it but not quite sure? E-mail Kenton to discuss terms.

Campaign Recap

Blog posts you should read

App ports we released

Talks and Interviews

Press

Referral Program

Don’t forget about our referral program:

If you refer someone, and they contribute, we’ll give you your choice of:

a) 1GB bonus storage for every $10 referred (on our managed hosting service, for one year).

b) 10% of your referral total in app store credit. Remember that our app store will support a pay-what-you-want model for open source apps, so this basically means you can donate your credit to the developers of an open source Sandstorm app of your choice.

The top referrer will additionally receive their choice of a LAN party invite (see the $512 perk) or a seat on the app committee (with $256 voting rights).

In order to receive credit for your referrals, be sure that you are logged into Indiegogo, then use the buttons under the video on our campaign page to share. These buttons will generate links that track the fact that they came from you.