Will you be able to use facebook pictures in contact shortcuts?

[joppu]

I was thinking that since Maemo 5 will have accounts for multiple online services (facebook, ect.) and contact shortcut widgets with a picture. It would be pretty cool if you could just enter someone's facebook username in the his/her profile and it would automatically ask you to scan for user's facebook pictures and ask you if you'd like to use one of them as the profile picture. This would greatly simplify adding pictures to people's profiles. Of course you can just point your browser to Facebook and manually save and the picture, but this might be too complicated to your average user.

[Nelson L. Squeeko]

Its a cool idea. A friends Blackberry Pearl Flip phone does that. But I think if an average user can't figure out how to save a picture off of the internet and set it as a contact, they probably shouldn't be purchasing a mobile computer as their mobile phone. Basically if that is too complicated for someone, they aren't going to take advantage of half the things the n900 can offer. No offense to anyone non-tech savvy, just my opinion.

[zerojay]

I was thinking that since Maemo 5 will have accounts for multiple online services (facebook, ect.) and contact shortcut widgets with a picture. It would be pretty cool if you could just enter someone's facebook username in the his/her profile and it would automatically ask you to scan for user's facebook pictures and ask you if you'd like to use one of them as the profile picture. This would greatly simplify adding pictures to people's profiles. Of course you can just point your browser to Facebook and manually save and the picture, but this might be too complicated to your average user.

As far as I know, the Facebook integration in the tablet as it stands right now, out of the box is limited to you being able to send your photos to Facebook. It will not have integration with your Facebook contacts from what I've seen.

What I have been working on is Facebook Chat for Diablo, which does indeed pull down profile images and adds their status to your contacts - when it works correctly, anyways. Collabora is working on bringing that same software to Maemo 5. I don't know how far along they are or when it will be released, but it should be around launch as far as I know.

[Jaffa]

I've also been working on something like this. Suffice to say, I've seeded contact pictures (and other info) from a variety of sources including Facebook and Twitter.

[NZtechfreak]

This would be handy alright, was a very welcome feature of SPB Mobile Shell 3 on my WinMo devices...

[joshua.maverick]

What would be even cooler would be to take profile pictures from multiple services, Facebook, Twitter, GChat, Live Messenger etc, and then have a "slideshow" with some simple fade over transition as contact images. Am I dreaming, or could this be done?

[matthewcc]

But I think if an average user can't figure out how to save a picture off of the internet and set it as a contact, they probably shouldn't be purchasing a mobile computer as their mobile phone. Basically if that is too complicated for someone, they aren't going to take advantage of half the things the n900 can offer

I think you just figured out why the iphone is so freeking popular. Apple disagreed with you, made it easy, and captured the mass market.

[joshua.maverick]

Yep, that's the main thing, Nokia creates multiple devices for each market, Apple made one that is easy enough for every market, but can still do somethings that more "advanced" or tech savvy markets may want to do.

Maemo has the hardware and the UI to be a huge hit, but it needs to be super intuitive and user friendly, and small things that users want or feel should be included i.e. facebook pictures as contact images, need to be worked in. imo.

[joppu]

There's an app for that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_6ZC8n9nKs

I'm suprised...

[kanishou]

Its a cool idea. A friends Blackberry Pearl Flip phone does that. But I think if an average user can't figure out how to save a picture off of the internet and set it as a contact, they probably shouldn't be purchasing a mobile computer as their mobile phone. Basically if that is too complicated for someone, they aren't going to take advantage of half the things the n900 can offer. No offense to anyone non-tech savvy, just my opinion.

You can't think like that, as a designer. Just because most users may be smart enough to do something the hard way, doesn't mean that _anybody_ enjoys doing it the hard way. And it doesn't matter if "hard way" implies rocket science or a mere five seconds of inconvenience.

If anybody in the N900 design team would think like that, the device would be guaranteed to be a monumental failure. Fortunately they don't. :)

[joshua.maverick]

I think something already exists for this called Hermes, I read about it on maemo-guru

[Jaffa]

I think something already exists for this called Hermes, I read about it on maemo-guru

Yup. It's even starting to get a very basic website: http://hermes.garage.maemo.org/

Mark Guim at thenokiablog.com also interviewed me about it (see the link above). But I've not watched it yet to see how badly I come across ;-)

[qgil]

This thread is connected to Automatically grab avatars from social services for Contacts app (http://maemo.org/community/brainstorm/view/enhance_contacts/)

Can someone please add Hermes as a solution there? Thank you.