Profiles - General Discussion

Jonathon Suggs jsuggs at murmp.com
Mon Jan 29 23:30:04 CET 2007


There are a couple of threads going on right now that are loosely
talking about "profiles" so lets see if we can't get them combined and
focused.

But first, I'm not sure if we are all thinking of the same thing that a
profile represents.  So here is my short simple version (please correct
if necessary or give a better term).
Profile: A named entity (Examples: Home, Work, Car, Silent, Meeting,
Airplane) that represents a group of settings (volumes, communication
(BT, GPS), ringers, power settings, etc)

Here is an app for the PocketPC that has a lot of the functionality that
I think should be implemented as a main part of the platform (so all
applications can access it via an API).
http://www.pocketzenphone.net/PZPForum/index.php

I REALLY think that the core of the profiles should be VERY simple so as
to keep the overall concept/usage user/grandmother friendly.

That said, there has been some good suggestions for what all else can be
added in (examples: make silent, except for a select group of people you
don't want to miss a call from, etc).
I'm not sure how that type of pretty detailed/highly user specific type
of rules should be implemented (Maybe a somewhat separate 'Advanced
Configuration' tab/application).

But the bottom line is that we need to keep things user friendly.  But
at the same time, we need to make sure that we allow for "powerusers" to
be able to do whatever they want/dream as well.  So hopefully we can
talk through some of these details before we all start jumping in and
going separate ways with our just slightly different ideas.

Also, having the "profile" concept tied directly to the core platform
(probably need to discuss if it is *really* a good idea or not as
profiles *can* have their limitations as well...) could make things flow
more smoothly between different applications.

One of my biggest pet peeves is having multiple applications all doing
the same general things and all having to be configured (to do the same
things).  So this could be a small step in mitigating that aspect.




More information about the openmoko-devel mailing list