[sugar] Resp.: Activities Portal: Proposal/suggestion

Mon May 19 17:37:45 EDT 2008

I hope such a UI be developers friendly, i.e., not just be a list of
activities which seemingly where made by magic elves ;) , providing no
extra information of who made them or how to contact them.

2008/5/19, Eben Eliason <eben.eliason at gmail.com>:
> I know I've tossed this out several times before, but I do so again to
> be sure its in the backs of everyone's minds, at least once.  I think
> the idea of creating an "appcast", or an RSS feed with enclosures for
> bundles/updates, could be a clean way to handle the backend for such a
> service.  Obviously, any number of websites could aggregate these, or
> display them with various UIs, but it might not need to be entirely
> centralized.
>
> I /really/ want to push forward the idea of a button within the UI for
> "getting more activities".  I encourage everyone to consider this use
> case as well when thinking about such a portal.  This button will
> probably, in most cases, connect kids to the school server as a first
> level repository, but could just as easily connect to any such
> appcast, at the school, city, country, or even global level.  If we
> actually support one or more of these feeds, then these all serve as
> sources for activity (and content?) bundles which can be displayed
> directly within the UI, in whatever interface suits, rather than
> requiring kids to go to this or that website.
>
> This technique can also be used to notify kids of updates to existing
> activities.  Also, for what it's worth, one could foresee the
> capability of an activity such as Develop to set up local appcasts for
> activities that kids create as well; there could be one feed for all
> of Jimmy's activities.  From this perspective, no server is even
> needed at all for "get more activities" to have some meaning, because
> the feed could come from others on the mesh as well.
>
> - Eben
>
>
> On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 2:37 PM, Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, 2008-05-19 at 23:56 +0530, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
>>> Has anyone evaluated Remora (http://wiki.mozilla.org/Update:Remora)
>>> for this ? This is the software which powers addons.mozilla.org
>>> Cheers,
>>> Sayamindu
>>
>> It is clearly closest to what we need.  Just haven't had the time to
>> make it happen.
>>
>> If someone wants to go for it, please go ahead and try it; when you need
>> access to install something (we have lots of bandwidth available), we'll
>> be happy to help host it.
>>                           - Jim
>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 11:47 PM, Morgan Collett
>>> <morgan.collett at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 5:16 PM, Marco Pesenti Gritti
>>> > <mpgritti at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >> Please wikify this! :)
>>> >>
>>> >> There is a note about something like this at the end of the doc page
>>> >> which would be good to link:
>>> >> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Documentation
>>> >
>>> > http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activity_portal
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >> On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 5:08 PM, Morgan Collett
>>> >> <morgan.collett at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>> I've been thinking about a better portal for downloading activities.
>>> >>> I
>>> >>> came up with some ideas, that I unfortunately don't have time to
>>> >>> implement, but I would be happy to cheer someone on if they are
>>> >>> inspired by this...
>>> >>>
>>> >>> It should be easy to upload an activity (specifically after the first
>>> >>> time it has been done) - easier than uploading to the wiki.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Activities should be categorised according to various properties,
>>> >>> including:
>>> >>> * The usual activity metadata from activity.info
>>> >>> * Descriptions, as in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities
>>> >>> * Category, as in http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities
>>> >>> * Age ranges the activity is suitable for? (Possibly a Mature
>>> >>> category
>>> >>> for Doom?)
>>> >>> * Competencies required: Pre-reading, reading, writing, ...
>>> >>> * Development maturity
>>> >>>  - like sourceforge: planning / pre-alpha / alpha / beta / stable
>>> >>> * Collaborative?
>>> >>>  - yes / no / only (for activities like Connect or Chat that don't
>>> >>> function as a single user activity)
>>> >>> * Requires Internet? (e.g. Gmail)
>>> >>> * Compatible with: Sugar / Glucose version or OLPC release or distro
>>> >>> release... e.g. Sugar >= 0.81
>>> >>> * Additional Dependencies (e.g. video-chat-activity needs extra RPMs
>>> >>> not in a build)
>>> >>> * Tags
>>> >>> * Languages - pulled out of the .xo
>>> >>> * Low power friendly?
>>> >>> * Related activities (for suites or alternatives)
>>> >>> * Screenshot
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Activities have Releases, which have status similar to the
>>> >>> development
>>> >>> maturity - Suitable for: development / QA / public release etc - and
>>> >>> of course the downloadable bundle for that release...
>>> >>>
>>> >>> The site should be internationalisable using standard i18n tools.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Bonus points for:
>>> >>> * Publishing a text page like
>>> >>> http://mock.laptop.org/repos/local.update1/XOS/index.html at
>>> >>> predictable URLs that lists activities compatible with a given
>>> >>> release, for easy downloading with scripts etc.
>>> >>> * Publishing the source in public distributed revision control, to
>>> >>> get
>>> >>> easy contributions to code / templates
>>> >>> * Deployment on a system that is monitored and actively sysadmined
>>> >>> * Implementation in a Python web framework, to tap into the existing
>>> >>> developer community :)
>>> >>> * A catchy name...
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Future features:
>>> >>> * Download statistics
>>> >>> * Feedback to the author(s)
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Regards
>>> >>> Morgan
>>> >>> _______________________________________________
>>> >>> Sugar mailing list
>>> >>> Sugar at lists.laptop.org
>>> >>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
>>> >>>
>>> >>
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > Devel mailing list
>>> > Devel at lists.laptop.org
>>> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org>
>> One Laptop Per Child
>>
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>>
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