"PC users have volumes of information saved on their computers, most of it disconnected and disparate save for a basic directory system. The answer to connecting all the information into a local semantic Web of information is closer than you might think. Thanks to the open source NEPOMUK (Networked Environment for Personalized, Ontology-based Management of Unified Knowledge) effort, the Semantic Desktop isn't a dream; it's an emerging reality and will be here with the upcoming release of KDE 4 for the Linux desktop."
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-08
Application developers can give the notion of semantic organization a kick-start by guiding users toward contributing metadata. For example, a media player could offer to add a common tag to files in a playlist. The "Save As" dialog for any application would be an obvious place to "remind" the user to add tags (maybe this done already).
Also, I think it might be useful to introduce generic key/value pairs to the possible metadata types. MIME types could be associated with default keys, and multiple applications could use well-known keys to communicate through metadata without requiring action from the user.
There may be some potential worries about malicious applications doing bad things with metadata, but I'm not sure there's any way to prevent that even in the current design. Maybe applications should be allowed to create private keys that no other application can modify. This would be a convenient way for applications to save per-file state.
Just some ideas. Keep up the good work!
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2005-07-06
> It's going to be near impossible to breakdown
these sorts of changes will inevitably be multi-generational. but they need to start at some point, right? =) we shouldn't be discouraged if we don't get to the final destination with the first iteration. we should only be discouraged if we aren't moving towards that destination as quickly as possible.
there are several things in kde4 that are like this, btw.