Dashboard - GNOME’s desktop agent

Ximian’s Nat Friedman is hacking up something extremely cool, Dashboard.

Here’s a sample scenario:

1. In an IM conversation with someone, they ask you about some project you’ve been working on.
2. The dashboard notices what you’re talking about and matches your latest design document for the project.
3. You say to your friend: “Check out my current design.” and drag and drop the document from the dashboard onto your IM window.
4. Gaim transfers the file to the other person.

Many of the required components for the above to happen are ready. Nat is receiving a lot of support and progress seems very swift.

Check out the screenshots of it integrating with (patched) versions of Evolution (email), Gaim (instant messaging), X-Chat (IRC) and Straw (RSS news reader).

Nat brings up a good point about the feasibility of this kind of cross-app desktop communication.

One important thing to realize is that it would never be possible to write something like the dashboard in a world where you can’t get the source code to your applications. This is the whole “basis for innovation” thing we’re always talking about.

And some say there is no innovation in open source applications.

Update:

IRC log of Dashboard demo at OSCON.

nat looks forward to doing some specialised backends for programmers

That sounds very interesting. Context-sensitive help in any development environment.

[/technology] posted at 17:15 #

The quickest way to send 2.8 terrabytes of data

Jim Gray, head of Microsoft’s Bay Area Research Center, calls his method TeraScale SneakerNet.

DP Are you sending them a whole PC?

JG Yes, an Athlon with a Gigabit Ethernet interface, a gigabyte of RAM, and seven 300-GB disks - all for about $3,000.

DP How do you get to the 7-megabytes-per-second figure?

JG UPS takes 24 hours, and 9 hours at each end to do the copy.

[/technology] posted at 16:28 #