Hi, I have some questions about google summer of code 2009.

First of will KDE by a part of it this summer? I know that it is early but can not find any good fact about this year and KDE.

Secund of all, as you might have expected I'm very intressted in partisiparing this year since I'we been thinking about it for a long time. Since I love KDE that would be my first choice.

I know that it is some time left before the whole thing starts but I just wants to be out in good time to collect some info, help with something or maybe just learn to know the people here at the forum. But if I should come back to my secund question, do you have any tips on things that good to do from now til the application should be in at google? I have been looking around at the "getinvolved" page but I just dont know were to start... So I'll start out asking about it.. ;P

Looks like things have started with GSoC. And it does look like KDE will be participating (they seem to be a regular). Check out these pages:

Summer of Code 2009
Summer of Code 2009: Participation (currently redirects to the 2008 page below)
Summer of Code 2008: Participation
Summer of Code 2009: ideas

Thanks for the links!

[quote='TheBlackCat' pid='44700' dateline='1234397662']
Looks like things have started with GSoC. And it does look like KDE will be participating (they seem to be a regular).
[/Quote]

Just to make this clear:

Google has not yet selected any project for this years GSoC.
Obviously we at KDE hope to be part of this again

It is always a good idea to get in touch with the subproject you intend to work with.

Ideas gathered at sites like techbase are mainly for brainstorming, students can always apply with different ones.
If students like one of the ideas the developers came up with, they should really think about how they interpret the task, because this will be visible in the application text (just copying the suggestion will not work).

It is also highly recommended to think about mile stones, i.e. when to achieve a certain level of completness, etc.
A good time table makes it easier for the mentors to decide whether the student has any idea about what will be involved in solving the task.

Cheers,
_

(GSoC mentor for KDE in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008)

Also, AFAIK, students are required/encouraged to "tell the world" about their progress.

Okey but this sound good...

In my case I have an idea of my own... How should I do with that now? Shoud I like post my idea somewhere for people to say good/bad things about it? :P I mean I have not written down a whole thing about it but I know like the most about it..

Any tips? And if I shoud post about it somewhere should post a like a little about it or what and try to write like more specific?

We plan on making an announcement and a request for ideas soon. In the mean time, if you have a good idea, identify the specific KDE (I assume it's a KDE idea) ML and post there (in detail, including possible implementations) for some discussion. If you do so, a link here would be useful to keep track of the discussion.

Okey that sound nice! I dont really understand what you mean with "specific KDE ML" ? I dont know what "ML" is short for..? :P My idea is about doing a new K*** program... :P I dont know maybe it might be a too big project I dont know but it is an idea that I have had for a long time.

When I'm writting this I feel a little like I dont want to write my idé if someone would "steel" it... haha :P but at the same time I guess you can't think like that either.. So.. why not tell a little about my idea right away...

I would like to make a program named "Ktrainer" or something like that... It would be made like an KDE program to integrate with the other programs. Since I'm an elite athlete in cross country skiing I a lot of training and like "training diary" and at my "ski gymnasium" as it is called in sweden we had an training diary in exel, I dont know the exakt word for programs in exel if its macro or something like that? yeah you know what I mean. It works ok in open office but not to 100%, and its not free either. So I would like to do something like that but integrated into an KDE program. And I dont know if its to big but ok, thean also I have thought that you can choose what sport or whatever you a doing like walking or fotball or something... :P And the the program can make upp an traingschedule for you after you have awnsered on a couple of questions...

So that kind of my idéa! I have some more extention as well but I thing you have got the most of it at least.. Now I have to change cause I going on a competition soon.. :P

Be gentle on my idea.... (A) :P

ML is short for "mailing list", there are various specialized KDE mailing lists. You should find the one related to the project you intend to work on.

Interesting idea. A couple of suggestions:

First, I would not limit it to sports. The same basic system could be used for a wide variety of tasks, for instance keeping track of continuing education hours for a professional certification, tracking your working hours on a job, keeping track of how long you have practiced a musical instrument, making sure roommates are doing their fair share of the cleaning, etc. I do not think it would be any additional work for you to make it flexible like that (perhaps just add a few more default "sports", while allowing people to add their own). Making it flexible both means that it is more useful, which is good, but also means (I would guess) that more KDE devs would see a use for it and thus there is a better chance of it getting picked.

Second, and other people please correct me if I am off-base on this, but I would expect integrating it into Akondi would likely increase the chance of it getting funded. KDE is moving all personal information management tasks to Akondi, and I think this would fall under that banner. A program that integrates into the overall KDE framework would, I suspect, be more attractive to KDE devs than one that is just out there on its own. This is not just a mercenary suggestion, either. Although this may be outside of the scope of your project, akondi integration may, at some point, allow you to display your training diary on your standard calendar, automatically set up and email reports to your coach, integrate with your away message (set it to "Training for..." and will automatically log the time from when the message went up to when it went down to your diary), and perhaps many other ideas that would not occur to me.

Hi again! Really nice to get some feedback on my idea, actually I kind of have had both of your ideas in my head but a little more abstract about the second one since I didn't know that much about Akonadi, until now... But I have had thoughts about makeing it possible to export information to for example Gmail calender. And I have also thought about adding other stuff than sports, maybe activities would be a better name?

After have reading a lot about Akonadi now I really like it and would like to integrate the program with Akonadi, but that is leading my on to the question if I should post on their ML? (kdepim-users@kde.org)

Is that a good choice of ML for my project/idea or should a post it somewhere else?

The developer list for KDE PIM is kde-pim@kde.org

IRC Channels are #kontact for general KDEPIM stuff and #akonadi for Akonadi.

Regarding your concerns about your idea getting "stolen": once you let the developers/mentors know about it, it is easy to remember you were the first one to come up with that idea.

Mentors might still favor another applications, there are a lot of mentors and all have their own sets of quality criteria

Cheers,
_

Yeah thanks for the tip! I'm going to do some more research before I post there! I have also started to look up Korganizer a little bit more than I have been before. I have not really used that program that much before but I am going to use it a lot here for a couple of days since it is kind the same as the app I was thinking of, at least it's a good base with all the calender functions and such.

I have also been thinking that maybe it would be a better ideá to make some extention and/or new futures of Korganizer instead of makeing a new app..? Maybe the project could be more like "adding training planning support" in Korganizer?

What do you guys think of that?

Bump...

Scorpiion wrote:I have also been thinking that maybe it would be a better ideá to make some extention and/or new futures of Korganizer instead of makeing a new app..? Maybe the project could be more like "adding training planning support" in Korganizer?

Theoretically this might be a good idea. At another time.

If all goes well, the plan is to port KOrganizer to Akonadi during the time overlapping the GSoC timetable, thus it would be constantly changing and not a good base to work on.

Cheers,
_