Author Archives: rob

Instant Bitcoin Wallet Creation in Gliph for iPhone

Create a Bitcoin Wallet Instantly with Gliph for iPhoneToday we’re releasing version 1.5 of Gliph for iOS, which makes it easier than ever to get started and offers the world’s first instant Bitcoin wallet creation via Coinbase. Update: Gliph now also supports BIPS wallet.

In this new release we’ve made Gliph account creation and Bitcoin wallet creation an amazingly near-instantaneous experience.

Changes to Signup
We now streamline the Gliph signup process. The app automatically selects a gliph (username) for you, yet allows you to customize your gliph as an option if you want.

Previously, we forced every new person to immediately choose the Artifacts (symbols) for their gliph. While some folks picked up on the idea of building a gliph out of Artifacts, some found it confusing. Gliph has a lot of new ideas in it. This change represents a step toward streamlining the process of getting started using the Gliph identity platform.

Instant Bitcoin Wallet Creation
Another big change in 1.5 is the “instant” creation of Coinbase accounts. If you’ve never used Bitcoin before, you will be prepared to receive Bitcoin immediately after accepting Coinbase’s Terms of Service.

Gliph magically creates a Coinbase account using a free Gliph Cloaked Email address, offering you a strong level of privacy in your Bitcoin transactions.

We believe signing up for Gliph on iOS is now the fastest and easiest way to get started with a Bitcoin wallet on the planet earth.

We continue to believe that Bitcoin is a very important part of Gliph’s future and are making changes to pave the way for this now. The team is excited about the further integration of Bitcoin into Gliph’s core experience. Continue reading →

Cloaked Email and Craigslist: It’s Complicated

Craigslist’s newly implemented email relay service breaks proper delivery of Gliph Cloaked Email. This post explains what happened and how you can work around the issue.

What happened

Our team first debuted Cloaked Email on August 14th, 2012. We created the product in part due to our own frustration with how Craigslist handled email privacy. We performed a survey and found that we weren’t the only ones who felt this way.

Previously, when you created a Craigslist post, their system would protect your email address in the listing itself. However, if you replied to someone who had emailed you about the old stereo you were selling, it would reveal your email address.

Gliph Cloaked Email solved this problem by protecting your email address across both ways of the exchange. It also allowed you to do it directly from your own personal inbox.

Beginning in November, we noticed Craigslist began testing an “anonymized relay” aka “email-relay” that offered similar functionality to Cloaked Email. After some testing, we were able to prove that their new service did not interfere with Cloaked Email.

However, at some point this spring, without notice, Craigslist began blocking email sent using Gliph Cloaked Email addresses as it passed back through their relay service. Then the system moved from optional to required for all ad listings where email addresses are automatically included. Continue reading →

Gliph for Android Update and FAQ

We released an update to the Gliph app for Android today. Our Android users are usually pretty tech savvy, and they seem to be more interested in details than iOS users. So we thought now would be a good time to check in and answer some frequently asked questions we receive on the Support Gliph.

Gliph for Android 1.13

The last major release we did for Android included visual updates and the ability to send and receive Bitcoin. This new release, 1.13 is meant largely to fix bugs and behind the scenes updates:

  • People wrote in that it was hard to send messages because the keyboard was displaying on top of text entry field on some Android devices, making it hard to see what the person was typing. This should be fixed now. Please tell the support gliph if you’re still having the problem. Update 7/19/13 11:19am: Galaxy Note owners are reporting this is still an issue. We are currently looking for a solution for those users.
  • We added a library that helps us determine when the app is crashing and allows us to diagnose and fix that better.
  • We changed out the code that displays the slide-in menu or “drawer” on the left side of the screen. This will prepare the app for improvements in the future.
  • There was a bug where if you did not save a first name or pseudonym, the drawer would say null, null. Whoops. That’s fixed now.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Gliph Android App

Q. Why can’t I send picture messages or delete messages in the Android app? UPDATE: Gliph now has limited support for sending Picture Messages from Android! Continue reading →

Bitcoin 2013 Conference Roundup

Gliph had a strong presence at the Bitcoin 2013 conference in San Jose, California in May and we’re just now sharing some of the media and story of the event.

Gliph Co-Founder Nicholas Asch and Gliph iOS Developer Joakim Fernstad in our freshly laid out booth at Bitcoin 2013. (It featured beanbag chairs and foliage)

The company first got involved when your blogger and co-founder (Rob Banagale) accepted a panelist spot on the Law Enforcement and Financial Privacy track at the conference. At this time our development team was working feverishly on the first release of the Bitcoin integration into Gliph.

Wanting to do something special for the earliest and most core Bitcoin adopters, we created custom Bitcoin branded merchandise for the event. This included hats and hooded sweatshirts embroidered with a great looking Bitcoin logo. We sold these for Bitcoin at our booth.

We did our release on Friday, May 17th, which included a feature article in PandoDaily. That article was written by Erin Griffith and included our news of joining the Boost VC startup accelerator. Continue reading →

Bitcoin Enhancements in Gliph for iPhone v1.48

Today, we’ve released a new version of Gliph for iOS that includes a variety of enhancements related to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is still fairly new, if you aren’t familiar with it at all, you may want to watch this. If you haven’t heard about Gliph’s recent addition of Bitcoin, you can read about it here, and watch a video of the iPhone app here.

