• We have a brand new way to deal with email: beside the preview-based approach, allowing to send new messages very quickly, we have now integrated Mozilla Thunderbird, so that users can use it to access all system mail (the standard way to use it) or to have a venue-based view and creation of messages. This also means that you can use thunderbird to compose mail from a venue, with attachments and everything.
• We are continuing integrating productivity tools thanks to FSter power, abstracting file system access, and now we have Microsoft Word compatibility with AbiWord… we know we can do more than that, and possibly OpenOffice is on the way (and it will of course bring spreadsheets, disgrams and slide shows into the prototype).
• We have the ability to have a rich preview thanks to Webkit: this means being able to preview pictures within the prototype, and it’s been a nice feature to show
• We have added RSS capability thanks to tracker-miner-RSS, and we addedd a default behavior linking to Twitter: each twit hash-tagged with the name of a venue automatically goes to that venue (pretty cool having populated in a few seconds a venue called CSCW2010 with the many participants’ twits).

We’re going alpha-testing (staff only) very soon, and we’ll hopefully go public (with a downloadable version of the prototype, e.g., with a bootable ISO) quite soon afterwards, in order to collect as much feedback as possible to make the itsme system prototype really usable in everyday situations… well, everyday stories actually

Here’s an extended verion of the slides set describing the things our guys will be talking about (they will actually have only a very few minutes, and will focus on FSter leverage of Tracker, especially with respect to how configurations are mapped to SparQL queries)

itsme OS architecture, november 2009

Just to mention some of the major changes in this version:

• we moved from Nepomuk stuff (Virtuoso, Soprano, Strigi) to Tracker 0.7: there are several reasons for this change, basically we are aiming at having a strong implementation and a strong reference community. The impact we had from Maemo Summit and by meeting some Tracker developers convinced us that we are on the right path.
• we adopted a model-state-view architecture for the itsme front-end: we are aiming at having an implementation that can dynamically and easily adapt to changes. We’ve made some of the engineering features that could allow multi-platform interaction slimmer (since they have lower priority at the moment), and gained a great amount of speed and scalability.

• interaction with panels and venues: re-arranging them, filtering contents with channels and subvenues, drag and drop, and so forth. We omitted showing how to create a new venue and renaming it, but it is possible, of course
• working with Linux applications: there’s a simple example with plain text editing, but we are working to integrate OpenOffice and similar tools;
• using interface shortcuts, for example to send email.

Here’s the video:

But first, what are frame panels in itsme OS?

The frame is the uppermost layer of the itsme OS that includes all the elements that must be accessible at all times independent from the actual visualization. In order to make these elements always available the frame is composed by several sliding panels, appearing and disappearing according to the user interaction.
In itsme two kinds of panels are provided: temporary spaces for unorganized contents (the limbo and the transition space) and collectors of transversal contents (the resource panel, the contact panel and the inbox). Starting from this conceptualization of the frame panels, we are now trying to figure out several details concerning their behavior and interaction modalities.

Movement of panels

• We all agreed that the user should be given the option to move a group of panels from left to right and vice versa, as per the needs, and his ways of using the interface.
• As far as the vertical movement (up/down) is concerned, since we are crunched under deadlines, we decided to keep the panels static for the prototype and to implement the vertical movement of panels in the itsme OS beta version. Vertical resizing, however, is already available in the prototype.

Panels as containers of multiple spaces

Thinking about what is represented in the panels, we realized that the objects displayed could be grouped in specific categories in order to provide a more functional architecture and visualization of the information.

• For example in the case of the limbo, the uncategorized elements can be grouped according to the space in which they are physically stored: the computer itself, the USB key, the mobile phone, … (and any other external device connected). In terms of interface, the issue is solved by assigning each group to a tab in the panel’s header so that the user can easily choose the object to see and switch from one to another solves the issue.
• Following this model, in the Resources panel we could have the list of applications, the list of the utilities, the list of the bookmarks, …each group with a specific tab.
• Considering the Inbox, since it could be defined as a collector of a series of elements that are located elsewhere in the system (in the limbo or in the venues) and since this is true for other contents as well (besides messages) we came to the idea of having a kind of “Universe” panel that comprehends the Inbox but also other collections (for example all the images in my itsme, all the music, …). How many tabs could this “Universe” panels have? What kind of contents would a user like to see in a collection outside the specific contexts?

Static or dynamic interaction?

This is a basic choice that concerns the modality in which panels could be opened and closed. In the dynamic mode it happens with a simple mouse-over, while in the static one a point & click interaction is required. Do we have to choose one of them for the prototype or the behavior is something a user can set in itsme preferences? This issue is open for discussion.

