Social Media confusion, by Damien Basile under CC-by-sa

Social Media tools suck

On the one hand, it’s kind of nice that interoperation is possible at all, but on the other it’s a silly chain with many unnecessary points of fail. I can use Wordpress to blog and that plays quite nicely with Identi.ca – I can syndicate the posts to Identi.ca and likewise list my dents here – things talk to each other. I can also syndicate from Identi.ca to Twitter, but Identi.ca (and therefore I) know nothing about replies at Twitter. From Twitter posts get passed to Google Buzz, but I know nothing about what happens there unless I happen to log in to the GMail web interface. Chances are that there are some people on Twitter wondering why I’ve @replied to them about something they never posted – markey on Twitter != markey on Identi.ca for example.

Identi.ca is made usable and useful by the KDE microblog widget – I simply wouldn’t use it if I had to actually visit the website and log in – that takes longer than the dent. Web interfaces suck. Similarly, I can interact with GMail via KMail (or I could, actually I prefer to have Google forward my mail to another server, a throwback from the days when GMail either didn’t support IMAP or it was a bit funky). GMail’s web interface, while better than other webmails, sucks. Twitter and Buzz, without convenient desktop interfaces that I use already, simply do not get visited by me on even a weekly basis.

In terms of Social Networking, I have Facebook (which I got bullied in to years ago and kinda use, infrequently), LinkedIn (dunno if I’m going to do much with that, another sucky web interface) and Flickr (only for KDE promo). Facebook and Flickr are made more bearable by the excellent digiKam image export tools

Infrastructure for KDE Promo sucks

Similarly, the KDE community wiki sucks – as a collaboration tool (it’s fine for storing info and userbase and techbase are both awesome). I need to discuss things by mail, then open a browser, log in (which requires a round trip to my openid provider if I want the same account on all the wikis). Then I need to remember how to use wiki markup. That’s my excuse for the various things I should have done on the promo wiki and haven’t done. There are things we can do better with the wiki, but the basic problems remain.

Collaborative writing tools suck too. Email is rubbish for actually keeping track of stuff. Google docs is amazing in its way, but it’s another web interface, doesn’t work in Konqueror (or does it nowadays?), is not free and is slow compared to a desktop app. Kobby (and Gobby) also don’t meet our needs – yet…

Really, I want a single “KDE Promo” app that deals with all the above. I’d like a pony too, please You can call it Kommunicator or Kollaborator if you like. The app, not the pony. He’s called Shergar.

There is hope…

Sorry if all that sounds a bit gloomy. There are some good points too The KDE microblog widget rocks. Kopete sorts out my soup of instant messaging accounts, making MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, and Facebook Chat not suck to the extent that I don’t need to care or even know what network I’m chatting to someone on. Kontact makes my email, calendars and contacts portable thanks to the magic of Kolab PIM data structures.

Ok, the point I’m trying to get to is that all these amazing new social tools we have are limited because they don’t interoperate by open standards, only allow some limited syndication. I want to operate my Identi.ca and Twitter and Buzz accounts as one. I don’t want to have to point Google Buzz at Twitter because they didn’t implement the Identi.ca API yet. I want my Facebook stuff and my Linked in stuff in a single view in Kontact or a Plasma Widget, not in some web browser or web browser widget.

Frank Karlitschek covered some similar ground a bit more coherently in his Camp KDE talk – be sure to check out the other talks too. Together with grappling with the Promo pages on the community wiki and discovering Google Buzz, that’s what has really prompted this post. The new services we’re seeing are exciting and can be useful and Google are helping to remove some of the suck from browser-based apps, but you have to wonder why they fix the browser rather than just using the desktop. ownCloud may have some of the answers, complemented by KDE software (reimplementable by anyone else by using open standards too). Perhaps we can even succeed in, as it were, “freeing the web from the browser”. Only time will tell.

Design KDE swag

KDE has a new spreadshirt store with a couple of nice t-shirts by Sebas and some badges including some work by Ingo.

Under construction by Ingo

One of my suggestions - help needed

So, what’s in it for you? Well, you get to say you contributed to KDE and might get to see your creation wandering around Akademy, plus there is talk of giving the designers a free copy of the t-shirt, or whatever, containing their design.

