[sugar] Activities Portal: Proposal/suggestion

[Eben Eliason]

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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