kde community plasma integration

Wed Jan 7 16:17:03 CET 2009

Hi Plasma Community,

Aaron asked me to post ideas about possibilities for social networking  
integration into plasma and other parts of KDE. So here comes a long  
email. :-)

I gave a presentation at this years Akademy about my vision of the  
"Social Desktop". The idea is to integrate our user and developer  
community better into our Desktop. Our community is one of our key  
advantages over closed source desktops. We should use this advantage  
more.

See my Akademy keynote for more information:
http://www.open-collaboration-services.org/socialdesktop.pdf

You can see the current state of the API "open collaboration services"  
here:
http://www.open-collaboration-services.org
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/open-collaboration-services

The current specification is fully implemented on openDesktop.org and  
the other websites like KDE-Look.org and KDE-Apps.org. I hope that  
other free software related websites use this API too in the future.  
So we can merge the data from various sources.

Here are a few ideas how the integration of community functionality  
into KDE could look like:

1. News

We should have a communication channel for KDE related informations  
directly to our users. So we can post announcements directly to the  
Desktop of our users.

For example a small plasmoid which reads a special RSS feed from the  
kde.org webserver.
In the future this feed could be personalized. So the KDE user can  
specify which kind of information and he wants so see which language  
he speaks and in which reagion on the world he lifes. This could be  
usefull for our PR people and helpfull to convert users into  
contributors and KDE ambassadors.

Perhaps we can use some news from the dot. But this feed is only for  
end users and not for developers, so we have to focus on information  
which is usefull for users.

It should be easy to build a plasmoid and a rss feed for this. Should  
be doable for KDE 4.3. This plasmoid should be on the desktop by  
default.

I have attached a small mockup (1.png)

2. People

Place a plasmoid on the desktop where users can find other kde users  
in the same city or region. You can contact users, ask questions,  
become friends and do screensharing. This is a nice tool for community  
building. We don´t want to show the billion of teens from facebook on  
our desktop. This is about building and pushing the KDE and free  
desktop community.

The serverside is already in place. We have over 110.000 registered  
free desktop users on openDesktop.org. The API is also working.

All we need is a plasmoid to use this api.
Cornelius did a proofe of concept already you can find the code here:
http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/playground/base/attica/

I have attached a small mockup (2.png)

3. Activities

People love to see what is going on in their KDE friends network.

For example.
- A friend of mine posted a new blog entry
- A friend of mine uploaded a new application or wallpaper on KDE- 
Look.org
- A friend of mine is going to the Linux User Group meeting tomorrow.
- There is an update for an application I am fan of.
- A friend of mine committed a new feature in the KDE SVN
- Someone was on my profile page and offered me a KDE related job.
- A friend of mine is now a fan of “Amarok”

Blog integration is coming soon and the event integration is work in  
progress. The other features are already available in the API

I have attached a mockup (3.png)

4. events

It would be great if KDE people could see if there are interesting  
upcoming kde or free software events in their region.

It would be nice to have a central events database where everybody who  
wants to organize a kde or free software event can publish the event  
and other poeople in the same region get notifications.

This would require a serverside implementation and a plasmoid to show  
the events. Or do we want to have korganizer integration here?
I plan to implement the serverside together with an api in the future  
but i cant promisse a date where it will be ready. So help is welcome  
here. :-)

(4.png)

5. Knowledgebase:

If a user is starting KDE for the first time he has questions. At the  
moment all the support for KDE users is handled by forums and  
mailinglist. So users have to start up a browser go to google and  
search for answers for his questions or problems. This is great for  
experienced users but not very good for beginners. Forums are not the  
best systems to store a knowledge base or FAQs.
We are developing a Desktop, right? I think we can do better.
Why not integrate a knowede base system directly into the desktop.

Great would be a plasmoid where users can directly query an online  
knowledge base system.
For example a searchline, most popular questions from today and  
alltime. And a direct link to the person who asked the question and  
provided the answer.
You can ask how you configure some specific option in KDE for example.  
You will get an answer or get the option to post this as an open  
question into the system.

I´m build a proof of concept knowledgebase functionallity at the  
moment for the openDesktop.org websites together with a possible API.  
But this is work in progress. I think we have to play around with this  
functionallity to solve some technical and social problems first. But  
wouldn´t this be great? :-)

I have attached a mockup (5.png)

So what do you think about this ideas? Please post your ideas and  
thoughts. I will work on the API and the openDesktop.org integration.  
I hope that other websites join and implement this API too.

So all we need are plasmoid developers to integrate this features into  
the desktop. ;-)

I think together we can build something really new in innovative for  
KDE 4.3

Cheers
Frank

--
Frank Karlitschek
karlitschek at kde.org

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