Activity streams: not just for the cloud

At the end of last year, I was asked to contribute my wishlist for Linux on the desktop for an issue of Linux Format magazine. Here’s what I submitted:

I want an activity stream for my activity on my local computer, and across my network. When, for example, I make a change to a document, I want my PC to record it on my activity stream as “Ben Werdmuller edited ‘Linux Format wishlist’ in LibreOffice Writer.” By default, those changes are private to me only, but I can set access permissions per file, application, location on disk and type of update (“status update”, “text file”, etc). In a network environment, I can share my activity streams across the network, and see the updates that other network users have allowed me to view. This stream is at an infrastructure data level, so I can choose a number of applications to view it with – although I can easily imagine Ubuntu, for example, shipping a beautiful default app.

Then, I want to be able to program against the activity stream, and the activity streams I can see on my network, using a simple API. This would allow me to sync files, status updates and other things, while not being bound to any one application or utility. It also could provide an interesting underlying basis for social web applications running on Linux servers.

This is a little convoluted, so let me explain: I want my activity on my computer, my activity across my enterprise network, and my activity on the web to be saved to a single activity stream that I control. I want to be able to conditionally share and have access to the entire activity stream – and then do stuff with it, using tools like the excellent ifttt.

Consider the following unified stream:

• Ben Werdmuller saved Technical white paper to Work out tray 3 seconds ago
• Ben’s mom sent you an email: A little family news to ben@benwerd.com 15 minutes ago
• Ben’s cousin sent you a message: I’m engaged! on Facebook 1 hour ago
• Your task: Finish technical white paper is due 3 hours ago
• You were tagged in a photo: ElggCamp San Francisco 2012 on Flickr 4 hours ago

In the example above, the act of saving something to the folder Work out tray could automatically cause it to be uploaded to Basecamp, or emailed to a few people for review. Similarly, my being tagged in a photo on Flickr could cause it to be automatically downloaded into my local Photos folder.

Why should my activity stream just contain stuff that happened on the web? Now that we have apps like Google Drive, these separations are arbitrary at this point. What matters is that I did something, not where I did it.