Online Desktop
Havoc’s keynote at GUADEC was extremely interesting, especially for how it polarised the people present.
Several people seemed very upset with the notion that f-spot should be replaced by flickr, but I think that was a problem with the way that Havoc presented the message, and not the underlying idea.
Instead consider f-spot and flickr as sharing the same collection of data, and being two different ways to view and manage it; with changes from one appearing in the other. The mechanism isn’t important.
Consider the following:
- While out and about, I take a picture with my camera phone.
- On coming home, the phone is within bluetooth range of my laptop (with both enabled).
- The laptop sees the new picture, so announces the availability of the new picture.
- f-spot is subscribed to those announcements, and causes the picture to be copied into my local f-spot library, with the meta-data adjusted to indicate the local cache (as well as the origin).
- flickr is also subscribed, so the picture is automatically uploaded to my flickr account.
- At some point in the past, a friend on Facebook changed their mobile number; this was detected and the change announced.
- e-d-s was subscribed, so automatically adjusted my contacts.
- And my phone sync service is subscribed, so now my phone is in range, its contact list is updated too.
Now, isn’t that cool?
