[liberationtech] Fwd: OpenWatch History

[yiu at csend.org]

Dear Karl,

 

Thanks for your very interesting mail dated 6th April and the follow-on reply from Chris Ballinger regarding OpenWatch.  

 

We are not IT developer nor programmer.  We are a UN accredited NGO.  We however interested in your conversation and in the liberationtech in regard to the technological potential in collecting data.  Through more inclusive data collection at the local level, we hope a robust feedback loop could be established so that local actions by the local authority can respond more effectively to the local needs.  This is also important to monitor the local commitment in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/)  

 

For instance, such APP has been very helpful in the fight against coronavirus.  An APP that shows the availability of face masks around the island of Taiwan has made it easier for people to purchase the masks by going to the right location where stock exists, and less queuing, more flexibility and stop hoarding.  

 

I therefore write to see whether there are other cell-phone based APPs available that we could look into and contact.

 

Many thanks in advance,

 

Lichia Saner-Yiu
CSEND, Geneva

 

 

 

 

From: LT [mailto:lt-bounces at lists.liberationtech.org] On Behalf Of Chris Ballinger
Sent: 06 April 2020 19:15
To: Karl <gmkarl at gmail.com <mailto:gmkarl at gmail.com> >
Cc: LT <lt at lists.liberationtech.org <mailto:lt at lists.liberationtech.org> >
Subject: Re: [liberationtech] Fwd: OpenWatch History

 

I know the history! I was one of the co-founders of OpenWatch.

 

Our main struggle was funding. After a small amount of initial funding by a private investor, we went through a startup accelerator program in San Francisco. It was very difficult to reconcile our original mission with the VC funding model. We realized we built some live broadcasting technology that was way ahead of its time, and pivoted the company to Kickflip <https://kickflip.io/>  - which provided live broadcasting SDKs with a SaaS backend. Our hope was that Kickflip would provide us the revenue to go back and revitalize OpenWatch, but it never took off either. Eventually we all burned out and had to move on to other things.

 

It's been interesting watching other companies in this space appear like Citizen <https://citizen.com/> . Their current product looks very similar to what we were building for OpenWatch towards the end of the project, but they were able to raise 60MM to execute their vision.

 

By the way, if it wasn't obvious, the openwatch.net <http://openwatch.net>  domain lapsed and is now owned by a squatter. Here's an archive.org snapshot <https://web.archive.org/web/20131221111943/https:/openwatch.net/>  of the original site if you're interested.

 

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any other questions about the project!

 

 

 

On Mon, Apr 6, 2020 at 5:40 AM Karl <gmkarl at gmail.com <mailto:gmkarl at gmail.com> > wrote:

 

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Karl <gmkarl at gmail.com <mailto:gmkarl at gmail.com> >
Date: Mon, Apr 6, 2020, 5:39 AM
Subject: OpenWatch History
To: <cryptoparty_masspirates.org at lists.masspirates.org <mailto:cryptoparty_masspirates.org at lists.masspirates.org> >, liberationtech <liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu <mailto:liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu> >, cypherpunks <cypherpunks at lists.cpunks.org <mailto:cypherpunks at lists.cpunks.org> >

 

Has anybody heard of the cell phone app OpenWatch?

 

It used to run at https://www.openwatch.net/ and let anybody upload video recordings live and secretly from their mobile phone, and publicized them.  Page archives show it came out of Boston and San Francisco.

 

Since it was focused on monitoring of authorities, it makes sense it would have struggled as this could spread power in ways that are harder for authorities to control, making their various tasks more difficult, and possibly pitting the urgent engine of control of crime against the project.

 

I don't see any evidence of OpenWatch having planned to discontinue, or notifying the public they were.  There is nobody on their irc channel, and their twitter account has been deleted.  Their github has an open improvement branch that is unmerged, and no following developer activity since.

 

Nowadays there are services like https://siasky.net/ and https://bico.media/ and some others, that can connect with reliable decentralized storage backed by the strength of a blockchain.  As blockchains rise it is becoming easier to support apps like OpenWatch in ways that won't disappear very readily.  bico.media may go down some day, but the data uploaded is still stored permanently on the blockchain behind it, and the app that stores that data could be stored on that blockchain as well.

 

I was wondering if anybody knew the story of what happened to OpenWatch, or if anybody was interested in resurrecting OpenWatch's work with a little motion towards migrating onto a blockchain.  https://github.com/OpenWatch/OpenWatch-Android

 

Maybe planning for disruption a little could make project development ideas that last longer.  Like clear instructions for newcomers to rebuild after developers disperse.

-- 
Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe, change to digest mode, or change password by emailing lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org <mailto:lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org> .

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ghserv.net/pipermail/lt/attachments/20200406/61b8891e/attachment.html>