GNOME has its vision of what a online desktop should be. I have another. The idea is to find a replacement for:

• VPN network access
• XDMCP graphical logins
• SSH logins
• etc.

My idea – and I am sure I am not the only one having it is to have rather a local login to a desktop – but then be able to fetch some common settings from a central server – and maybe also some data.

I will explain a possible session:

First you have a plain desktop like a GNOME desktop. You might want to use the settings of your central account. Then you can do this by clicking on a link. You can type in your password and you will get all the settings you use. By that I mean things like IMAP account, bookmarks, Jabber account,… maybe also desktop settings loudness settings, messaging preferences – and maybe not some location specific settings like your proxy. Maybe you can register your location or rather choose it to by a dynamic location (because you use a public WLAN with some more secure settings and with different IP addresses).

On a second session  login  the settings will be downloaded and the environment of the desktop will change. Potentially this settings could be accessed from a central GCONFD which runs as root as a daemon instead of per session. Maybe this would also allow to tunnel some traffic through the server that has this GCONFD running.

So what this does NOT is:

• It does not provide any secure connection like SSH or a real login to a server.
• It does not provide a login to GDM through XDMCP
• It does not provide any access to a VPN

It rather provides:

• Information that a user has saved
• Themes, Looks and other environment definitions
• Maybe also acces to data if this is wanted. So if the user saves the data on a central server this desktop could offer some ways to access (via VPN, SSH, XDMCP,…). The ways that are offered could depend on the configuration of the GCONFD and on how the user defines access to his desktop.
• It could also offer different VIEWS – so coming back to former ideas I offered here in my blog – So I as a user could define a simplified, lightweight profile for my notebook when I am on the move or for mobile devices. These views could also maybe be shared anonymized or personalized via Email, Jabber, etc. – so that they could be downloaded, installed, executed and used.
• A way to print something from anywhere in the world to a printer of your choice.

For privacy concerns the user should be given some options to anonymize his shared views – or be warned if the connection is not encrypted or secure enough. These views could maybe also include many different desktops in one – so like you import a HOME view and a OFFICE view – and can switch between them like today with the screens in the GNOME panel. So that would be useful not only while traveling but also handling different usages. Users need different environments. One main problem people have is that their computer tend to mix all kinds of usages – so maybe somebody is working, has some private usages and also is active in an organization. Today people sort data and information by creating folders. But the number of folders is steadily growing – and often you  only need one or two folders if you want to work on one subject. The other 500 folders are useless in this moment.

All those problems are neither targeted by todays desktop nor by GNOMEs online desktop vision which really just tries to integrate big websites into your desktop. I wish some of those visions could become true. Right now all desktops are much too conservative. I think maybe Plan 9 has done the groundwork for such an idea (representing all data in folders and files)

some of us might ever hear about ulteo project…
this project founder is ex mandriva developer, Gael Dauval.
it looks like he and his team tried to design a slightly new concept about Operating System….
Okay…
At first glance, I was curious… what could it be… this new concept about…
and I think it wont hurts to keep an eye on it…
so I decide to do research a bit…
and…
at first phase…
Ulteo come with full installation CD, this OS named Sirius (codename),
and nothing special on it…
it was look like just another linux distribution…
and then…
something changed…
ulteo suddenly talks about shared desktop, online desktop, etc..
hng…
well… I know current computing trends tend to keep anything as green as possible, (you know what I mean…)
and many companies doing heavily research on virtualization with the same reason. minimized resources as much as possible…
but do we really need it…?
based on my experience as end user…
virtual desktop won’t be useful, I’d rather choose to create portable OS, or remote desktop than using virtual desktop.
I was using virtual desktop quite awhile and it isn’t effective for daily use.
i know current virtual desktop using shared resource. but the server itself will have a weight load. and the clients must have some specific software installed…
well it is not effective…
why not using LTSP then….
you can even use diskless client…
for me at least. It looks a lot more effective…
it just.. IMO btw….

Wednesday, Johann and me, we presented People at the GUADEC in Istanbul. We were slightly disappointed by the number of attendants, especially that there was a considerable number of people attending the Soylent talk. However, we managed to get the attention of the Online Desktop people, as well as the Telepathy crew, and we had a quite positive feedback about our ideas and goals.

