An unique Idea for GSoC 2009

[Rocky Hartono]

Hi Pidgin community,


I would like to introduce myself, my name is Rocky, and now I am still an
undergraduate student majoring in Informatics Engineering (computer
science). I have a great interest to propose my unique idea to Pidgin for
GSoC. I love web engineering and I have enough experience in developing some
web based project. Moreover I was a Network and System Administrator in my
faculty, Informatics Engineering Department, who handled networks and some
servers in the faculty. Almost of all servers are Unix based.

I am a Pidgin active user, in my daily activity I used to work with Pidgin.
I love it, because it supports multiple protocols and it can run more than
one account at the same time. I have a unique and useful idea, well actually
this idea has been appeared about two or three months ago. Maybe you need to
read the rest of this email.

As we know, there are many web forums on internet. Some of them have heavy
traffic and a lot of active members. Much information they gave are useful.
I myself join several web forums. In some forums, information comes rapidly.
Some new threads and many new replies in threads could appear every day and
they move old threads down. Those new information (new threads, new replies)
might be very useful and interesting for me. But it is hard for me to keep
monitor the latest information (new threads, new posts, new replies, etc)
from those forums at the same time every day, because I have to open every
forums I’ve joined and look into interesting threads by using web browser
every day. It could take so much time and effort and becomes troublesome.

Based on this problem, I would like to make a mini program looks like a
messenger that could show information, threads, posts, and new replies from
web forums. How nice it is if this program could show alert or notifications
when there are new updates in threads. In advance by using this program we
could reply thread directly, so we could interact with this forum directly
quickly using this mini program. It will save my time and help me so much in
order to monitor the forums I interested without open each of them every day
by using web browser.

Until now I only know some messenger programs could support IM protocols,
plus support accessing emails and social networks (e.g. Facebook, MySpace,
Twitter, etc) at the same time but there is no messenger program support or
have a feature to access any information in a forum. Forum is one kind of
places on internet where much internet users could come and join and
interact with others to discuss many kinds of topics. I think this will be
great if messenger programs also have a feature (or an added feature) to
help so much forum users on internet know the latest update about their
favorite forums quickly.

I realize that there is no standard protocol that could access every forum.
In order to get information from some forums we could use the RSS feed
provided by the forum themselves, and then process it and show it into that
mini program/messenger. While replying to a thread, it needs advance
handling.

Solving the non-standard protocol problem in accessing forums, my idea is to
make a kind of plugin/addon to access each forum, one plugin/addon to access
one forum. If a user wants to access forum X, he need to add plugin/addon
appropriate to the forum (forum X). Because every plugin has specific rules
to access certain forums and the rules could be different for accessing
other forums. And I think people don’t need to access all forums on
internet, they just enough to access some forums they interested in, so they
just need to install some plugin/addon appropriate to access the forums they
interested in.

I think this will be great if this feature is integrated with the messenger
programs, although only as a plugin or an added feature to messenger
programs, it will make messenger program as one small-mini program which
more powerful that could connect people to more heavy-traffic and
people-interactive point/places on internet (besides IM, social networks,
and emails).

Would Pidgin like to be the first in implementing this feature, although
only as a plugin? Because this feature will be very unique and helpful for
many internet users if it is realized.

For this GSoC, I think I could make a starter project to develop a simple
version which has some basic features and make a plugin for one specific
forum for instance.


The simple mockup of this feature looks like:

   - buddy groups (in general IM messenger) as categories in the forum,
   - buddy list as thread list in each category :

o   Category A

§  Thread 1

§  Thread 2

§  Thread 3

o   Category B

§  Thread 1

§  Thread 2

§  Thread 3

§  etc..



   - when a thread is clicked, a new window will appear and show every post
   in thread,
   - for replying thread, in advance there will be a text-area input field
   just like as a common chatting window.



I think this project will be really very interesting for me as GSoC project
because the idea is unique and it will be really very useful for me and all
internet users who have interest in forums if this feature is realized.

I would like to get any suggestion from you, Pidgin community. Can I use
this idea as a project in GSoC this year?


Warm regards,

Rocky
GTalk : rocky.hartono at gmail.com
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