KDE's Aaron Seigo has published a blog post in which he details how Nepomuk and the semantic desktop can be beneficial to users. He introduces the concepts of "context" and "context switches" - possible states are "writing an OSNews news item", or "posting a blog entry", or "editing your MySpace page". When you switch from one of these contexts to another, it's called a context switch, according to Seigo. "What happens with the rest of the software running on your computer when you switch contexts?" Seigo answers his own question. "Pretty much nothing. At least not automatically."
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Member since:2005-07-06
all in all kde and any other apps that tie into this could in theory learn your habits and patterns and predict what you want to do when something happens.
i recall reading about a similar system being tested out at microsoft, something about a mail app looking at the content of the mail and being able to set up meetings and so on based on that...
if it works, it will be like having a secretary that do what things before you tell her, as she have learned how you behave.
or if you want the funny interpretation, take a look at the early seasons of mash. radar pulls this on the colonel all the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_O%27Reilly
Member since:2005-07-06
Save me from software second-guessing my intention! That would be some sort of desktop hell as far as I'm concerned - at best it will be stupidly getting in my way, at worst it will try to actually run the show. No, thanks - "pretty much nothing" is exactly what I want my software to do until *I* say otherwise.
Member since:2005-07-12
Member since:2005-07-06
Nothing will be forced upon you. First of all, context switches have to be done manually. If no alternative context is set up, it's like before.
Secondly, KDE is known for its configurability. So even if at some day in the future, KDE will feature automatic context detection, nobody will be forced to use it.
Member since:2008-02-26
The problem with this kind of technology is that it has to know what you want to do better than you or it will end up being another Clippy or Microsoft Bob. Anything less intelligent than yourself ends up getting in the way.
If someone breaks into your house you don't want your Nepomuk-powered tool to decide that you intended to use camera instead of gun because you use camera more than gun towards people.
Member since:
2006-11-14
have you ever used a mac? on a mac, you only have one menu bar at the top and it changes based on the window that has focus ..at it simplicity, that is what he is saying ..having one thing(or a bunch of them) that changes based on what you are doing(or is happening)
for example, lets say you are working on 4 projects and you have 4 groups of people in your kopete contact list that you are collaborating with on your projects ..you can work on each project on a separate virtual desktop and with this, you can attach each group on your kopete contact list to a particular desktop and you will only see a particular group of people based on what you are doing .. effectively, you will use whatever he is talking about to have kopete responds to a particular desktop ..
the idea already exists in KDE, you can have amarok play a particular song when a particular user log in in kopete using dcop(and i think dbus in kde4) ..the idea is the same, they are just extending it to plasma ..