I think one of the biggest hassles with instant messaging is that it’s
tied to the computer. If I’m away from the computer, like watching tv,
I may miss an important IM. I can leave the speakers on the PC really
loud, but then I’m always jumping up and running back to the PC to
read an incoming IM in case it’s important. Most of the time it’s not.
I can subscribe to a service with my cell phone—but that costs money.
So here is (I think) the perfect solution, and a good GAIM plug-in
that’s not too much work.
I just installed a Pluto Home system (plutohome.com). It’s a free,
open source smarthome and media server. You put Bluetooth dongles on
all the pc’s in your house, and then when you enter a room your
Symbian Bluetooth phone turns into a remote control for everything in
that room. It already tracks your movement—if you start listening to
music in 1 room, your music will follow you as you move with your
phone to another room. And it already sends messages to the phone
based on events. For example, when the song changes, the cover art
shown on my phone changes to show me what’s playing.
So that got me thinking… Why not make a GAIM plugin for pluto so that
whenever I get an IM, I see it on my Bluetooth phone? That way I can
either type a reply on the phone, or go back to the computer if I want
to use the keyboard, or ignore it if it’s not important. And I’m not
having to run back and forth to the computer to check IM. And it’s
free since it uses Bluetooth! Plus, I think it’s such a real
convenience it would be a great way to get people to switch to GAIM.
I talked to the programmers at Pluto and they said it would be really
easy since their stuff is already written in small modules and
plugins. However, since we’re all open source, we could also just take
whatever pieces were useful and do something completely new using the
same concept.
Many of the other GAIM projects listed are either specific for only
some users (like Apple iChat), or would only be used by geeks (like
the Perl interpreter). But not having to run back and forth to the
computer is something everybody wants (imho). I don’t see how to
recommend a new idea for GAIM, so I’ll just try the forums and hope
somebody else likes it too.
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