Comments on: Thoughts about the current Zeitgeist situation (GNOME 3 and beyond)

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Links 3/3/2010: CrossOver 9.0, Android 2.1 | Boycott Novell — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:29:20 +0000

[...] Thoughts about the current Zeitgeist situation (GNOME 3 and beyond) I would love to see Zeitgeist growing to be something like Telepathy in terms of providing a standard for event logging (even if its in python), and I hope we get there soon. And I hope Nokia and Intel could also make use of what we have and not reinvent the wheel if they like what we do…. [...]

By: Cally

Cally — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:02:49 +0000

I fear, like many initially cool-sounding ideas, Zeitgeist is a problem looking for a solution. So far, I’ve yet to see a single compelling use case that would make me want to use it.

By: oliver

oliver — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:51:43 +0000

Maybe you could collect some ideas where _you_ would like to see Zeitgeist integration, and then ask specific app developers for this. For example, as mentioned above some integration in file chooser would be nice (but might be a too intrusive change).

Another nice thing would be if the mail client’s “Add Attachment” button would automatically offer files which were recently used – this might be a change that’s small and non-intrusive, and would show users what’s possible. So for example go to devs of Thunderbird, Evolution, Claws…, tell about the ideas, and ask if somebody is interested to add this feature or to write a plugin.

By: Seif Lotfy

Seif Lotfy — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:07:51 +0000

@anonymous: Check your facts
http://trueg.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/just-another-way-of-browsing-your-files/

By: anonymous

anonymous — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 09:52:09 +0000

“I mean even KDE 4.4 copied our functionality (Zeitgeist-Filesystem) into Nepomuk.”

KDE already has this and you’re only talking about this. Maybe you’re copying from them?

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:57:12 +0000

I love GAJ, Zeitgeist and the Nautilus integration. I think the file chooser should get Zeitgeist too.

Just stick with it. It is amazing tech.

A side note though: Couldn’t you reimplement some parts (eventually all of them) in Genie (Python-Vala). Start with parts where Genie is now mature enough and expand.

Reimplementing everything in C is just insane, but in a world where Gnome will mostly run on mobile devices (the future) Python is not really the answer (Google tried hard to make it fast, but didn’t really succeed)

By: Thorsten Prante

Thorsten Prante — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:29:46 +0000

@You: Zeitgeist is an event-logging framework, providing activity awareness from user-related as well as from more computer-side events. It can do much more than what is currently visible in what you term as “a lot of fancy timeline related stuff”. Still, our starting-point use case was the ubiquitous re-finding problem, which some computer users happen to have. GAJ is our developing contribution to it. And there is more to come.
Some of us are very organized long-time computer users, just as those you probably have in mind stating “For such people zeitgeist seems to be next to useless”. Again, Zeitgeist is not equal to GAJ. And the point with GAJ is that personal computing in whatever form is becoming so common place that even unorganized users appear on the scene – yes, they are users, too And there are many of them.
Plus, recognizing situations, in which time invested into keeping and organizing personal information or references will pay off in the end and distinguishing those situations from other cases, when re-finding can be more easily achieved is not trivial for many. Even worse, this keeping and organizing work is known to sometimes track users off from their primary task, keeping and organizing being the secondary. Well, and one of Zeitgeist’s ambitions happens to be alleviating this secondary-task burden for GAJ users.
Finally, there are people considering it more natural to re-situate in what they have done and experienced as opposed to going back to what they have filed. Example: Alan has the habit to come up with ideas when listening to certain songs. He jots his notes down here and there, and thereby, yes, classifies as a member of the unorganized user species. Still, even Alan usually wants to get back to his notes at some point. Just now, he remembers to have formulated “some stuff in a row” about two weeks ago, while listening to song X. As he knows the titles of his favorite thinking-songs by heart, Alan wants to employ this knowledge for referring back to his creativity burst. Oops …
Not making a short story long: “While”, “before”, and “after” tend to be little supported query means in today’s common desktop experience. Zeitgeist provides users with this sort of relative time scoping, because time is one of the central means for everyday people to structure and remember their everyday activities and experiences. As our approach is totally open information-format wise and doesn’t only look backwards in time, but allows also subscribing to events, we know that there are other use cases coming up, with other Zeitgeist-enabled tools.