The demo during the talk went pretty well, and the phone backend for people (the one using Bluetooth to access your contacts directly from the phone) also worked flawlessly, but it seems like I went too quick during the demo, and most people didn’t really get what was happening in there :/

If you missed the talk, and are looking for the slides, they are available now, and you can find them here.

After the talk, we started a quick ad-hock BoF session about People, with Owen Taylor and Marina Zhurakhinskaya, as well as Robert McQueen and Travis Reitter which led to this:

BoF Blackboard

We are now planning to quickly hack together an Online Desktop backend, and a Telepathy backend, and improve the DBus daemon before the 0.0.5 release.

I have ported GNOME Online Desktop to FreeBSD. which is now available in ports tree at net/online-desktop. Enjoy…;)

Premiers paquets que je vais essayer d’intégrer à Intrepid : Mugshot et Online-Desktop (les 2 étant très liès).

Mais d’abord, une petite description. Mugshot.org est un site qui tente de fédérer plusieurs site dit “Web 2.0″ comme Facebook, Digg, del.ico.us, last.fm etc … le résultat est un programme qui tracke ces activités du web et les publient à vos amis.

Online-Desktop poursuit le même principe en l’élargissant. Il utilise notamment Firefox pour utiliser au maximum les applications web comme Gmail, Google Reader etc … Le but est de les utiliser de la façon la plus transparente possible et faire de l’ordi une porte ouverte sur le Web.

Dans l’ensemble, je trouve que c’est un concept intéressant qu’il faudrait explorer. C’est peut être le futur de l’informatique (ou pas ). Et puis, je fais une fixation sur les programmes que Fedora a et pas Debian unstable

En ce qui concerne les paquets, ils sont disponibles pour Hardy dans mon PPA. Mugshot doit être fonctionnel, même si des déconnexions peuvent subsister. Online-Desktop et Bigboard (les 2 vont ensemble) devrait marcher, mais je ne garantie pas la stabilité après le lancement.

Pour Mugshot, il est impératif d’avoir un compte sur mugshot.org et se s’y connecter avec Firefox. Il faut aussi conserver les cookies venant de ce site, le client Mugshot s’en sert pour se connecter.

Pour Online-Desktop, il faut se connecter par GDM à la session “Online-Desktop”, il doit lancer Firefox et Bigboard. Après, il faut jouer.

J’espère pouvoir les proposer à Ubuntu dans quelques jours quand la merge avec Debian aura commencé, sauf si on (l’équipe Debian qui maintient tous ces paquets) arrive à les publier chez Debian avant

Liens utiles :

• Online-Desktop chez GNOME
• Mugshot.org

a few words about the evolution of Facebook and the future of the platform:

Yesterday facebook added a new set of features that allows users to import information from other websites (i.e. flickr, delicious, digg, twitter) directly into your mini-feed, and your friends feed.  Just click over to your profile, view your mini-feed and click IMPORT near the top to get startd.

Say you add your summer vacation photo’s to your flickr account, now you won’t have to double-post them on Facebook because your all-knowing friend feed will have already notified your friends that you posted them over there, cool right?

The next step Facebook needs to take is to integrate some kind of open office tools (i.e. spreadsheet, word processor, slide presentation) that way the platform is capable of sharing all kinds of data.  Facebook could be used as a strong business tool if businesses had the option of privatizing a network, and then going further with developing applications using the Facebook open API.

Also, note that last June the company aquired an online OS named “Parakee”, who’s interface mirrors that of Mac OS X, it was developed by Mozilla for use within the Firefox browser woohoo.  So if Facebook can integrate that interface within it’s own platform they could establish the first workable version of Web 3.0 and the elusive Online Desktop.  I’m excited for that one.

Seems interesting subscribe the way you want to keep updated…



Recently there is a flurry of Web Operating Systems (Web OS) which allows you to setup your public/private Web Desktop on the world wide web, the Internet. This allows you to access your files, music, photos, videos on the move no matter if you have a PC/laptop of your own. Sounds cool rite.

This is very useful for people who are constantly on the move, but still can’t leave their favorites. This allows you to upload your files to the so called “Web Desktop, chat with your friends on the move in many of the major instant messengers such as Yahoo Messenger, MSN, AIM etc., listen to your favorite music, watch your fun filled videos n lots more. No, no no need for download, installation and other overheads . It’s available on your Desktop

I have browsed through some of them – such as Jooce which is available for use under Beta and Cloudo which is under Alpha development soon to be released. But the UI looks cool, inviting n tempting to use.

