[Social-Desktop] Summer of code and social desktop

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hi Fabio,

I'm CC:ing the social-desktop list, since that's the place where you might be 
able to get additiona feedback. Hope you don't mind...

On Monday 30 March 2009 05:25:19 you wrote:
> I´m Fabio a computer science student from Spain and I´m very interested
> in collaborate with the social desktop project. I choose this project
> because it´s a really useful project and I can learn more about the new
> KDE4 technologies (nepomuk,decibel...). So I´m thinking in code:
>
> * A news plasmoid: I think it can be easy, It´s an RSS reader with some
> easy changes.

Already there, but could use some love.

> * Activities plasmoid: this can be more challenging but not impossible.
> I know that you can post a message visible on your profile, like your
> status but Can you comment your friends activities?  Enable comments can
> improve the social capabilities.
>
> * Knowledge base plasmoid: ok, It can be a very useful plasmoid. But I
> think It´s a better idea to show a list of answers instead of one. For
> example a trick can be perfect for ubuntu users but the same trick don´t
> work on opensuse or fedora, or the same trick can be outdated.

Yes, it doesn't have to be exactly one answer. BTW, the forum.kde.org people 
have shown interest in offering access to the forum's discussions through the 
OpenDesktop API, another bit where we can seemlessly integrate community and 
desktop.

> Please give me some feedback, in this years working I learn that coding
> its not the problem, the problem it´s to understand the project(and
> people) needs.

Exactly (well, given that you're actually able to write code ;-)).

The bigger context is integrating information from the Internet into the 
desktop, and structuring this information around the social network a person 
is part of.

This means, on a conceptual basis:

- the concept of a contact is needed, a canonical way to query information 
  about a person is needed (Nepomuk can help here)

- It should be easy to retrieve all information relevant to this contact, this 
  means that information from the following sources should be integrated with 
  the above concept of a contact:
		- Akonadi for address book data
		- Emails, exchanged this person (Akonadi again)
		- Information to get in contact with this person (Decibel for IM status, but 
		  also for example to set up a voice over IP call)
		- Blogs, microblogs and other one-to-many communication media in context of 
		- a particular person
		- Tracking a person (collecting information from various sources to prepare 
		  a more complete picture of a person
 		- Possibly local data related to a person (attachments sent by, photos 		
		  of...)
		
		- Other information from the web (FlickR feeds by this person, facebook 
		  friends, LinkedIn contacts, ...)
  As you can see, a lot of the information is already there and merely needs 
  to be retrieved, integrated and possibly cached. There are some gaps that 
  need filling of course.

- This information should be displayed of course. This can mean using widgets 
  in Plasma, but also involves making it easy to get at that information 
  through means such as Nepomuk, so that it can also be integrated with non-
  plasma applications.

As you can see a lot of technologies are involved. Your proposal should focus 
on doing the base work below it and making it easy for apps to integrate the 
social desktop. A proof-of-concept implementation will of course be necessary 
to make sure that new stuff is based on real-world usecases. Also, don't 
expeect to have it all come together at the same time, within three months. 
It's more like setting the foundation for the Social Desktop in the future, as 
it will be a long-term endeavour.

I hope this gets you started with writing your proposal.
-- 
sebas

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