free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

, Zeitgeist is a

software service In the contexts of software architecture, service-orientation and service-oriented architecture, the term service refers to a software functionality, or a set of software functionalities (such as the retrieval of specified information or the execu ...

which logs the users's activities and events, anywhere from files opened to websites visited and conversations. It makes this information readily available for other applications to use in the form of timelines and statistics. It is able to establish relationships between items based on similarity and usage patterns by applying data association algorithms such as " Winepi" and " Apriori". Zeitgeist is the main engine and logic behind GNOME Activity Journal which is currently seen to become one of the main means of viewing and managing activities in GNOME version 3.0.

Features

* Zeitgeist currently logs file usage, web activity, plus chat and email conversations. More to come. * Zeitgeist allows any application to store this information and makes it readily available over a

DBus In computing, D-Bus (short for "Desktop Bus") is a message-oriented middleware mechanism that allows communication between multiple processes running concurrently on the same machine. D-Bus was developed as part of the freedesktop.org project, ...

API. * Zeitgeist figures out which are a user’s most used items, not only in general, but also applying time scoping as in “What was most relevant to me, while I was working on project X, for a month last year?”. * Using

machine-learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

algorithms, Zeitgeist can establish relationships between items based on similarity and usage patterns. * Zeitgeist is light-weight and supports extensions to enhance its engine’s core feature set. * Extensions reside within the same process as the engine’s core logic. They can be used to include information about activity and experience beyond the desktop, such as geo-logging and

geo-tagging Geotagging, or GeoTagging, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as a geotagged photograph or video, websites, SMS messages, QR Codes or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. This data u ...

Applications

* GNOME Activity Journal * Docky *

AWN AWN may stand for: * Awn Access to Justice Network in Gaza Strip, Legal Aid Network operate in Gaza Strip, Palestine * Animation World Network, an online organization for animators * Avant Window Navigator, a dock-like bar that tracks open windows ...

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; ...

* Synapse Launcher

References

Linux Magazine - Gran Canaria: GNOME Zeitgeist Tracks What You've DoneLWN - Erlandsen: What We Talk About When We Talk About Zeitgeist

External links

Zeitgeist description on GNOME wikiFormer Zeitgeist project page on Launchpad
Semantic desktop Free software programmed in Python Free software programmed in Vala {{storage-software-stub