TL;DR
BARRACUDA is your cybernetic curation helper - and it fits in your pocket! The alpha .apk is available for Android starting today It's a cross platform mobile app that helps you curate stuff from steemit.com. It's not quite a bot, and it's not quite a normal steemit browsing app. It can help you curate more, it's fun, and the best part is that you don't have to share your private keys with anyone! Read on to find out how you can get your hands on it today.
What Can You Do With It?
Have Your Own Pocket Curation "Bot"
You wouldn't believe how fun this is. Why should whales have all the fun anyway?
Start a Decentralized Curation Guild
With a group of friends decide on a list of people who will resteem/post topics you like. Email or share the list in chat. Copy and paste that list into BARRACUDA. Boom. Decentralized curation guild.
You Decide?!
It's designed to be flexible - the only limits are your imagination :)
Updates
I've made some updates since the last post based on my testing. These include
"Logo" Update
More feedback on when the bot is running
A most recently upvoted item right below the run button
Addition of 'Ignore Words' and 'Ignore Authors' settings.
Screenshots!
First, login using the tab to the upper left (use your posting key only). Then, add some 'Top Friends'. These are the people who BARRACUDA will swim around looking for awesome content. BARRACUDA will also check out stuff that your top friends have resteemed!
This is what it looks like after you click "UNLEASH ...". The fish is indeed an animated gif (no expense was spared on the production quality here, actual minutes were spent searching for a free image like this
You can change several rockin' settings here.
Easily see and review what you've recently upvoted. You can click on these items to view the full post, comment, or remove your upvote if you want. This app is based on eSteem by @good-karma so you can do anything on this app which you can do in eSteem!
Be a power user! You can do like developers do and stare at logs to see what BARRACUDA is doing in the background :^) This is can be helpful and fun. Click hide and re-show if the log seems stuck - for some reason this seems to happen on mobiles but not while testing in the browser.
What is BARRACUDA?
Is it a bot? It is a fish? No. Yes. Maybe?
What is BARRACUDA!!? Your very own robot fish that will find and upvote shiny things for you - with your own account using your own posting key on your own mobile phone!
Your robotic BARRACUDA!! should follow these rules.
- Only upvote one post per cycle (when the unleash button is clicked or every N minutes after you click the START BARRACUDA LOOP button).
- Only upvote posts by people who are in your top friends list (or posts that they've re-steemed). Look at the specified number of posts per run.
- Only upvote posts which are more than the minimum minutes and less than the maximum seconds old.
- Only upvote while you have the app running.
- Only upvote posts with more than the minimum and less than the maximum upvotes.
- Flags are currently ignored.
First, make sure you have added some top friends. This is how BARRACUDA!! knows what to bite, I mean vote. Click the menu icon and choose some posts. Also, make sure you're logged in. We recommend you only use your POSTING key in Advanced mode for your own security.
The punchline
BARRACUDA finds something and upvotes it. You can then see what it upvoted, check it out, and decide if you want to leave the upvote or not. For me, this has been really fun. It's like turning the TV on to a random channel and THEN deciding if you like it or not. Finally, it basically works like a bot, except it requires you to click a button every now and then. Anyway, it's wicked fun.
Note ... that full bot mode does work if you run from the source code using ionic. More on that later...
Why did you make it?
As you may be aware, I'm interested in decentralized curation tools (see Project @THUNDERWHALE!). BARRACUDA grew out of my desire to see if a decentralized curation app was doable. I think BARRACUDA proves that it is. With some (significant) changes and enhancements (possibly including making it a desktop app) this code base might be tweaked to achieve the goals of Project @THUNDERWHALE!
How did you make it?
It's based off of @good-karma's awesome eSteem app. I just brought the mind of a back end bot dev to the world of front end apps. Boom. BARRACUDA!
Alpha Warning
Be careful. Barracuda's can and might bite anything. No warranty is expressed or implied. It's based off of @good-karma's amazing eSteem app, thanks @good-karma!!
Image credits
The barracuda image is based on a freely available image of a barracuda!
Where's the Source?
It will be released as open source but I need to clean some things up first. For now only the compiled .apk is available.
How Much Does It Cost?
For now, at least, it's free! There are no restrictions. The only 'catch' is that the @nonlinearone and @barracudaapp accounts are permanently in your top friends list. You like us anyway though, right?
Want Your Own Barracuda?
This is still an alpha version, but it is running on my Google Pixel XL. Note that I can also run it in a "full" bot mode using the ionic framework testing tools on my laptop.
For this first version it is be Android only and you need to "install from unknown sources."
How to get your BARRACUDA!!
Send an email with the subject 'barracuda alpha' to bryangmyrekcom@gmail.com
You should recieve an automatic response letting you know you've subscribed to my low-volume blockchain tech newsletter, plus there will be a link to download the .apk for BARRACUDA.
As a show of goodwill, please resteem this post if you try the alpha
BARRACUDA!!
Want to support BARRACUDA? Please upvote and resteem this post, and try the alpha on your Android. Short version: email 'barrauda app' to bryangmyrekcom@gmail.com and you'll be emailed back with a link to download it. Thanks!