GNOME Zeitgeist is NOT a file manager
Disclaimer: Due to time constraints, I am not an active Zeitgeist developer right now. Seif Lotfy is the man.
GNOME Zeitgeist is a file manager application for the GNOME desktop environment. Instead of providing direct access to the hierarchical file system like most file managers, GNOME Zeitgeist mainly classifies files according to metadata. This includes time and date of previous accesses, location of use (using GPS positioning), file type, tagging and more. In addition to local files, GNOME Zeitgeist also organizes web browsing history, email and other data sources.
What’s wrong? Zeitgeist is not a file manager. The GNOME Activity Journal can be used to replace a file manager and do file manager-like things, but Zeitgeist is more than that. Check the official Zeitgeist website for details.
If you are a Linux user, how do you use Zeitgeist?
Zeitgeist and Fulltext Searches
I’ve been thinking about the proper way to handle fulltext searches in Zeitgeist. (E.g. searching through a file’s content instead of just searching for files by name.)
I think the best solution is to fall back to Tracker and other search engines for all text searches. This is especially important if we index things like GMail emails where we can’t possibly handle all searches ourselves without downloading and indexing all emails. (Instead, we would just index each email’s title and sender. If the user performs a search, we would use GMail’s API to find results on the fly.)
On that note, I’m planning on adding Google Documents and Flickr support. This probably wont happen until later this week or the beginning of next week
Cafe Thoughts

I’m sitting at the Coffee Bean with a large Ice Mocha. Things that I’ve been working on include:
- The GNOME Journal article on Zeitgeist which is due today.
- An improved version of the mockup which I posted last night. (The new mockup is still only on paper.)
- I discussed this bug with Ketil.
- I’ve been thinking about how to handle fulltext searches in Zeitgeist. I’ll post about that later.
- I’ve bought the domain name natanyellin.com last week. I’m going to start redirecting theesylum.com to natanyellin.com later this week.
Time to get back to work. One large Ice Mocha down and one salad to go.


20 year old