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Hi,

this is an idea I had today (or the day before). Since English isn't my native language the idea may be explained better. Sorry for that.

This is the story behind it:

The idea came up when my wife and myself were sitting in front of our computers and I received a mail with a really good joke. So I asked her to come to my computer. First she wasn't happy about the disturbance but finally she enjoyed the joke and wanted it on her computer too. So I sent the joke to her via mail....

The idea for the push feature:

When I want to transfer a vcard from one mobile to another I am going to send it via bluetooth or infrared. Why shouldn't this be possible from one computer to another. In the example above: When I want to push an email to my wife I just select the feature "push email to another computer" via the context menu. On the receiver machine a pop in lower right corner will be opened and I can agree on getting the information or rejecting it.

This should be possible from everywhere. Push selected text, push an image, push a video, push a file from dolphin, push whatever you can select with the mouse. For non KDE applications there should be such an option included in klipper.

The address should be as simple as possible. Something like user@machine. The address selection should also be connect with the address book. So you can easily select the "local address" from a contact fast. In addition the last 5 push addresses should be listed in the context menu. So most pushes would be just 1 mouse click away.

Ok, that's the idea. I am looking forward to get your response. I never have heard of such a service on an other Desktop so this could be also be a marketing benefit for KDE.


An enhancement to my idea:

Why not having a local service that collects everybody currently sitting in front of any computer in LAN and then addressing the person via this information?

I agree, that would be great.

I would like to see somthing like a peer-to-peer jabber, that would enable sharing messages and files between two machines. I guess that is a typical problem everyone has run into: You meet someone, and you want to exchange something. Often you end up using an usb stick to distribute the stuff. But if you are in one network, there must be a better way to do that. scp does not work, because it might be disabled, or you do not want to enter your password on another machine. File shares do not work, because of similar problems, and maybe you want just to share a single piece of information. And something like jabber does not work, because it requires a server, that might not be available in this scenario.

So if you say there is a need for a push solution, I second that.

I really like this idea. There are a number of ways to share information, but nothing nearly as straight-forward as this.
An over-simplified idea for the protocol would be: sender sends request to send item, receiver gets notified and accepts or rejects, if receiver accepts then sender sends item. Receiver is then notified of the sent item which can then be copied, drag-and-dropped or saved with save dialog to the appropriate location; or just read, viewed or opened in the appropriate application in-place and discarded when finished.
My first though was ssh, but the trouble there is how to automatically start the ssh session between two different users on two different machines (where one or the other may have ssh turned off). FTP and other file sharing runs into similar troubles.
IM protocol seems a likely fit. If both users are connected to the same protocol then this is all trivial - already implemented (although not the best-use of network resources since it has to go through the IM server). If the two users aren't signed up for the same service then this probably won't work.
I'm sure there are other P2P technologies that could be used to do this, though (bluetooth comes to mind - only without the wireless). If there aren't, it seems like this would be straight-forward enough to set up.

I think the feature should be made without any server service. Just sending a singe message from one computer to another. Connect, send the message, disconnect. That's it. Maybe a small response whether the message has been accepted or not.

There is no need to limit this to a local network but within a typical network setup there will be no chance to let the message pass the firewall. In this case you would need an server at the internet ...

So I think the main use of it at a local network.

I like the idea, but a transfer protocol is needed to send the data with an adequate addressing scheme. I'm not aware of a protocol which can work over bluetooth and ethernet (and we don't want to deprive the non-bluetooth users of such a great possibility, right? ). KIO may come to help, but still there are a lot of difficulties down the road.

Maybe in the near future we will remain using kde-telepathy (when it comes out)

The addressing shouldn't be a big thing when you are using an IP address/port pair. Of course the user has to be found but that's also no big deal.

The kde-telepathy idea is great. But you should change the name

I love the idea, yet there is something like that for gnome called giver (code.google.com/p/giver) made by people working at novell. I love it when using gnome yet I use mainly KDE with Chakra which is pure KDE. It would be great to have a KDE version of giver with more features, like you could push a link, note, or email to someone!

This has been possible since LAN was taken in use... Todays technology is called simply "talk". Idea is that anyone can start a chat with any other computer on same network.

kde-apps.org includes lots of applications to give a GUI for that. It is simply as just clicking a computer name on the list and then typing.

The bad side is, transferring files is not so easy. That needs a good old fashion server function. What KDE SC already includes if I remember correctly. You add a "server" plasmoid for what you drop files. And others see it in your LAN and can download it.

But... we need by default something very easy, it really should be integrated to SMB/NFS functions on Dolphin and bring to Kopete as well.

So that every computer has a name. So when they are on same network, you see the shares easily on dolphin sidepanel (now there is currently problems with NFS shares if connection is lost to server) and on kopete window.

I think the kopete is going to get that as when they get the telepathy working with it. Then you get see your LAN computers online and send them messages.

Never, ever I have seen any other system than Mac OS X working totally easily way sharing files. Just setting a folder to be shared and it just pop-ups on any other Mac on same network.

And I think it would be needed to easily see who download and what, and what is their process. So can user disconnect/close computer without asking.

I just was reading the Apples letter about Mac OS X 10.8 (Lion) Developer preview. And it mentions this:

"AirDrop, a remarkably simple way to copy files wirelessly from one Mac to another with no setup;"

I just wish I could see every LAN computer (I prefer actually a user names!) on sidepanel or desktop folder widget and then just dropping files there or seeing their shared files there.

Ive always felt like the "Send to" in the context menu should have a way to send to another persons computer. Using telepathy would probably be the easiest way to accomplish this, but creating an abstracted system where you could edit the entries name and protocol and other details would be the best way. Once you have all the info you need for where to send the file, you could save it and then "push" a file to that location whenever you want. This would help get rid of having to upload files just to send something to a friend. Great idea!