Thursday, May 18, 2006 7:19 AM
As I write my articles, there is often this struggle just to come up with a good idea. There are two things going on. First, I want some great concept to show off. In the past I've discussed data-enabling, mobility-awareness, file notifications, and various Windows forms coolness. Second, I need a vehicle to show off the concept. You don't write code in isolation. You can, of course, but it's so dry that no one wants to read it! The intent is to choose an application that is simplistic enough to fit within the time constraints of the article, integrated with the topic of the article, and fleshed out enough to be useful. I hope that I've been hitting a good balance of these attributes. That said, sometimes I just want to write a fun utility. Writing any utility with good code documentation and an associated step-by-step article is going to have a benefit. My file router, background cycler, and time tracker application are fully useable in their own right, yet offer great opportunities for learning and extending. So, onto the point of this post...
What are some other good ideas? I have done a few searches but can't seem to find any nice list of projects that people would like to see. Preferably smaller utilities -- not full-fledged applications. I'm sure there are other coders out there who have had ideas but not time to implement them. Perhaps a user who has a need that is unfulfilled. Google's Summer of Code provides specific ideas for projects, but targeted for their needs.
I propose keeping a list of such programming ideas. If there are some contenders for a given idea already out there, they can be listed as well. I'd selfishly dip into the project list from time to time for an article(!), but others may be interested in them too. You never know when an idea might be a good one for a student project, or for a coder looking to try out a new environment. Obviously I would be implementing any ideas in .NET, but anyone could choose any other platform as desired.
Is this just weird? Let me know! I'll add any ideas to this post. If I get a good number of entries, I'll spin it off onto its own page. It could be fun to add some tracking to it in case someone wants to take up the challenge. No reward for adding an idea or implementing it, but hopefully some good would come out for the community. I'll jumpstart the list with a few small ideas of my own.
| Idea |
Status |
Submitter |
| Media Edit DirectShow plugin |
Basic concept starter (here) |
A. Kulp, 5/18/2006 |
| Utility to set jump points in a media file to make a TV show, DVD, etc. kid-friendly. Set-top players exist for this but are pricey. The concept of skipping frames or silencing audio is trivial. The bigger deal is how to mark the points, save the data, and act upon playing media. As a DirectShow plugin, would work in many players. |
| Rapid Image Tagger |
Idea only |
A. Kulp, 5/18/2006 |
| So many image library apps! Image keywords are portable, but typically tedious to assign. I envision a full-screen canvas. Keywords become regions of the screen (clouds). A pile of photos in the center of the screen are waiting to be categorized. Drag a photo to a cloud for rapid single-keyword, or drag clouds over photo for multi-keywords. Prev/next buttons, natural photo pile metaphor, enhanced for Tablet PC. |