Initialize key label with name from address book

[GoogleCodeExporter]

ICS+ has a "me" contact card. On first run, you could ask the user how they 
want to appear to other users, initialized to the users name, and then set the 
label of the new key to that. Creating a new key should ask the user for a 
label, initialized to whatever the last key was.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by mh.in.en...@gmail.com on 16 Jul 2012 at 9:26

[GoogleCodeExporter]

That's a good idea. I'll implement it as soon as I've got the time.

I hope that I don't need any additional permission for this (e.g. 
READ_CONTACTS).

(Did I mention Android badly needs optional permissions?)

Original comment by andreas....@gmail.com on 16 Jul 2012 at 12:19

• Changed state: Accepted
• Added labels: Type-Enhancement
• Removed labels: Type-Defect

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Sigh. In order to read the "me" contact, you need not only READ_CONTACTS but 
also READ_PROFILE permissions. I suspect the users will go haywire about this, 
especially since there is no efficient way to explain to users what the 
permissions are used for.

Probably not worth the hassle.

Original comment by andreas....@gmail.com on 16 Jul 2012 at 3:18

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I think in the longer term there'll be more and more social features 
integrating with Bitcoin. Rather than deal with raw addresses (which IMHO need 
to slowly disappear into the background), it's a much friendlier experience to 
just pick names/photos from a list, eg from Facebook or G+. So address book 
integration makes a lot of sense to me, it also makes it easier to switch 
mobile clients because you don't lose all your accumulated addresses (they're 
stored in the central contact store).

For example, I was thinking also that when starting the app for the first time, 
offer to use the users name as we discussed and ALSO allow the user to embed 
their G+ profile ID, if there is one, into any generated URIs. On the other 
side, we can investigate how the transactions list can look when instead of 
being address-oriented it's people oriented, eg, showing names/photos and 
showing the person widget, allowing you to send Bitcoins from the ICS contact 
screen, etc.

Probably if you do that, it also generalizes to +Pages without any effort, so 
for instance, not only could Room77 put its name into the URI label, but the 
act of performing a transaction makes it just a one-tap operation to 
circle/follow/+1 the business. I guess the same is true for Facebook pages as 
well. That's a feature many businesses would really like!

However, you're probably right that some users today would see that as a 
privacy problem. Ultimately privacy is something that is a very personal 
matter, where users fall on the use-vs-hide data spectrum is never going to be 
consistent, short of some big changes in our society.

How about this compromise for now, until Android permissions are overhauled 
(I'm sure they will be one day). The regular Bitcoin Wallet app goes in the 
direction of integrating with your services and data, and adds features like 
these. There can be a separate build, call it "Bitcoin Wallet Incognito", which 
is the same app but without any features that might upset very privacy oriented 
people.

This distinction can help later too. For example, an incognito build of Bitcoin 
Wallet might have some kind of coin mixing protocol activated by default. At 
night-time it'd mix your coins, perhaps paying small transaction fees to do so, 
whereas perhaps by default the regular build would not do that unless/until it 
can be done freely and without inconvenience. It could use Tor by default, etc.

I think just generally bundling up "strong privacy" vs "good convenience" into 
one simple choice the way Chrome does makes a lot of sense, and today the 
easiest way to accomplish that on Android is with two builds.

Original comment by mh.in.en...@gmail.com on 17 Jul 2012 at 7:51

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Oh, and I forgot to mention - even if we punt on all of that for now, asking 
the user to provide their name/business name on first run and then propagating 
that to new addresses by default is still a nice improvement. We want to move 
the Bitcoin world away from addresses poking out everywhere. They're ugly and 
unhelpful. 

Even if we can't pre-fill the welcome screen edit with the name from the phone 
without annoying some people today, letting people re-type it will still help a 
lot.

Original comment by mh.in.en...@gmail.com on 17 Jul 2012 at 7:59