Here’s some additional info courtesy of Justin on the kde-promo mailing list:

1. We do have some existing logos and things you may want to use or at least be aware of which are stored on the Community wiki. Logos are in the KDE clipart link at the top.
2. Spreadshirt allows for both “vector” and “pixel” designs but due to the nature of of the t-shirt medium it is highly advisable to design in a program that produces the vector graphics so we can scale them as needed without distorting your images. Though I think in some cases if we only have “pixel” versions we might be able to work with it if the resolution is high enough.
3. Since this is printed media you should design everything in CMYK colorschemes rather than RGB.
4. More details about the Spreadshirt “design” uploading process can be found on the Spreadshirt site
5. “Be Creative”…”Be Inspired”….”Be Free”

Provide your science photos for LabPlot

Something I started working on a number of months ago and have recently come back to is working on a website redesign for LabPlot.

The current draft is at lp.asinen.org (there’s still a lot to do, integration of the logo in the header definitely needs a lot of work). One of the things I want to have is a rotating image in the sidebar. I have a few already – one is displayed and the rotator is implemented but I’ve lost the copyright info for the others so only displaying one at present. It would be great to get photos from actual KDE people in Science – I’m after things that are fairly simple, optionally quite abstract from any branch of science. You should be prepared to license the image under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike (or something more liberal). You can send images to me at stua…@gmail.com (click on the dots to solve the CAPTCHA) or just put a link to an online image in the comments. Please specify the license and make it clear that you’re the copyright holder in your comment or email.

New KDE website

There are plenty of goodies in this new release (see the feature guide for a more complete run down). However, one of the most exciting new features is the Plasma Netbook workspace. Almost makes me want to get a netbook, but I suspect I’ll give it a run out on my old but little laptop anyway.

In the KDE Platform there are all kinds of exciting changes that have a direct impact on the workspaces. You can now share Plasma widgets remotely, handy if you’d like to share info between your machines (a simple universal todo list perhaps?) and there’s more social web integration thanks to the new GetNewStuff interfaces built on OpenDesktop.org’s open collaboration services that also allows you to find other KDE software users and search online help.

KDE Plasma Netbook

Heroes of SC 4.4

So, enough of what we’ve done. When you read through the feature guide you’ll see the names of a whole load of people who helped make this release (and there are hundreds more who made contributions, big or small). But there are also some people you won’t read about in there at all.

Is there are party near you?

Then there is the promotion team who have put together the release announcement (kudos to Sebas and Jos I believe). Even more impressive there is the comprehensive feature guide which saw over 2700 revisions by 26 contributors (Jos was all over that, Luca, Justin, Aron Asor, Sebas, Vivek Prakash, Ricky Laishram and Carl Symons all made significant contributions too – there may well be many others who aren’t in the author list).

Ah well, too many people to list – translators, developers…

Spread the word and have fun

There may be release party near you so be sure to check. Otherwise Lydia has been coordinating the social web effort: spread the word on the usual suspects: identi.ca, twitter, Facebook, your blog and the like – tag “kde44″ where possible.

You can see what everyone else is saying at buzz.kde.org (props to
Franz Keferböck for his work on that).

Enjoy the software that makes up Software Compilation 4.4

My operating system hard disk has failed (again – kinda, poking it from a live CD shows that the filesystem isn’t recognised, though I can mount it if I explicitly state it is ext4 and a fair bit of the data is still there). It’s a vintage 70GB Seagate, the SMART diagnostics are not good, it has got corrupted before and I didn’t really trust it anyway – data is on another disk.

So, it’s time for a new disk.

Broken PC, by Sarah Baker (cc-by)

I also need to decide what distro to put on the new disk. The old system was Fedora 12 and I’m pretty happy with that, but I always have a bit of a look around when I’m doing a new install. I have a laptop on F12 too and my work PC runs F11, while a geriatric Shuttle PC acting as a media centre runs Arch.