• Drag and Drop: it is possible to create new private messages by simply dragging and dropping a person to the messages channel.
• Highlight: related things are coloured in yellow, simply move your mouse around to quickly see what’s related.
• Comments: posts with new comments since the last visit to the emulator appear in green, and by opening a post you can read comments and leave a new one.
• RSS bookmarks: in the emulator it’s possible to subscribe to external RSS feeds, read posts, and also make bookmarks: you can really start using the metaphor of stories and venues!

The reason why we are paying this much attention to the emulator is that we’re envisioning ways to make it evolve as a complete social computing platform, to be used also in other context, and possibly making a complete product out of it. It’s early to start talking about this topic, but… what do you think about it?

The prototype has always been a tool to validate technical choices, with the nice side effect of putting into practice the ideas coming from the ID team. While being the right thing to do at the time, this meant that… well, let’s face it: the prototype was pretty ugly

In the last months we carried on a redesign effort, which went along two main lines: code refactoring and interface completion.

The first activity was the results of all the things we’ve learned with the earlier versions of the prototype and it has made our code more lean, robust and resilient to change. The direct effects of the refactoring are mostly under the hood, but one of the beneficial effects was allowing us to take some leap forward with the interface.

The second activity was in fact driven by the need of providing a better interface for the prototype, while giving at the same time some useful feedback to the ID team. You can see the results in this screenshot, comparing an earlier version of the prototype with the redesigned one.

Of course much has yet to be done, but it’s already incredibly satisfying to work on something which looks like a real system and not just like a sandbox to build some tests in.

The bottom line is that now the venue is in perfect shape for the summer. I wonder how it’ll look with a swimsuit on

A couple of days ago we had an internal demo of our software prototype: apart from minor problems with screen resolution on my virtual machine, it’s been quite good. We showed how we are integrating the itsme front-end with Guglielmo, our meta/data management system. We presented two scenarios:

• writing and saving a new document with gedit, from within the itsme UI;
• composing and sending email, and getting replies into the right venue.

This means we have Guglielmo running and the itsme front-end exploiting its services, we are successfully integrating some simple Linux applications (text editing) and communicating via email. Moreover, we have the Virtual File System and RDF metadata management working.

Some slides and a video are worth a thousand words

Thanks to all the guys in the Software Design team for their work, keep on rocking!!!

How did you hear about the itsme emulator? Most of the respondents heard about the emulator from some one in the staff….we know that many others heard about the Emulator from one of their pals, or just floating away on twitter. Maybe it’s just time to tweet again to make them come back and fill the questionnaire

Presentation page (tutorial) and video. As far as the presentation page is concerned, some of the users liked it, understood everything without any doubts while for some it was a bit boring. hmmm….. Any ideas as to what we can do to make it  more interesting ? let me know if you have any ideas, please comment this post so we can dissuss them together and possibly apply them as soon as possible. On the other hand, the video was liked by all (so far) and every thing was quite clear (they say). As you might have seen, we’ve added some features after the video was released: do you think we should make a new one? If so, what can we improve?

Did you use the emulator to start building relations in our community? Well two main points are standing out, “No, but i would have liked to.” and  “No, who should i have added”. Well, the problem here is that this is still not a full social networking site, so it is quite obvious users are a bit held back before initiating a network. From my own experience, I quite like this feature and I did initiate a few networks by writing messages and by becoming fan. Have you checked out if you have some new fans?

Did you use the emulator for private messaging? I think I personally used this feature more than anyone else, some users had no one to write to , while some like the feature, and think its useful but needs a bit of technical improvement. Kindly let us know (either by commenting here or dropping us a private message from the emulator) what exactly do you mean by that. Making it more accessible, user friendly….? We are constantly fixing bugs, so maybe it already works better than you’ve seen.

Did you read and write posts from the emulator? All the users who evaluated say they read the post that was already there in their venues. One of them wrote a post and got it published. yayee to that, but more than one post written in the emulator has been published, what about those others?

What do you think about the way we visualize related items from different channels? Personally, The Highlight feature happens to be my favorite out of the lot, so lets see how this one performed so far. Yes, the majority voted it to be extremely useful. Not surprised at all. This is one of the features that we added after the video, so maybe some of you have not seen it in action, if so, please check it out. Besides the survey we have obtained expert opinions, which i am going to write in another post in some days. If you have decided to evaluate now, please do mention comments along with the votes. We are very curious to know your opinion on each and every feature of the emulator. Suggestions are welcome too.

The emulator runs much faster now, so in case you faced any problems with the emulator before, you should try it out now. Trust me you won’t regret it.