A screen shot of my desktop for your visual treat

Go ahead n start using it…

Make use of the power of Internet in your day-to-day life.

Последние дни разбирался с блогом, настраивал, копался и…  недоумевал. Поэтому не могу об этом не написать.

Нет конечно положительных эмоций много, но лично у меня как программиста не раз возникал вопрос: “а почему здесь не так… а я бы добавил это и это…”, но в основном возникало два вопроса: “какая светлая голова это придумала?” и “какие кривые руки это писали?”. В общем ощущения смешанные, итак по порядку:

1. Блог я зарегистрировал на WordPress. Ну это в принципе понятно, не понятно может быть другое почему именно здесь? Сразу скажу что времени основательно выбирать блог-сервис не было, поэтому пошел по самому простому и надежному пути: прочел несколько статей в которых сранивались различные блог-сервисы. Вот тогда и появилось первое непонимание… Сервисов много, если хорошо поискать даже ОЧЕНЬ много, но что по-моему сугубо личному мнению должно присутствовать в таких сервисах?

• Бесплатный.
  Вот тут конечно можно и закончить, за бесплатно разве можно что-то получить? Можно. Существуют же open-source проекты и бесплатные программы и сайты, так почему же не сервисы? Прекрасным развитием такого сервиса впоследствии может стать предоставление дополнительных услуг за небольшую плату? А теперь помножьте на аудиторию и… в общем не об этом. Собственно поэтому из всех рассмотренных бесплатных кандидатур WordPress оказался наиболее конкурентноспособным.
• Онлайн-ресурс.
  Вот это для блог-сервиса оказалось большой проблемой. Как это? Да очень просто, конечно сам блог-сервис доступен в онлайн-режиме. Однако предоставленный вам ресурс имеет огромное количество ограничений, и всех тех возможностей, которые можно получить развернув блог на своем хостинге, вы не увидете. У себя вы “царь и бог”, вы можете менять внешний вид, добавлять любую функциональность, загружать кучу файлов и вообще делать что угодно. На чужом ресурсе безопасность на первом месте, поэтому и настроек меньше, и возможности не те. Нельзя использовать внешние темы и плагины, в блог можно загружать только файлы изображений и документов, поэтому для других типов файлов приходиться использовать внешнее хранилище. Я использовал Box.net.
• Удобный для редактирования.
  Администраторская панель не имеет возможности настройки внешнего вида или адаптации, слабый html-редактор, который к тому же живет своей собственной жизнью и может не спрашивая менять форматирование вашей страницы, из замеченных особенностей: преобразование тегов div в p, объединение тегов p с потерей форматирования, дублирование и перенос тегов без видимой причины. В результате всего этого просто открыв страницу и не внеся в нее никаких изменений вы можете изменить ее внешний вид до неузнаваемости. Также отсутствует официальный offline-редактор который бы позволил экономить трафик и писать статьи не заходя в интернет. Конечно можно использовать offline-редакторы третьих фирм, но и они не лишены недостатков. Наиболее удобным оказался BlogJet.
• Распространенный.
  Существование различных сообществ (communities) позволяет проекту динамично развиваться, а его разработчикам постоянно испытывать к нему интерес. Пользователи самостоятельно разрабатывают различные плагины, виджеты, темы, программы и многое другое… Часть идей перекочевывают в сам проект, поддержка проекта может быть включена в другие распространенные приложения. В качестве средства подобной интеграции можно использовать Netvibes.com.

Не совсем понятно почему часто внешне продуманный сервис спотыкается на мелочах и плохо воспринимает опыт конкурентов, очевидно что организация достаточно гибкого и расширяемого сервиса задача не тривиальная, с другой стороны чем больше компания (либо количество включенных в разработку пользователей), тем больше возможности, остается надеяться что нарастающая конкуренция поможет в развитии таких проектов.

