Open Source Project Idea
To whom it may concern:
suppafly asked if anyone was up to working on a project. It seems like some folks are up to this. This got me to thinking... [insert, "uh-oh" here]
For some time now, there has been a project knocking about my noggin like a rock in polisher. I have been, with my eXtremely limited knowledge, unable to do diddly about it, and have basically had to hunker down and squat on the idea, hoping someday to learn enough to do the thing myself.
Now along comes this community, and I begin to see a possibility. My idea is not so grand as Torvalds' idea, but it would be highly useful in the long run, and this community may well be the right place to see if the ball will roll at all.
Ready? Follow the link below...
I don't think that anyone has come up with this yet. If someone has, and you know about it, please feel free to disabuse me of my claim to being the author of this idea. If folks here are interested in this project, and want to assist me in learning how to program, then I will gladly do all I can. Anyone proving to have the desire and vision to take the project over from me is welcome to contact me to that end, so long as he/she promises that the project will remain open source (licensed under the GPL, or whatever). Fair enough? Honestly, I am, at this point, more interested in the overall design of the project, its GUI, how people will use it, etc., as I don't know yet how to program (I really want to learn, though!).
Required (collective) skills: Java, XML/XHTML, XSL/CSS
Platform: Standalone (cross-platform)
We all have to go grocery shopping, right? If you're like me, you have to go to different stores for some things. I have met a number of people for whom this is the case. Myself, I go to Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and Ralphs. There are redundancies between the stores, but the prices vary, sometimes significantly. These price differences induced my spouse to write up a comparative price listing, which told us that we needed to purchase certain items at a store other than the one we usually did. It was quite a process, and it got me to thinking:
This idea may be extended, of course, but I really want for now to keep it as small as possible, with a very tight focus, because so many good ideas get used up in the "what if we made it do this..." cycle. Maybe it should start out even smaller, as a program that the user could input his/her prices into in order to get the same results. Of course, this loses out on up-to-date prices, and requires the user to take more time and make more effort. But... but but but...
What do you think? Please let me know!
suppafly asked if anyone was up to working on a project. It seems like some folks are up to this. This got me to thinking... [insert, "uh-oh" here]For some time now, there has been a project knocking about my noggin like a rock in polisher. I have been, with my eXtremely limited knowledge, unable to do diddly about it, and have basically had to hunker down and squat on the idea, hoping someday to learn enough to do the thing myself.
Now along comes this community, and I begin to see a possibility. My idea is not so grand as Torvalds' idea, but it would be highly useful in the long run, and this community may well be the right place to see if the ball will roll at all.
Ready? Follow the link below...
I don't think that anyone has come up with this yet. If someone has, and you know about it, please feel free to disabuse me of my claim to being the author of this idea. If folks here are interested in this project, and want to assist me in learning how to program, then I will gladly do all I can. Anyone proving to have the desire and vision to take the project over from me is welcome to contact me to that end, so long as he/she promises that the project will remain open source (licensed under the GPL, or whatever). Fair enough? Honestly, I am, at this point, more interested in the overall design of the project, its GUI, how people will use it, etc., as I don't know yet how to program (I really want to learn, though!).
Required (collective) skills: Java, XML/XHTML, XSL/CSS
Platform: Standalone (cross-platform)
We all have to go grocery shopping, right? If you're like me, you have to go to different stores for some things. I have met a number of people for whom this is the case. Myself, I go to Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and Ralphs. There are redundancies between the stores, but the prices vary, sometimes significantly. These price differences induced my spouse to write up a comparative price listing, which told us that we needed to purchase certain items at a store other than the one we usually did. It was quite a process, and it got me to thinking:
What if you (imagine you are a typical computer user... I'll wait for the chuckling to end...) had items and their prices available in XML format? What could you do with that? Not much. But what if you had downloaded a friendly program from the store (whichever), or picked up a disk, and installed a Java program that could fetch and interpret the XML, directly from the stores you pick? What if that program could do the price comparisons, look at your last shopping list, and make a tentative shopping list for printing out?
This idea may be extended, of course, but I really want for now to keep it as small as possible, with a very tight focus, because so many good ideas get used up in the "what if we made it do this..." cycle. Maybe it should start out even smaller, as a program that the user could input his/her prices into in order to get the same results. Of course, this loses out on up-to-date prices, and requires the user to take more time and make more effort. But... but but but...
What do you think? Please let me know!
