Fwd: Fer de Lance, intelligence for the free desktop

[Christian Schaller <Uraeus linuxrising org>]

This was posted to Gnotices, but I am sending it here instead since it
is more of a request for contact than a news item:

From: Wolfgang Müller <Wolfgang Mueller cui unige ch>

Hi, I am the maintainer of the GNU Image-Finding Tool.

We (Carsten Pfeiffer and myself) are trying to get a project going
described at http://www.fer-de-lance.org

The goal of this project is to integrate content-based retrieval
services into the desktop. Content-based retrieval means: retrieving
without relying on keywords. See the GNU Image Finding Tool,
demonstrated at

http://viper.unige.ch/demo.php

for an example.

We would like to work on extending the GIFT but also on extending the
desktop for providing services like a content-sensitive file open dialog
(don't show me the next directory, instead show me all files similar to
this one), or a content-sensitive file manager (same functionality in
the file manager). We want to extend this idea as far as possible,
drawing on current research and on your desktop expertise. What would be
needed would be an API for programs that use such services etc.

Getting this to work would be actually quite cool, as this would create
the largest base of content-based retrieval users so far, being a tool
both for users and research.

We intend this project to encompass any free desktop you like. It's
about free vs. non-free, and about writing exciting software. Currently,
the only one who has contributed desktop code to the project so far is
Carsten Pfeiffer, who wrote a kioslave to Konqueror, which talks quite
successfully to the GIFT. See
http://master.kde.org/~pfeiffer/kmrml/screenshots/

I find this is a really good fist step, and we would like to see things
like that and more both on GNOME and KDE. It would be really cool to get
some interoperability here.

Cheers,
Wolfgang