Here are the new Bitcoin-related updates in v1.48:

  • The Bitcoin option in the menu now shows to all new users. We had a bug that was causing this to not be displayed without restarting the app.
  • You can now view the current exchange rate in the Send Bitcoin popover. It is based on the 24-hour MtGox weighted average.
  • Bitcoin payments now have a small Bitcoin symbol next to them. You can also tap on a Bitcoin payment in a conversation view and see it listed in the wallet view.
  • You can now detach a Coinbase wallet from Gliph. If you want to remove your Coinbase Bitcoin wallet from Gliph, use the trash can button in title bar of wallet view. Please note: if you intend to completely remove the connection we recommend you also visit Coinbase and remove Gliph’s access to the Wallet.
  • Wallet view now shows Gliphs of users from prior transactions. Previously Gliph showed Bitcoin transaction IDs.

We made a few other non-Bitcoin enhancements as well: Continue reading →

Gliph’s Responsible Disclosure Program

Lost among the multitude of announcements and happenings for Gliph this past weekend was the introduction of our Responsible Disclosure Program.

As a platform focused on providing security and privacy, it is important that we involve everyone willing to help us keep the Gliph community safe. We created a page to officially describe our Responsible Disclosure Program for whitehats and announced the first contribution from a security researcher.

Anand Prakash, (@sehacure) a student at Vellore Institute of Technology in kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, India has proved a helpful early contributing security researcher to Gliph. We would like to thank him for his work.

If you are a security researcher, we encourage you to check out the program and reach out to us if you have any questions or feedback. You can reach us at security at gli dot ph.

Announcing Simple Bitcoin Payments with Gliph

Bitcoin P2P payments on GliphWe are proud to announce that Gliph now supports simple peer-to-peer (P2P) mobile payments using Bitcoin digital currency. You can now send Bitcoin with other Gliph users using updated versions of our iPhone, Android and web applications.

We have an iOS demo video up if you’re hungry to see how it works.  Also a step-by-step guide to setting it up for Android and for iOS. But this is more than just a new feature for us and we wanted to go into detail as to why we’re adding Bitcoin to the Gliph platform.

Over the past several months the Gliph team has been fascinated by Bitcoin. Bitcoin brings privacy to payments that is unavailable with traditional banking. The software behind Bitcoin is open source and has sustained great scrutiny. The currency itself is distributed, and transfers can take place with little or no fees at all. We love that no one company or government controls Bitcoin, and that even its creator(s) are shrouded in anonymity.

We believe Bitcoin and the ideas behind it have the power to change the world.

But when our team began using Bitcoin every day, we noticed some rough patches. Getting started can be confusing. If you were able to get a wallet set up, it was easy to get stuck asking “what next?” If you wanted to send Bitcoin to a friend, you had to awkwardly copy and paste long wallet addresses into tiny form fields. Existing solutions, even from biggest players, felt too technical and took the fun out of using this amazing new currency. Continue reading →

Using Bitcoin on Gliph’s Updated iOS App

Today, we’re turning some surprise Bitcoin functionality on for all Gliph iPhone users. The most recent version in the App Store, version 1.47 now allows you to send Bitcoin. This entry goes over how to use Bitcoin functionality in the app.

If you haven’t, you may also want to read about why we added Bitcoin or how to use Bitcoin with the updated Gliph Android app.

 

Continue reading →

Using Bitcoin on Gliph’s Updated Android App

Today we’ve released version 1.1 of the Gliph Android application to Google Play. Our Android users have been very patient in waiting for updates, and today marks solid progress. This entry covers both the updates and how to use the new Bitcoin functionality in the app. You may enjoy the demo video of how awesome Bitcoin can be on Gliph available here.

What’s New: Visual Updates
Gliph Android Bitcoin Update Screenshot appGliph for Android 1.1 catches up with the mobile web and iPhone application in a number of areas. First, we’ve updated the Activity View to show the actual tags of the connections you’re talking with instead of the Gliphs themselves. The conversation view has been touched up, also bringing connection tag, first name or pseudonym facets into view, rather than the Gliph.

While we love the Gliphs, and know some people use them as their central identifier for other people, we have also gotten feedback that it is hard to keep track of who is who when you have many contacts. So now there is more consistent styling across iOS, Android and the web.

What’s New: Image Viewing
While we weren’t able to get image attach into this update, you can at least now view image thumbnails sent by your web using and iOS using connections. We hope to get uploading into an upcoming update. Continue reading →

Gliph Joins Boost VC Startup Accelerator

Gliph joins Boost VC Startup AcceleratorWe are happy to announce that Gliph has joined the Boost VC startup accelerator. Gliph will join around a dozen other companies in a business incubation that includes mentorship, seed capital and a heavy focus on product development.

Beginning late June, Gliph’s founders (Rob and Nick) will relocate to Boost’s provided housing and office space in San Mateo, California. There we will join a group of startups specifically focused on the Bitcoin digital currency. The team will be working throughout the summer to refine the Gliph experience and further integrate Bitcoin into Gliph’s digital identity platform.

We chose Boost because founders Adam Draper and Brayton Williams have shown themselves to be early advocates for the Bitcoin currency. They’ve also put together a stellar program for startups that is a great fit for Gliph’s stage as a company. Continue reading →