GSofC introduction

[Roberto Serrano]

Hi my name is Roberto C. Serrano,

First, let me apologize if this not the right list to conduct an 
introduction, please redirect me if I should post somewhere else.

I am the founder, and one the leaders of the Flourish! conference at 
UIC  that will be taking place next week -  see  www.flourishconf.com 
for more details.  This an annual conference geared to the promotion of 
Free and Open Source software and open culture, this will be our second 
edition.  As you can imaging, I am and have been incredibly busy over 
the last few weeks, which is why I have taken so long to actually sat 
down an express some interest in your project.  I hope you can 
understand this and be able to excuse my lateness. 

I am a senior at the University of Illinois, Chicago Campus, and I am 
really interested in participating the summer of code and more in 
particular in Open Moko.

Ever since I worked as an intern at Motorola last summer, I have been 
looking at OpenMoko project with curiosity and interest.  Time and 
resources have not allowed me to acquire a unit, or to get involve, but 
I am a firm believer that the next showdown in the digital revolution 
will came from the integration of communities and mobile devices.  The 
disruptive power encase in a device such us neo combined with its true 
open nature the platform offers is to me a truly interesting new field 
of applications that I would really like to explore first hand.

I am interested in these two proposed projects:
_______________________


    MythTV Advanced Remote Control

Bluetooth/WLAN-based remote control for MythTV, which for television 
channels, would show a view like a mini-channel guide (complete with 
preview, if tuner is available). For mythvideo, it would show all of the 
details and cover art. Neo could act like a MythTV slave, where 
television shows could be shown on the Neo as well.


    Ad hoc communication via Bluetooth/WLAN

We want to be able to chat, send files, have internet connectivity, 
exchange contacts, ...

The following issues need to be addressed:

   1. Make BT/WLAN discoverable
   2. Ad hoc pand connection
   3. IP connectivity via zeroconf
   4. Chat (and voice) communication via link-local and zeroconf
   5. Interoperatibility with the other daemons to perform said tasks
   6. GUI controls to access settings/perform actions

_______________________

I have been a user of Mythtv for the last 6 years, ever since version .4 
. Mythtv was the one Killer App that pecked my curiosity, and made me 
wan to stick with Linux for the long round.  That was 5 years ago.  I 
have a decent knowledge of Mythtv, how was architected, and what 
limitations it has.  Over the years, I have looked through its code and 
database and I don't think it would take me a big effort to get to 
understand the communication protocol used in mythtv's client-server 
architecture.

Regarding  this second project, I am taking a Networked Operative 
Systems class at school now.  This class is giving me a interesting 
perspective in how a unix system organizes is file system, network, etc, 
and although I cannot claim I am an expert yet, I think this project 
would help me growing and consolidating the knowledge from that class 
and help me taking it to the next level.   In addition, as I move 
forward to my master I would like to make this my area of research.

In addition, I have been for a long time interested on participating in 
the OSS process from within.  I have been a happy user for a long time 
now, and although I had been heavily involved in OSS - via my 
contributions to the UIC LUG and Flourish! -  I would like to take it to 
the next level.

Before I formalize my proposal, I wanted to reach out the community, and 
to ask a couple questions:

    * What level of expertise in the OpenMoko platform do you expect
      from the participants? 
    * Would it be possible to find out who is going to be mentoring and
      to read a bit of what they have done?

I have only limited experience with some of the technologies that make 
up the platform.  Case in point, I have only programmed a bit of GTK 
when I put together a small python utility a while back.  I do have more 
knowledge in qt, as I am currently  using qt for this class:  
http://www.evl.uic.edu/aej/422/index.html   (This are the sketches for 
the class final project I'm doing with a friend of mine:  
http://lug.cs.uic.edu/rr/  ) 

I think I have a decent level of C/C++ as I will have used it in 5 
different classes where it was required or I chose to use it   (software 
design, OS concepts and design, OOP languages and environments, UI 
design and programing, and Networked OSs).  Additionally, I have 
surrounded myself with a veritable collection of C/C++ / programming 
unix books. :)    I am fairly decent when it comes to design of UIs.

Finally, I am looking forward to the mentoring aspect of the program:  I 
am a thirsty to learn about OSS development and to improve my 
programming skills learning from others.

Thank you so much!

Roberto C. Serrano