DoctorMo's Blog

Today I attended a session close to my heart, user content management on the desktop.

The project I have proposed my Central Services project (formally User Data Services) to meet the needs and supply access to all content library features to the very core of Ubuntu.

First I will explain the problem. Every media and content system has library programs, editing programs and viewing programs. Sometimes their all in one, for instance Rythembox is a good library and viewer of audio content. But the core features that you want to find in all these applications is the same:

• Listing and Opening
• Metadata and Tagging
• Indexing and Searching
• Event Logging
• Online Service Support
• Hardware Device Support

The only thing that separates these generic features is the content type and the kinds of applications that will display the content. It seems natural then that we should aim to get content library infrastructure in place so programmers don’t have to re-invent all of these things (some of which are none-trival), these are some content type examples:

• Images / Galleries
• Audio / Albums
• Contact / Address Book
• Event / Calendar

Imagine a time when you no longer have to hunt around for a picture to attach to your email but instead select a “pictures” tab and are presented with all images availble even if they are on your Google Picassa account or on your ipod without having to first sync them, imagine being able to access your contacts from facebook, gmail and your blackberry all from the same application and then deciding for yourself how they should be sync’ed (it at all).

I think it would be awesome and I’m trying to complete the implimentation details for the metadata and indexing, working with the Zeitgeist project and learning from the mojito moblin (intel) who are also hear and trying to solve a similar set of problems.