2

a short-cut that starts a group of shortcuts
Like when I write I like to open the dictionary and the text editor and wikipedia, and my chat programs. But I don't want them starting on boot-up cause I may want to,
be virtually social and open all my various chat clients and facebook instead
and possible sends some proggies to open on other desktops for the ready.

Ultimately, an active desktop that starts from a file browser desktop, wherein I can select which activity I'm going to pursue and up comes a desktop with pre-formatted window layouts integrated into the background with which I can interact with and overlay with additional shortcuts and applets All of which is multiply-instanceable so I can assign a different one to each each desktop and switch between activities as I let the paint dry on one picture and work on another.

While I believe Activities are supposed to be able to support this kind of functionality when you stop and start them, I've found them to be deficient - primarily when it comes to browser windows because the Activity doesn't close the windows nor remember what tabs were open on a per-Activity basis. This is definitely an area that could use improvement.