I’m looking for a distro that:

• Packages the latest KDE SC (and does it well)
• Installs only free software by default, including drivers
• Has good repos for multimedia stuff, if not included – 3rd party is fine
• Isn’t obsessed with re-inventing the wheel (use NM, one of the major package managers/PackageKit – or have a good reason for not doing so)

Bonus points for working well with upstreams and contributing to KDE. Good (free) Radeon drivers are also a plus. I’ve recently played with Kubuntu and Mandriva in VirtualBox and not been convinced they’d be better, but maybe I missed something?

Any thoughts?

LJ Feb 2010

Nonetheless, something I did back in November came to fruition this week. A few months ago Jos got in touch with the folks at Linux Journal to see if they might be interested in some KDE related articles for their February issue. It turned out they were and so the latest issue has plenty of KDE content with Jos’s interview with Aaron and Sebas about KDE’s future, Riccardo’s article on writing Plasma Widgets and my article on running KDE software on Windows.

Linux Journal uses a subscription model, but they make their archive available for free a month or two after publication and (if you didn’t use it already) you can get a free PDF trial copy of the current issue by filling in an online form.

Well here it is: If you used to use “KDE” don’t just replace it with “KDE SC”

At least, not always… I’ve noticed a few people – and even your KDE Promo team is not immune from this – apparently being a little confused about what terms to use. People are trying to be good and not use “KDE” alone but in some instances this leads to a little overuse of KDE SC when that’s not really what is meant.

Be Happy, by Ana Cotta (CC-by)

We want KDE SC to be usefull for everyone in the world. So, do our icons and our terms work for everyone in the world?

So, what’s wrong with that? Not necessarily anything. The question is, does he really mean we want only the SC to be useful for everyone in the world? We’ll never do a usability survey for Amarok icons? So perhaps the better term would be “KDE software” rather than “KDE SC”.

Björn’s post is a case in point because the error (if any) is very small and subtle, but there are a few other examples I’ve seen that do appear to show more confusion. I won’t pick on anyone here, but here are a few examples of sentences using old and new terminologies to show that we don’t want to just replace “KDE” with “KDE SC”:

Old: “I use KDE”
New: “I use KDE software” or “I use KDE SC (4.4)” or “I use KDE Plasma Desktop (4.4)”

Use whichever one you really mean.

Old: “KDE is great – just look at how cool Digikam is”
New: “KDE software is great – just look at how cool digiKam is” or “KDE (community) is great – they made digiKam”

Just think – are you talking about the community or the software?

Old: “KDE is the best, it has Kontact, cool widgets and desktop effects”
New: “KDE software is the best – for example Kontact, the Plasma Desktop widgets and desktop effects” or “Plasma Desktop is the best – you have all those cool widgets and desktop effects” or “KDE Software Compilation is the best – it comes with all the Plasma Desktop widgets and effects and great apps like Kontact”

Old: “I want to make an app, should I use KDE or Gnome or plain Qt?”
New: “I want to make an app, should I use the KDE Platform, or Gnome or plain Qt?”

Old: “KDE 4 sucks and I’m switching to Gnome until there’s a KDE 4 K3B”
New: “KDE SC 4 sucks, I can’t even get a KDE Platform 4 version of K3B to fit in with it, Gnome forever” or “KDE Platform 4 sucks, no K3B yet, Vista for me” or “Plasma Desktop 4 sucks, there isn’t even a complementary version of K3B. I’m going back to CDE.”

See, you can even use the right terms when trolling

Old: “Nepomuk is one of the most exciting developments in KDE 4″
New ” Nepomuk is one of the most exciting parts of the KDE Platform 4″ or “Nepomuk is one of the most interesing things in KDE SC 4″

Old: “Amarok is an awesome KDE app”
New: “Amarok is an awesome KDE app”

Some things change, but some things stay the same

So, this is really an internal thing – perhaps you post to the Planet or write about KDE elsewhere. If so, and you support our efforts at clarifying our branding, please try and think about what it is you mean and use the right terms. If we simply replace “KDE” with “KDE SC” then we won’t have achieved anything. We don’t want KDE SC used everywhere, if we did we’d have given it a catchier name

There is, as always, more to do. Nathan Ogden has done some really great work (with assistance from others on KDE-Promo) putting together a guide for distros on how to use our brands in their communication. We need to get the word on that out to our distro contacts (something I should be helping with – perhaps you can help?) so that it’s as easy as possible for us all to work together and present things in a consistent way.

