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The "About Me" section of System Settings currently has two kinds of information about the user: details of their user account on this machine and some real-world details such as full name and organisation.

I think this should be extended to include account details other than the user account on the local machine. For example, it could have fields for Jabber address and password, last.fm username and password, identi.ca username and password, openID and so on.

New types of account would be added in a way that's generic, so that no service gets preferential treatment over another, and displayed in an opt-in way, so that users who don't use a service do not have it cluttering their GUI (this could use Get Hot New Stuff).

The details could be stored in the KDE wallet, and from there can be accessed by other programs, so for the examples above Kopete could use the Jabber details, Amarok, Juk and other media players can use the last.fm account, the microblogging plasmoid can use the identi.ca details and so on. They could even be used transparently in Konqueror too, so that visiting last.fm will autocomplete the login details as if the "Remember" button had been clicked from within Konqueror. This would also work the other way too, so that details entered in an application would appear in "About Me".

This would make the desktop feel more cohesive, and would stop users having to enter the same details into different applications, since once one application has obtained the details, they are available to every other one (once the user authorises access to the wallet of course!).

Also, if presented when the user first logs in to KDE then more personalised behaviour could be made. For example adding Kopete to the session's autostart list if IM details are given, Akregator if a Google Reader account is given, etc. This would give exposure to parts of KDE which many users might not know, and do it in a way that would not bug users with apps irrelevant to their computer usage.

Nepomuk, anyone?

Madman wrote:Nepomuk, anyone?

Using Nepomuk would be nice as a layer on top, but I wouldn't want sensitive information like passwords stored in there. Kwallet works well for that

I don't think that this is such a good idea... Consider users with multiple identities (jabber accounts, openid etc). How would you sensibly handle that?

Helps the user avoid duplicating data entry, I like it.

The idea should be extended to other programs that require personal info, like Kmail. Most account managers from Web pages to E-mail clients don't provide enough fields.