GSoC: Making KDE more social

This year I would like to bring social networks to your KDE desktops. To have your Facebook stream, Twitter/Identi.ca feed always on your fingertips without the need of a browser. But not just inprisoned in a webview widget, but have the data itself really present and integrated "under the hood". We already have technologies for all the parts - data storing and processing as well as for data visualization. 

 

For the data processing part we decided to use Akonadi, which serves as data cache. Each social network can have its own Akonadi resource (the backend), that gets the data from servers and store them in the cache. Right now I finished patching akonadi-facebook resource, which can be found on KDE's git. My plan is to shape it up so it can be shipped with the default Workspace/PIM install. Currently it feteches the news feed, your notifications, friends, events and notes.

Next resource is for Twitter/Identi.ca. There is one very old and not very good one. So I'm writing one from scratch. Well sort of as I'm using parts of Sebas' Microblog implementation for the backend, which you'll be able to try out in the upcoming 4.9 release. Current state is not really usable yet - but it can authenticate users and get their timeline (just raw data for now). Once it's in just a bit usable shape, I'll push this to a scratch repo.

Google Plus resource might come later when they open their API.

 

Once we have the data in an easily processable way, we can do whatever we want with them (read "create awesome native apps"). So for the visualization part/applictaion, I want to use Plasma at first. QML plasmoid capable of displaying data from all the sites together, something very alike Nokia's implementation in the N9 phone, mockup below.

The idea is to have all the networks aggregated at one place. With optional posting to all of them, ie. if you want to post only to Facebook, you'll check just Facebook, if all, check all the networks. However posting is a whole different story, so first of all I'll make sure that reading works perfectly, then I'll move to posting.

This QML plasmoid can also be used as a standalone application. But for those of you preferring other existing apps, there's a plan to have plugins for Choqok based on Akonadi, which will allow perfect system integration - if you read a post or refresh the feed from Choqok, it will automatically do so in all other apps (because they all share the same backend). Please note that this does not mean that Choqok is being ported to Akonadi, it's not. These will be just optional plugins.

I also want to turn social notifications to system notifications. Someone will comment your post on facebook - Plasma spawns a notification. A reply to your tweet arrives - notification. And so on. Next part of system integration will be with the new-but-yet-unreleased WebAccounts stuff, which will allow you to configure all your web services at one place in System Settings (including Telepathy). This is still heavy work-in-progress and we'll have a BoF at Akademy on Monday (probably) about it, so if you're interested, come and participate.

The ultimate vision is to have all nicely integrated - you'll see the latest Facebook post in the KDE Telepathy contact list, you'll be able to start a chat from the plasmoid etc. We have lots of the needed pieces already in place, we just miss the links between them..

 

I plan to start the UI next week, I'll post more updates when there's already something usable to test :)

 

Comments

[Eric Mesa]

At first I was worried - we already have the awesome Choqok to do this. (Although up until now Choqok doesn't have Facbeook integration) The news that it will have Choqok plugins is awesome. It's like the KParts mentality which is one of the best things about KDE. Keep up the good work!

[Marty]

@Eric - the thing with Choqok is that it's just a stand-alone self-contained application, so the data right now exists only in the app while the Akonadi implementation provides the data system-wide for consumption by any app :)

[Lacsilva]

Hi Marty, I would like to start by thanking you for this work. It sounds awesome. Do you have plans to finish the integration of messages into the facebook resource (the messages branch in the repo)?

[Marty]

@Lacsilva - I had no idea about such branch, thanks for letting me know. Messages are little bit outside of the GSoC scope, but I imagine it can be done, even if after the GSoC ;)

[Filipe Saraiva]

It sound very interesting. Good luck, it will be a great KDE feature!

[D]

Nice feature.

Will it provide Rss Feeds and Calendar Events, like the N9 implementation ?

[Marty]

@Filipe - Thanks!

@D - Eventually it could, but it probably won't happen in the GSoC scope (there won't be time).

[Matthias]

There is already https://github.com/viranch/facebook-notifier-kde-plasmoid