Getting your app published on Google Play is fairly easy. You basically just upload an APK and with how little Google reviews apps, you can get almost anything published. F-Droid on the other hand has very strict standards (which is a good thing). Since I published an app myself on F-Droid, I can tell you that fulfilling those standards does take a lot of effort, and thus a lot of love from the developer.
This creates a filter: If you care enough about your project to go the extra mile to fulfil the F-Droid requirements, you probably also care about making a good product. If you don't, you also won't be motivated enough to publish on F-Droid. There are countless open-source projects which sort-of work but are left behind, usually because it was someone's side-project. This is ok as well, because it's free time that most people are spending on Open-Source projects, but as a result, most open-source projects are actually not very mature. They just never make it onto F-Droid and don't go viral.
Almost all alternatives use OpenStreetMaps. I prefer Magic Earth but all of them are similar enough
The main issue is OSM. They lack many addresses (varies A LOT among different countries, some are fine) and POIs. Please consider contributing yourself, because it depends only on volunteers!
It is SUPER easy. Just download StreetComplete on Android to add multiple different info in a very easy way (or just house numbers which are the most important info) and EveryDoor for POI editing/deletion/addition in just a few clicks. And don't worry if you don't input something because you aren't sure as long as what you enter is correct
I tried to use mastodon but it never stuck for me. Mostly because of the lack of communities that I’m part of on twitter. Ever since musk’s takeover, I’ve been using twitter less and less.
I tried to use mastodon but it never stuck for me. Mostly because of the lack of communities that I’m part of on twitter. Ever since musk’s takeover, I’ve been using twitter less and less.
Same here. I love how fluid Mastodon’s app is, especially compared to Lemmy’s. But I scroll for a bit and there’s nothing that interests me on my timeline.
No one is going to feed you content. It’s a different way to think and consume media. You just gotta start following people or hashtags and see which content and people are posting things that interest you. Go the the local feed of the instance of the world feed and watch things unfold.
But you gotta bootstrap it. There’s a lot of interesting people and content in it.
There’s a few sites that help with discovery by listing relevant people and topics.
There’s hashtags important to follow at the start, for example #fediverseMigration where lots of posts trying to help new people and guiding them appear.
I know it may hurt a little at the beginning, but it’s so worth it and rewarding. So, don’t quit and give it a little bit to grow on you. It’s a new experience so not everything will feel similar to what one knows previously.
And, the amazing thing that on mastodon one being able to directly interact and comment on lemmy posts is just mind-blowing.
Seriously, follow hashtags! If friends start to join boost their early posts so other people can find them too. You take the place of the algorithm on Mastodon, so you’re ultimately responsible for curating your experience.
Though I will say, don’t use the offical app. It lacks a federated timeline still, which is weird. If you like that UI though, Moshidon is a fork that adds some customization and the federated timeline, which is a neat way to see what’s goin on.
Hit “Explore” and follow hash tags to grow your list of accounts to follow. It really helps a lot! Mine used to be like 2 minutes of scrolling and I’m done for the day. Now it’s…um…I should get back to work.
One of Mastodon’s upsides, the lack of an algorithm also hurts it, I find.
It’s surprisingly difficult to find new and interesting users to follow, since they don’t suggest anything, but at the same time, the only way to find users is seemingly to browse your local instance’s users, which won’t cover interesting things from other instances (unless they’re specifically boosted).
Discoverability was largely the reason why I got in fights with Mastodon users over the platform being in a bad place when Twitter had its first wave of musk awfulness.
I find that the system is now much improved, but man, I can’t stress out just how bad an impression I was given that everyone seemed to think searching posts by tags was a bad thing, and that tags in general were, in fact, objectively broken at the time. Like, people go on social media with purposes in mind.
It’s fixed now. Tag activity is shown correctly. Tag history also gets shown correctly. You can also follow tags. That’s all I wanted, and acknowledgement of it, not a philosophy discourse.
Best thing for discovery in Mastodon is to follow hashtags. This is algorithm-like in that you will see posts from people you don’t follow, on the topics you have an interest in.
Not there yet - but there are bot accounts that feed you their tweets. LOL Look up the accounts you have on Twitter for news and you’ll most likely find a bot account for them on Mastodon. That’s how I’m keeping up to date.
Pinch & double-tap to zoom works for images, and there are plenty of settings to adjust font sizes in Connect.
Make sure you have the latest version. It generally gets updated daily (or more than that). I know there was a pinch to zoom image fix in the last day or so.
Compared to iOS it is. You get access to the most of the folders that are visible through file explorers on Android when you hook it up to any desktop OS.
On iPadOS it is just the DCIM folder. So got to use stuff like air drop, wifi transfer, or upload files as a work around.
Can’t beat the Pixel in that regard. Google doesn’t give two hoots what you do with your phone once you buy it. You can flash custom ROMs, unlock AND relock bootloader,… you name it. Pixels are really fantastic for that reason.
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