2. Файловые хранилища существуют уже давно, но они не позволяют хранить файлы долгое время или организовывать единое хранилище для всех файлов одного пользователя. Веб-хранилище Box.net позволяет не только постоянно хранить до 1 Гб информации, но и организовать структуру схожую с файловой системой включающую подкаталоги. Есть возможность открыть для общего доступа определенные файлы или целые каталоги, при этом пользователи могут подписаться на события в вашем хранилище и получать информацию о появлении в нем нового файла. Так же можно создать общую группу, что позволит различным пользователям хранить свои данные в одном месте. Но пожалуй самым перспективным может оказаться возможность подключения различных сервисов для работы с файлам в хранилище, на данный момент уже доступны такие сервисы как:

• Autodesk Freewheel – для просмотра DWF файлы непосредственно в браузере

• Blog posting – для публикации записей в блог из хранилища (совместим с WordPress)

• Picnik и Snipshot – онлайн редакторы фотографий и изображений

• Scribd, Thinkfree и Zoho – редакторы текстовых документов и таблиц

За дополнительную плату хранилище может быть расширено до 15 Гб и более. Минусом можно считать то, что в бесплатной версии хранилища нельзя получить прямую ссылку на файл, вместо этого отображается специальное окно с кнопкой загрузки. Плюсом является интеграция с WordPress в виде специального виджета, который отображает содержимое хранилища.

3. Средством интеграции и более удобного доступа ко всем ресурсам стал онлайн рабочего стола Netvibes.com. Этот сервис больше всего опирается на сообщества. Для разработки специальных виджетов выпущен Universal Widget API позволяющий разрабатывать дополнительные компоненты, которые также могут работать на платформах Mac, iPhone, iPod touch, IGoogle, Opera, Windows Vista, Windows Live, Yahoo! Widgets. На данный момент доступно более 110000!!! компоненентов. Используя эти компоненты можно:

• вести список задач, добавлять заметки, помечать даты в календаре
• просматривать новости, погоду, rss рассылки
• выполнять поиск с помощью Google, Yahoo!, Live
• просматривать любую страницу (я поместил ссылку на свой блог)
• напрямую общаться с хранилищем Box.net
• и еще огромное количество различных компонентов в том числе и развлекательных

Netvibes пожалуй больше всего поразил количеством предоставляемых возможностей и… их однообразием. Из-за отстутствия удобного поиска и категоризации иногда кажется что все уже просмотрено на первых 3 страницах и ничего нового уже не найти, но иногда попадаются действительно полезные компоненты, хотя их поиск может занять много времени. Еще одним недостатком можно посчитать отсутствие персональных пространств, которые могли бы просматривать другие пользователи, но похоже что в скором будущем подобная функция станет доступной.

Итого:

Хранение и организация собственной информации в сети позволяет не только стать более мобильным и не зависеть от конкретного компьютера, но и открыть доступ к информации которая может быть полезна и интересна другим, так что больше сервисов хороших и разных.

O mundo está mudando e as aplicações online estão se tornando cada vez mais e mais populares, seja por e-mail ou processamento de textos. Os desenvolvedores por trás do Bigboard e Gnome na iniciativa “online desktop” acham que está na hora de nossos desktops começarem a correr atrás.

O Fedora Wiki publicou uma entrevista com o desenvolvedor Colin Walters, engenheiro de software, sobre o que é o ‘Desktop Online’ e quais serão as mudanças a respeito no Fedora.

Você poderia nos explicar o que é o conceito de “desktop online ” e como o Bigboard fará parte disso?

A iniciativa Online Desktop é essencialmente um reconhecimento do fato de que cada vez mais e mais pessoas estão computando online. O Yahoo! Mail ou GMail ganharam completamente o mercado do consumidor sobre o Thunderbird/Evolution, e estão no processo de moverem-se para empresas. O Google Docs e outros como ele estão crescendo rapidamente no mercado de “processamento de textos básico”, e de fato adicionando novas funções como edição colaborativa extremamente simples.

Então, essencialmente nós estamos tentando reorganizar o desktop e otimizá-lo para estes tipos de aplicações.

O Big Board faz parte da iniciativa Online Desktop; é um novo componente do painel que pretende mostrar coisas mais relevantes sobre sua vida online do que o painel tradicional. Você pode pensar nele como uma coleção de “widgets” customizados para coisas como Google Calendar ou Docs, exceto que nós estamos pouco interessados em algumas coisas que podem vir à mente com o termo widgets, como relógios gigantes meticulosamente renderizados.

Quais mudanças específicas no Fedora você teve de fazer para tornar esta função uma realidade? Estas mudanças serão úteis para outras distribuições GNU/Linux?

Até agora nós estivemos adicionando mais coisas como uma biblioteca para comunicação com online.gnome.org, uma nova sidebar, etc. No entanto nós estamos começando a modificar componentes existentes como Pidgin e Firefox.

