[2009-2010] Present yourself!

[admin]

Hi students,

Welcome to Gephi GSoC program! I hope you're motivated to work on cutting edge technology for Network Science and graph visualization. Last year was really hard for us to select the best of you for only 4 slots allowed by Google. Hence to help us identifying you as a valuable candidate, please present yourself on this thread, then fill in this questionnaire and return it by email in plain text to gsoc@gephi.org.

This summer will be hot !

[felix]

Hi everybody,
my name is Felix Schmidt and I'm currently studying theoretical physics in the german diploma system. During the last term I worked on a network analyzing project where my task was to detect communities in networks. I did most of the work with Matlab and Cytoscape, but when almost all work was done, I discovered Gephi and was really impressed by it's statistic and filter features. But the most amazing part are it's layout and drawing abilities. So I took all my Cytoscape *.xgmml files converted them to gml files and imported them to Gephi and everything looked so much better.
My idea for the GSoC project is to create an import wizard for Gephi, which merges all the already existing import features like import from database, *.gml, *.gexf ... and upcoming features into one place to start from. This import wizard should also include the "import from social network" features as outlined in the proposal. I already created a java program to import data from the last.fm network for my project and I'm looking forward to create a powerful but also comfortable tool that unleashes the power of Gephi to social network analysis. An other, but smaller feature that I want to implement if there is some time left is the support of the *.xgmml and the edge list file format.
Maybe I should mention that although physics is my major subject, I have a lot of experience in computer science worked as tutor for the java courses at my university.
Best regards,
Felix

[Oscar]

Hello,

I'm greatly interested in collaborate in a open source project in this years GSOC, and the Gephi project really caught my attention, I've saw the demos of Gephi and tried for a bit, and it's functionalities are really exciting.

The detailed explanation and objectives for each project proposed in the wiki, shows the great commitment and focus that the Gephi organization puts on the projects, something that I really appreciate, and that makes me want to be a part of it.

Currently I am a student attending to my second IT BSc, this time Multimedia and Communication Networks degree at High Institute of Engineering of Lisbon - ISEL but if need more detailed information about my academic/professional background I would be more than happy to forward them to you.

In a first approach I am interested in one of the following projects:

• Graph Streaming API
• Direct Social Networks Import
• Force-Directed Edge Bundling

Hope hearing from you soon and thank you very much for your time.

Best Regards.
Oscar Lopes.

[GorDev]

Hello everybody,

My name is Alexander Gorskih. I'd like to work on Shader Engine Idea from Idea's list. I think I know Java quit well, have some experience in shader programming using GLSL(I've help friends with it on IPhone 3GS. And my current coursework is the same.), understand computer graphics. I want to get experience in some real world project and in communicating with other people.

I'm student from Russia, currently attending my bachelor's degree in IT at South Ural State university.

Thank you for your attention.
Alexander Gorskih.

[sumitd]

Hello all,

My name is Sumit Dubey and I am interested in the "Data Laboratory" project proposal in the ideas page. The project though simple, seems to attract me because of two reasons

i) It involves the use of Java Swing APIs and I worked last year for Fiji and built a plug-in script editor for it during and after GSoC period which involved a lot of Swing. So I think I will be on board as soon as I start the project. Unfortunately Fiji could not make for SoC this year but I was consistently involved in the changes done to the script-editor branch of Fiji.

ii) The Project seems to have a lot of window for innovation. Infact I am dying to talk to the mentors on IRC but I guess they are busy as there is little strength at IRC channel. Or I am not sure if IRC is not a regular way of interaction for Gephi.

About myself, I am a third-year undergraduate student in the Computer Science department of Indian Instutute of Technology(IIT) Kanpur. I have worked for other small open-source projects(besides GSoC'09) at my university's local programming club like carrom-board game on J2ME, developing Firefox Image Slide Show Addon. I think I am proficient and fluent in coding in Java. After working with Fiji team, I am really excited to get to know more active open-source organisations and I feel GSoC is the ideal way to start. So I look forward to have an exciting and "hot" summer with lots of code.
Thank you very much,

Sumit Dubey

[maxime]

Hi all,

My name is Maxime and I'm currently attending a master degree in computer science at the University of Technology of Compiegne (French school near Paris).

I heard about Gephi something like a year ago while taking a course about web crawling. I used it a lot to produce a map of various websites speaking about "love". The original subject was to create the "web Tenderness map" (you may find explanation about the subject here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_of_Tendre.
Because I really enjoyed the course about web crawling, I decided to continue the project with a friend and a teacher to create a website : http://carte-du-tendre.com/
The main ideas was to provide the map to a large set of people through a web browser and get a more interactive way to explore it. During that time, we had to reuse part of the Gephi's code and to create our own crawler in order to have an easy way to expand the map.

Because I'm deeply interested in new technology and challenging algorithms, I would like to work on the Shader Engine or the "Web-based network visualization engine with WebGL"

Have a great day!

Maxime

[gabrielsilk]

Hello,

My name is Gabriel Silk, and I'm an undergraduate computer science student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C.

I first heard about Gephi when I looked at the list of participating organizations on the gsoc website. I was instantly enthralled by the Gephi demo video. I downloaded Gephi and played around with it; then I checked out the source, and now I'm hacking on the code.

I'm a huge fan of open source software, and I'm looking for an a project to work on for the summer -- but one that I could see myself becoming a full comitter on in the future. I think Gephi is very cool . After I graduate in April, I'm going to have a lot more time to work on non-school projects, and I could see myself making substantial contributions to Gephi.

