Three Important Things for Plasma Active 3

[Marco Martin]

On Saturday 13 October 2012, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> Hi :)
> 
> So I've been mentally chewing on the question of "what are the three
> important messages for PA3?" Some suggestions were made in a previous
> thread on this topic, and several of them really resonated. What follows
> is built on the foundations of this input .. so thanks to everyone who
> contributed there :)
> 

thanks for it, they're expressed in an excellent way ;)

do you also plan to publish those in articles aroud (dot, blog, whatever)

> 
> So ... Three Important Things about Plasma Active;
> 
> 1) Activities -> Plasma Active is a mobile user interface focused on
> personal productivity. It achieves this through the information-centric
> concept of "Activities" wherein a person can have the life experiences
> they are most engaged in reflected in the computing device. Whether it's a
> short term event such as "a party next week", a topical endeavour such as
> a research project or business report or a long term interest such as
> "parasailing" or "tropical fish", these become topics which the device
> reflect as you experience them. Information in the form of books,
> documents, images, videos, web sites, people and more are collected
> together to form the definition of each activity the person defines, and
> the device can then be requested to focus on a given activity. This means
> that one device can become your exclusive party planner one minute and
> with the flick of your finger morph into the quarterly report review
> project that you have to deliver next week. The device reflects who you
> are and what you are doing.
> 
> 2) Useful from the moment you turn it on: we aim to create a useful
> productivity environment complete with essential tools such as book
> readers, groupware, content delivery systems, file managers and more. This
> makes Plasma Active not just a starting point for a mobile experience, but
> a complete mobile experience right from the start.

this one is very important, is what says "we are not playing the same game as 
android, so stop comparing with it" ;) 

> 3) Freedom -> There is no vendor lock-in, no design behind closed doors, no
> code kept behind a royalty structure or other pay-wall, no artificial
> technical barriers to adoption and extension. This makes Plasma Active the
> perfect platform for custom application building taken to a whole new
> level: not only can your write "an app", you can build an entire device
> experience ... no barriers, only possibilities. This is what drives our
> collaborative approach.

this also in many environment should really be the first talking point

> Three Important Things about Plasma Active Three:
> 
> 1) Apps: Plasma Active Three brings numerous new and powerful applications
> all designed with easy-to-use touch-based interfaces. These include:
> 
> * an Add Ons app that speaks to a Free software content server
> * a file manager that incorporates tags, timelines and content discovery:
> want to see all your books from last year? No problem. Want to mannage
> your videos? Simple. Want to see all your images tagged as being from your
> vacation last month? One touch.
> * an eBook reader that integrates seamlessly with both the file manager and
> Add Ons apps, so seamlessly you may not even notice it's there!
> * Alarms: a simple thing, but so useful to have on a mbile device

s/mbile/mobile ;)

> * News Reader: a beautiful touch interface to keep up with all your
> favourite online news sources

the news reader is maybe the one that is still a bit weak (ok-ish as ui i 
think, not much reliable yet as backend)

all in all, the right apps to bring forward tough. the real big one would be 
the file browser, but is very difficul to talk about it without sounding 
nerdy, so should be put forward as a core feature of the os rather than an 
"app"
(next time i want the news and microblog ones to be teh perfect :p)


> [...]
> Ok, so those are my thoughts / ramblings / suggestions. Feedback very
> welcome. Nothing in the above is a "sacred cow" ... if we come up with a
> better idea for any point or sub-point above, we can and should use it :)
> 

I can't really find much more to say, much corrections to the global points, 
so for now well done, and i'll think more about them and let sedimentate to 
see if i can think about something more

Cheers,
Marco Martin