Finally, exams are over. Not convinced they went great, but then I never am – will just have to wait and see. I’m relaxing for the next few days, but after that it’s time to dive right into my new classes, and a bunch of Fedora/free culture stuff I seem to have hooked myself into again 
Fun times ahead.
Saving
I suppose this is something that would need to be tackled at the application level instead of the desktop level, but I’ll share anyway.
Storage is pretty cheap, search makes it easy to find stuff, and I should never lose my work.
With those things in mind, applications should regularly auto-save by default, i.e. every few minutes. I’m not even sure that the save button should exist any more, Tomboy manages quite well without it.
Further, many online services and desktop applications integrate revision tracking, and it’s incredibly useful: if you decide on a new direction for your essay, 10 minutes later realise you hate all your changes, no problem, you can just role back to an old revision of the file.
Final point, which probably presents the greatest challenge from a free software point of view, is that there should be universal integration with a remote backup service, without the user having to set anything up or maintain it. Specifically, I believe that my local data should be synced remotely so there are always two copies available, one of which would be accessible any where I have a web connection. Being able to edit online while away from the computer is a bonus, having your files safe is a necessity.
Across the various planets, there seems to have been quite a lot of discussion about interfaces and how Gnome 3.0 should proceed. I think the most interesting of all these posts has been this one from Alberto Ruiz where he linked to this talk given by Aza Raskin. While I know very little about interface design and human computer interaction, it seems to me that many of his suggestions make a lot of sense and could help to tackle some of the problems people have with their computing experiences. I’m going to share some of my thoughts on this here, take it or leave it, but I at least hope those who are working on Gnome 3.0 interfaces will give some thought to Aza and his father’s work.
Ubiquitous Search
One of the major points under consideration for Gnome 3.0 is developing a new paradigm for file management, and it seems the front runner for this is some kind of journal, similar to what the OLPC has. Federico Mena-Quintero posted to his blog saying that he believes humans are pretty good at knowing when they’ve done things, and this forms a useful paragidm for interacting with the computer. I don’t know about anyone else, however, but I at least struggle to tell you what day last week I had cabonara for dinner, let alone what month two years ago I worked on that essay which might have been about some aspect of polytheism in the Hebrew Bible.
What Aza Raskin et al would suggest is that there is already a model for interacting quickly and efficiently with large numbers of files and data on the web: text based search. I agree with him too, there’s no way I could work my way through all the billions of pages quickly if we were still stuck using web directories. Not only that, but it’s an interface many people are used to dealing with: my non-technical friends who use the web never type any address out in full except for www.google.com, which they then use to find what ever else it was they were wanting to go to even when it’s something they visit regularly like their email (interestingly, most don’t even realise there’s a quick search bar just to the right that would save them even typing that!).
So, while being able to narrow down a set of search results by date might be useful for pinpointing a hard to locate file alongside other technologies like tagging (a file might belong to two distinct sets) and smart folders, it seems to me this should not be the default; instead, one of the many existing free software desktop search systems should be used, whether that’s Tracker, Stirigi or Beagle with these other technologies built around search as assistants.
Oh, and search would need to be well integrated into the operating system and not require me to open up a separate application before being able to do anything (as with Tracker now). Maybe something in the panel, maybe something like QuickSilver/Gnome-Do, maybe, crazily, a search bar in the middle of the desktop.
More later, perhaps…
See:
http://www.mysociety.org/2009/01/17/6-days-to-stop-mps-concealing-their-expenses/
I have 5 essays due in today. I’ve come to the library to make final editing passes and get them printed. Remembered to save documents as .doc so that crippled Office 2007 can open them. Office 2007 fails to correctly render many special characters anyway(I’m learning Hebrew, proper transliteration is essential in my essays). Google Docs fails to preserve any formatting. Currently waiting for OpenOffice to install on my USB stick so I can actually get on with some work, an hour after I arrived! Once essays and exams are out of the way, I’m petitioning the University to install OpenOffice.org on their systems.
Next time, I’ll make sure I have live system on my USB stick – OK for me but what about less technical people who don’t want or can’t pay for a Microsoft Office 2007 license. Not acceptable.
I think Microsoft and Apple have both finally started to create a picture of cloud computing that is really promising.
By integrating their desktop products with their cloud services, they’re making anybody’s data who takes advantage of these services safe and universally available (with a network connection), without forcing us to abandon more functional desktop applications (as Google would have us do). Neither are they forcing us to abandon the ability to keep a local copy in whatever format or way we wish, and providing us with the ability to opt-out of these services for individual documents.
Of course, the usual caveat exists: these products are not open for anyone to develop around, and so anyone who wishes to use them gets locked into a particular set of applications 
Fix this, and I’d be really interested, I think.
Right… back to my essay.
1. That OpenOffice.org Writer would have a keyboard short-cut for new footnotes.
2. That there was a functioning and quick way to save the state of my Gnome session when I shutdown, on a per session basis. I don’t like having to start up all these documents every time I sit down to work for a while at the moment
Gargh, look at the window list!
3. That everyone enjoys a happy and peaceful new year.