Any other examples? Queries about the above? “I hate the rebranding” rants? Please post below

Vote, by Theresa Thompson (CC-by)

So go to KDE Apps, vote and help us choose.

Wow, by Robyn Gallagher (CC-by)

How do we get more people interested in KDE software? We can talk about it being Free (and free), point out that it does everything that the proprietary competition can do (if that’s true) but there is always a cost in changing software: you have to learn new stuff. Therefore our biggest openings are when the alternatives suck and so people are looking for change or when our stuff just leaves the competition for dead. The latter one is about the wow factor – something in our software that makes the casual observer sit up and take notice and think “I want that”.

The wow factor could be visual, but it needn’t be. Here are a few things that have prompted people who see me using KDE software to ask what the application is:

• KWin – the desktop effects are really pretty slick now (this one works best on people who don’t use Macs)
• Konqueror shortcuts – I use the gg shortcut for Google and have set up ‘go’ as the shortcut for Google I’m Feeling lucky (it’s shorter and, to me, more intuitive than ggl). Several people seeing me use ‘go bbc news’ (or whatever) have been pretty much dumbfounded – “you mean you can just tell it where to go without knowing the address?”
• Kopete – “You’ve got all your chat accounts in one app?”
• Amarok – the Wikipedia integration, mainly
• Okular – people love that presentation progress indicator
• KRandR – people are suprised I can just plug a projector in and activate it with a couple of clicks
• Digikam – it’s just so cool all round, but the Facebook upload plugin is a particular winner
• KRunner – it looks fairly funky and people are impressed by the speed of launching applications (most menu launchers suck)
• Marble – fairly cool anyway, but fire up the OpenStreetMap view and people want it
• Kile – simple things like code completion and syntax highlighting impress people trying to use Notepad for LaTeX
• Gwenview – it’s just so shiny, particularly in full-screen mode

Several items in that list surprise me a little, because they’re things I take for granted (Konqueror’s web shortcuts for example) and I’m sure several of them would leave a lot of people cold. So which can we push when promoting KDE software, which can we demonstrate at events and what others can we add to the list?

I’ve started a page to track these on the wiki, so please add your own or comment below.

My Plasma Desktop at work

Thomas Hannigan suggested on kde-promo the rather good idea of making a flickr group to showcase some of the ways you can build your own ideal workspace using KDE’s Plasma Desktop. This can act as a store of various ways people have built working environments different to the ones you normally see (that could be handy for us in our own promotional activities) and also, being on flickr, can help expose KDE software to an audience that might not be aware of us.

So, if you’ve done something a bit different with your workspace, please upload the picture to the group. You can be super helpful by applying a Creative Commons license to it so that we can re-use it easily any time should we want to do so. CC-by-sa or something even more permissive would be ideal.

Update

I just noticed on the thread relating to this on kde-promo: there is also a screenshot thread on the KDE Forums which is a great additional (or alternative if you don’t have a flickr account) place to post your screenshot.

Anyway, plenty of other people have been very busy on the promotion front. Justin and co have been continuing to do great work with Camp KDE and the numbers of attendees there are rising nicely. Jos and others have continued to work on things in the community wiki which is starting to get to be a really useful resource.

Excitingly, there seem to be several new people appearing on the kde-promo mailing list (although it’s possible that they’re old hands and they just haven’t been around for a while). Long-time KDE blogger Liquidat (aka Roland Walters) has an article in progress for the Dot, which is pretty awesome.

Most encouraging of all was the response to the Krita appeal for funding. I didn’t have any doubt they’d reach their target, given the amount to the raised and the quality of the proposal, but I was surprised at the speed with which the target has been reached. Perhaps an approach to consider for other application teams in the future, though it’s probably something that needs to be not done too often.

After a busy Monday, I’ll hopefully be a bit more active again. Getting a poll together to choose a text for third party developers to show their application’s affiliation with KDE is top of my hit list and I also have a mostly done Dot article that should hopefully be appearing towards the end of the week.

Busy times