CS 680
Project 2

You may continue on with your current project, or switch over to one of those listed below. You must decide by Tuesday, April 5, at the beginning of class. You may not switch to a completely different project not listed below (unless you can somehow talk me into it). If there is a relationship between your project in this class and one in Distributed Software Development, you must submit, in writing, details of how the projects are being separated in terms of grading.

At class on April 5, submit a proposal for what you plan to complete by the end of the semester. Please be very specific and state the deliverables in terms that can be verified. For on-going projects, you will submit both a final paper and implementation. For new projects, you may submit an implementation and wiki spec/design only. Be sure and clearly state all deliverables you plan to complete.

If you indeed write your proposal in a clear, detailed, and verifiable fashion, I will consider it a contract and you may even specify A, B, and C levels of work (though quality will be measured, so you definitely want to show me iterations as you work). Be sure to have me sign off on it if you want such a contract.

Potential Switch-Over Projects

1. Explore A9's Open Search protocol by one or more of the following:

a) implementing some Open Search wrappers for services (e.g., Internet Archive).

b) Writing a position paper on what should be in the next version of the protocol

c) Writing an Open Search client using TouchGraph (see below)

2. Use TouchGraph to build a Graph-Based client for WebTop

There is currently a number of TouchGraph applications, including one in which you can enter a url and see Google related pages. This project would create a new TouchGraph application

a) Writing some generalized code to make it easy to build touchgraph graphs with various types of data.

b) Specifically, allow the user to enter keywords or URL, have the graph show the results in the middle area along with connections to those results. The user should also be able to configure the graph to show various types of relationships (inward, outward, content, etc.), varying number of results/links, and various sources.

c) explore various event-handling and graph configuration. For instance, should inward links come in from left and outward to right? Should you draw a result node twice or just once? How to show inwards of outwards, etc., without the graph getting too ugly. There are all kinds of issues here.