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?
Fabian:
Flickr sucks, it discriminates people from certain contries by censorship.
To get an impression please read these articles and follow the links (some of them are in German):
http://www.nohn.net/blog/archives/32-My-photos-are-unavailable-to-Youhoo!.html
25 July 2007, 1:21 pmhttp://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/42597/
Erik:
Yes, indeed. Just as the ubiquitous/pervasive computing always is. Awesomely cool. Also I think that Trackar/Beagle could do some magnificent stuff if they just were better towards services at network.
25 July 2007, 1:28 pmKirrus:
Cool yes. Headache to actually get all the devices talking to each other seamlessly like that with proprietary drivers, all the configuration etc: yes.
If it “just worked”, then I’d say it’d be cool. In my experience, things relating to computers, especially ubuntu rarely “just work”.
25 July 2007, 1:58 pmPharao:
>Instead consider f-spot and flickr as sharing the same collection of data
25 July 2007, 2:24 pmGreat idea - if you replace flickr with a service that isn’t censoring just as they want.
Sven:
I’m not sure if I should like such ideas or not. On the one hand it’s would be very nice to use the networks in such a productive way but on the other hand I don’t like to have my data scattered all over the net.
25 July 2007, 2:46 pmReminds me of the old fortune “real man upload their stuff to anonymous ftp and let the whole world mirror” but now that this could be real I’m not sure if it’s the right way to go. Strange how things change within a decade.
nicholas butler:
This is great but why should device A which can have net access worry about application B on device C ?
My phone has Wifi so when I get home it should just connect to the internet and directly via HTTP gateway of the Phone manufacturer in conjunction with my own service gateway ( flickr ) just upload the image directly.
My music player should be able to consult a online RSS agregator with which to connect and download/upload/update my musci and podcast collections outside of the need for a computer platform.
My Pda/UMPC/Laptop should just have a shortcut to google docs for all my documents/spreadsheets
Im less and less convinced I really need a desktop but what I do need is open and available APIs, XML and Data structures to share my content directly with my online service providers.
I do agree where your going on this though.
25 July 2007, 3:06 pmEspen:
The online desktop push for Gnome is something I’m so excited for I can hardly contain myself, and the sooner it starts happening the happier I’ll be. I believe this is where the desktop is headed, where you lose track of where the glue between the internet and your desktop starts and ends.
A friend of mine over at Opera Software was a bit concerned with what he viewed as a dependence on Firefox though, developers should beware of locking users in
25 July 2007, 5:09 pmCan’t wait for this to gain some momentum.
lodsb:
Yeah, **very** cool indeed! Just, *how*? Multisync? Opensync? From Ubuntu deb, built from Debian sid deb, or custom build from upstream sources? Any hint is very appreciated!
26 July 2007, 11:18 amWarbo:
Such a thing sounds cool, but the major problem I have with it is this: Flickr is a VERY restricted service, and I wouldn’t want to use it. The same goes for YouTube and pretty much all of the “Web 2.0″ sites. The reason they’re so restrictive? Well Flickr is basically just a file store, but they only let you save pictures. YouTube is also a file store, but they only let you store videos. If there was a generic online storage area that anyone could use (this could mean people running their own servers 24/7 at home if nobody else wants to coug up the bandwidth), and the different applications of this data are handled in the applications (hence the name) rather than the server (which merely serves the application) then so many more possibilities would be available, far more than I can imagine.
If that means someone writes a Flickr uploading plugin for F-Spot then fine, if someone writes a YouTube uploading plugin for Totem then fine, but in order to actually harbour innovation those services must not be used as a primary storage area, since the owners are free to implement or remove features at will, rather than letting application programmers create whatever database/XML/whatever they like in a generic online file store and add features as and when they are thought up.
17 November 2007, 4:36 amKevin Mark:
Sounds cool. If you have net access, synchronize local and remote data & metadata. If not, just use the local data and local app.
17 November 2007, 8:06 amNow obviously this has to start with one local(f-spot) and one remote app(flickr) but it would not seem impossible with other apps that have open api. So why would folks worry that it only uses flickr, at first? If its open, we will build on it.