The reason I want to work on Gephi is that it represents a completely new way of looking at information. It could be useful in almost any setting. For example, if a developer joins a project that already has a large code-base -- she could use Gephi to visualize the entire hierarchy of code, instantly seeing which source files reference each other, what's calling what, which portions of the code are "dead", etc. Combined with a versioning system, she could step forwards and backwards in the repository's history. She could start at the very beginning and step forward, seeing exactly which code was added at which stage, and by whom, in a graphical format. That's just one example, and the possibilities are endless.

I have experience with a number of languages and toolsets, including Java and OpenGL. Recently I wrote an on-line multiplayer game called Squabble as a personal side-project, consisting of a multi-threaded server written in Java, and a client written in Flash. Last term I wrote a world-modeller in c++ using Ogre. This term, I'm working on a multi-touch, collaborative, UML diagram creation tool for the SMART Table as a course project. I'm also working on a web-based CMS for the BC Cancer Agency. Both of these projects will be finished by the end of April.

I've worked for Electronic Arts (primarily graphics-related with some toolset work), and Merck Frosst (writing tools for Confluence, their wiki system).

It's nice to meet you all, and I'll be keeping in touch. Cheers,


Gabriel Silk
http://gabrielsilk.wordpress.com

[kageiit]

Hi,

My name is Gautam. I am an undergraduate student in the Computer Science and Engineering department at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, India.

I am interested to work with the gephi community for GSOC 2010. I have been doing research and application related work in complex networks for the last two years. I have experience in C++,Java,Python etc. I have also interned at LIP6, Paris last summer in the complex networks team under Matthieu Latapy. I also work with the Complex Networks Research Group, IIT Kharagpur under Niloy Ganguly. Thus, I have gained insights into the intricacies and complications that arise while working with such large datasets during my experience.

I have worked on projects related to exploring Twitter efficiently using its API, studying the hierarchical organisation of railway networks and their interpretation via geo coding, and many software development projects in computer graphics (OpenGL), networking etc.

I have developed tools for clustering of graphs in python. I also have extensive knowledge of Twitter and Flickr APIs. I also have experience in OpenGL. I used other graph visualisation tools like Pajek and even used libraries like igraph to visualise data, but gephi is just much friendlier and has a huge set of useful features.

Some of the project proposals this year are very interesting. In particular, The direct import from social networks feature is in my opinion immensely useful.

I also have an opensource project called PyBatch - http://code.google.com/p/pybatch/. But I am the only contributor. So i decided to participate in GSOC this year to work with interesting people and contribute in a more meaningful way to OSS in the future.

Looking forward to have a great future (not just summer!) with the gephi community.

Regards,
Gautam.

[kumarlavr]

Hi all,
I am Kumar Lav from IIT Bombay. I am pursuing my Dual-Degree(B.Tech. + M.Tech) in Computer Science and Engineering. I am in fourth year of the curriculum.
I am interested in "Data Laboratory" and "Direct Social Networks Import" projects. Both of these projects have their own flavor.
Apart from being a UI design project "Data Laboratory project" also has a wider scope for categorization and organization of the data so that the user dont have to scratch his head to search for the data but is always there before his eyes. The design part of this project will involve many customization to the standard models to meet the specific user needs. Currently I am doing a course on Human Computer Interaction and am implementing various principles and heuristics in my course project. Applying these on a industrial project is very intriguing to me as it will be used my many people worldwide. I have done many projects on Swing the details of which are given in the mail to gsoc@gephi.org.

"Direct Social Networks Import" is a hot topic these days. World is moving towards a unique login system where a single account on the internet will suffice to access any page. Facebook Connect and Open Id are the pioneer in the field. Now social-networking sites are becoming more and more popular and almost everyone who access the internet has a social-networking account. These sites and networks provide a huge amount of data about ones interests and personality. Capturing these data from different sources and then converting them to information after processing will lead to better understanding of one. The processed information will help us in analyzing the situation in better way.

Apart from having the programming experience in the high level languages like Java, C++, my interests also lies in the software development oriented languages like VB, PHP, Javascript, Swing, J2EE etc. All of my Java projects were done using Netbeans. Recently, I was part of the Clicker team, which is to develop a software solution to enable the professors to conduct the quizzes using remote devices. This project also allows the peers to be in the remote locations where they contact the main server through internet. All these procedures of conducting quizzes, collecting responses and generating reports are automated. My work was to design and implement the various interfaces for the system. This was done using Swing.

In another project I developed a personalized search engine, "ChoosY!". This project was done during Yahoo Hack Day competition organized at IIT Bombay. This project found its place in top 4 projects of the event.(http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2009/02/17/ ... bai-delhi/). Currently I am working on this idea to extend it and develop it from a project to full furnishing software. Till now I am successful in connecting to Facebook and Google and am presently working on StubmleUpon and Twitter integration.

Looking forward for a great experience not only during summers but for times to come.
Cheers,
Lav

[admin]

Hi folks,

Thanks for willing to contribute to Gephi project! I've just created dedicated thread for each proposal:

• Shader Engine
• Dynamic attributes and statistics
• WebGL
• Force-Directed Edge Bundling
• Data Laboratory
• Graph Streaming
• Direct Social Networks Import

Please ask your questions there, not in IRC or by private emails in order to provide the same information to everybody: this will give equal chances for all of you to write the best proposal! We hope to have 5 slots this year.

Regards,
Seb