RippleCore for towns and communities

A town’s Circle is the largest kind and the one that surprised us. Residents’ groups, the neighbours who have your spare key, the high street’s traders, the person who found a wallet and wanted its owner to know: a town already does all of this, and none of it is written down.

What a town Circle holds

• Moments — what somebody did, with a photo and the people who were there.
• Events — the clean-up, the summer fair, the coffee morning, each with an RSVP.
• Volunteering — open opportunities with a date and a place, and a sign-up.
• Challenges — a goal the whole town takes on for a month.
• Badges — read off what members have done.

Where you live, kept coarse

A moment can say where it happened, and the point that is stored is already coarsened — a town rather than a street, by default. The range the app offers runs from exact to hidden, and the coarsening happens before the point is written, not on the way out, so a filter cannot find what was never kept. A place name you type is kept as you typed it, unless you choose hidden.

Getting in

A town Circle is usually community, which means it is listed and can be found by anyone — including somebody who has not signed in yet. Joining takes a code from the Circle, or a tap if it is open; a Circle set to approve answers an application instead.

Everyone in a town Circle is a neighbour before they are a member, so it is worth knowing: nothing inside it — the posts, the events, the member list — is readable by anyone who is not in it.