Lendo a página de características na Fedora Wiki, eu estou intrigado para aprender mais sobre configurações “online/offline” do Gnome, e também aprender mais sobre o que é o online.gnome.org e como ele se relaciona com a função Bigboard no Fedora 8?

O Desktop Online é designado assumindo que você esteja online, e o padrão para usar aplicações online. Dito isso, o desktop não deve “cair” se você sair fora da sua zona WiFi temporariamente, mas para muitas pessoas seus computadores são basicamente um tijolo sem internet (sem GMail, Wikipedia, etc.). Obviamente com coisas como Google Gears as aplicações web estão começando a trabalhar offline, também.

online.gnome.org pretende ser um serviço oferecido pelo GNOME para guardar aspectos do desktop online. O Big Board usa ele atualmente para guardar quais aplicações você usa. Outras coisas no protótipo incluem guardar preferências como tamanho da fonte, etc.

Para a entrevista completa acesse: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Interviews/ColinWalters

Que venha o Online Desktop!

I’m introducing the GNOME Mobile initiative next Tuesday in the OpenMind conference (open source / open content \ open innovation – Tampere FI). The program is interesting, so interesting that it is clear that I can’t just go with the basics under the arm.

I’m gathering some ideas to open minds. Throw yours for inclusion if you wish.

Doing this session as GNOME Foundation member, one of the ideas I want to rise is how the mobile activity has been useful to put in words (or more exactly in actions) what was floating around for a long time: GNOME is not only about one graphical desktop environment. The project in fact digs deeper until the boundaries with the kernel, and might flourish in a multitude of different interfaces, being the PC/laptop desktop just one of them.

Another idea: computers are going mobile as much as mobiles (the phones) are going computing. In this sense Ubuntu’s famous bug # 1 could become OBSOLETE since desktop/laptop PCs would not be the only computer category to have as reference. The mobile space (with sales much higher than the PC sector) has different references: as for today Microsoft has not a majority of market share and Linux is not an automatic flag of freedom.

Another idea: the online desktop thingy is in fact quite crucial. Who buys a mobile device to have it isolated or even just occasionally connected. Nowadays you carry a mobile computer precisely to stay connected, always on.

To me all this shows an opportunity for the GNOME project that goes beyond free licenses and open source code: the key is open&free collaboration between different people, organizations and paradigms. We have already seen some interesting moves around the GNOME Mobile initiative and this should be only the beginning.

Said all this, at the same time I’m having some mixed feelings. There is ‘GNOME Mobile’ related stuff in my professional work almost constantly and I was happy seeing the interest and participation on the GMAE related sessions in GUADEC but… the mailing lists are quite silent and I don’t know really where are we now, nor where are we supposed to be heading.

Maybe it’s just me, but the feeling is that companies are collaborating on an enhanced P2P basis but the GNOME-centric agenda is missing, or at least is not visible (even to insiders). This is a problem, but on the other hand a much worse problem would be to have a clear agenda but no activity/interest from the mobile software developers and hardware manufacturers.

Optimism wins.

Having been in the services space for about close to 5 years now I have always been waiting for the software as a service concept to become more of a reality in our day to day lie and apart from all the great things that Microsoft has done and is in the process of doing in this space reading about Nivio today certainly made me feel that we are one step closer. What excites me more is that its a bunch of Indians from Delhi who did this.  An on-line windows based desktop which could help the user roam his complete desktop including applications and data across machines. It also gets the user out of the buiness of installing and maintaining different applications and dealing with a lot of computer maintenance issues. How they would monetize this is yet to see, but for a beta release it surely seems quite promising, only unfortunate to see all the open office stuff available for free but then again its open office.  But the way I look at it, it does have a lot of potential mainly in the small business, student and even a regular PC user of today.. this can open up a complete new avenue for subscriptions, ad sales, application sharing, networking.. the applications are just infinite if done right.  Given all these advantages, I guess I would like to see how the whole aspect of security and privacy shapes up in this space.

Although I must say, its quite frustrating that Microsoft could not come up with something like this even after the fact that we actually bought Softricity.. I would blame to the same problem I see in Microsoft – time to market is way to long.. maybe its the bureaucracy or just the way we plan this, it just scares me sometimes. I just hope nobody else beats us to this.

As for now check out more on Nivio at www.nivio.com and some more details at http://www.internationalreporter.com/News-2243/Indians-invented-World-s-first-Windows-based-online-desktop.html