Re: Tracker, Zeitgeist, Couchdb...where is the problem ?

["Thomas H.P. Andersen" <phomes gmail com>]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 22:48, Matthias Clasen<matthias clasen gmail com> wrote:
> I think this recent discussion about tracker as a gnome module is
> somewhat backwards. I don't think it is leading us anywhere to talk
> about ontologies and rdf and events and timelines and metadata stores
> and kernel apis before we answer the first question:
>
> What is the user problem that we are solving here ?
> Can that be described in a paragraph ?
> And if it can, is it something that a 'regular' user would recognize
> as a problem he has on his computer ?

I'll give this a try. I am not related to tracker in any way, this is
how I see it from my user perspective.

User problem:
My computer is a dumb data storage. It simply holds all my data and
does not understand the data. I can not ask it anything intelligent
about all this data.

Solution:
Add a mechanism that can interpret and understand my data and can
relate it to the rest of my data.

Also allow applications to query this "intelligent" mechanism for
information they want to present in their own UI.

Result:
Email app can suggest to IM the contact instead because it can relate
the IM contact data.
IM app can suggest documents that relate to the current conversation.
Image viewer app can now relate a picture I'm viewing to other
pictures of the same place, person, etc. Both local pics and on
flicker, facebook.
Document viewer can categorize documents and show related documents to
what I am reading. Other docs with the same topic, same language, same
wording, same lenght, etc. Also wikipedia articles I have read that
relate.
FIle browser can show other files of any type that relates to the
current file. Maybe I'm writing a report and have pictures, charts,
datasheets, etc scattered in many other folders.
Show me all files of work (documents, music, paintings, video)
authored from year 2007 to 2009.
Music player can show my own concert pictures that relate to the band
I'm listening to.

And lots of other interesting stuff that I am not creative enough to imagine.

> Once we have the problem scoped out, we need to look at the user
> experience we want to aim for in solving it. Will it be a single
> search-for-everything dialog ? A query language ? Tagging everywhere ?
>
> After that, it might be possible to evaluate whether tracker,
> zeitgeist, couchdb or something else can be part of the
> implementation...
>
>
> Matthias
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