| Taking the temporal aspect of the Journal one step further, Events act like "future" journal entries. By specifying a name for the event, a brief description, and a time, these Journal entries serve as a basic planning system. A control within the entry also enables an audible alert, so that Events can act as alarms. Events also tie in closely with some implicit actions of the laptops. For instance, a child might want to go on a photo safari with her friend after school. While still in class, she sends him an invitation to join a photo capture activity, but schedules a time of 3:00. He then receives an invitation, as usual, but upon accepting it receives an Event entry in the journal, with a reference to the scheduled activity, instead of immediately entering it. When 3:00 arrives, both children receive notifications that their scheduled event is about to start, and join each other both physically outside and virtually in the referenced capture activity. | | Taking the temporal aspect of the Journal one step further, Events act like "future" journal entries. By specifying a name for the event, a brief description, and a time, these Journal entries serve as a basic planning system. A control within the entry also enables an audible alert, so that Events can act as alarms. Events also tie in closely with some implicit actions of the laptops. For instance, a child might want to go on a photo safari with her friend after school. While still in class, she sends him an invitation to join a photo capture activity, but schedules a time of 3:00. He then receives an invitation, as usual, but upon accepting it receives an Event entry in the journal, with a reference to the scheduled activity, instead of immediately entering it. When 3:00 arrives, both children receive notifications that their scheduled event is about to start, and join each other both physically outside and virtually in the referenced capture activity. |
| + | In many cases, entries will appear at one point in time but the desired result of the entry won't be immediate. This might occur, for instance, when downloading a file from the Web, receiving a file from a friend, restoring a file from the server, or saving a large Object such as video or audio data. All of these processes take soem non-trivial length of time, and so when necessary, Journal entries will provide a progress indicator stage. |