Saturday, February 21, 2009

GNOME and The Cloud

Recently I've read some thoughts on GNOME and its (no) integration with the Internet. Let me throw my 2 cents here:

Please allow user to fill its accounts in 'About Me' dialog. Distros (like Ubuntu) can make a nice wizard. possibly the first time GNOME starts (is installed). It can even simplify the install process a lot. User would fill Name, Password (also default from gnome-keyring) and was allowed to add its on-line accounts (possibly with templates for well known, reccomended and new online services out there).

First time user can benefit in following ways:
  • It is logical to edit this kind of information in one place. It will not have to be entered multiple times in various applications. User will be happy.
  • Gnome can automatically start Piding, Empathy or other IM if user has pre-configured at least one IM account.
  • Other applications can pull for this information (Ekiga, DropBox, Firefox Plugins?, Banshee-Last.Fm) and use it whenever appropriate.
  • The first time application wants to know about specific account, confirmation dialog for access gnome-keyring data is raised.
I am not a GNOME hacker but is this feasible? I guess store it in the gnome-keyring and write a DBUS service Accounts?

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