Project Proposals

Accessing memory of other machines on a network.

Some machines some of the time aren't using all of their main memory. Wouldn't it be nice to use memory from other machines for your memory intensive programs. The problem is that swapping memory in and out can become very slow when the total swap space is being used. Maybe using the memory of other machines around you will be quicker than crippling one machine.

Commenrcial Index

I read an article the other day about how the only people who are really making money from the web are the indexers (Lycos etc). The way they make money is to charge (something like 1 dollar per thousand hits) for advertising on the index pages.

I thought that most of what is searched is users home pages and other such dross. If a web index/crawler only indexed commercial stuff then it might draw more advertising revenue.

Or how about this. Indexes with a theme, indexes of say travelling might draw renvenue from holiday companies. etc. etc.

Internet Shopping Catalogue

Server side :- database containing all info about products including urls pointing to pictures of products.

Client side :- Java applet using public key encryption to order goods using VISA etc. found in the database.

PDA Leicester City Campus Wireless Internet Access

The title says it all really. The idea is that someone with a PDA Personal Digital Assistant like a Psion could walk about the campus and have access to the Internet. Obviously this is quite tricky but a small subset of functionality might be achievable. You might be able to receive some data but not send. Something like having mail delivered might work.

OSF Compliant Window Manager look-a-like

You know the HPVUE toolbar. Well this project is too simulate as much of that as possible using FVWM. Simple.

A Real Virtual Window Manager

You would need access to a VR head set for this. The idea is that in a 360 cylinder or sphere (bit hard on the neck) you could have a very large `desktop'. You know how in DOOM some objects are flat and that any direction you approach them they are facing you. Well the windows on this desktop top could do the same. You could move about in this 3d world using your windows. The tricky bits in this are obviously how a mouse interacts with the windows.

Monopoly

The only difficult thing about this one is how you handle the AI(computer players). But it would have some graphics stuff in it and networking. There would obviously be extra points for using stuff like C++ Motif. etc.

WWW Games

This is a tricky one and would need research. The problem is that multiplayer games are not/can't be very interactive. A program/script on a server can't tell two peoples web browsers to update. So, porting games to the WWW are difficult.

Single player games are also difficult because the state of the game has to be kept. Therefore if two hundred people are playing a game of one server the info has to be kept somewhere and managed.

Marot

Check this out its a cool card game, hope you've got a DVI viewer

WWW Stats

There are various ways of present the HTTP access logs. You might be able to come up with the definitive tool. The stats here at DMU may be of help.

Super Janet

How about using all of the bandwidth up in some way. People are already doing things like MBONE. Some audio/video stuff maybe with compatibility between many platforms.

Domain Window Manager on X

Domain is the best window manager in any and all of the universes. See an Apollo or Mark Careys Dominion.

Molecule Modelling

To translate the images of Atomic Force Microscopes to 3D images of molecules. A mate of mine is about to start a PHD in this area 8->