[Kde-pim] Dissertation project

[Kevin Krammer]

On Friday, 2013-12-13, 15:53:35, Ovidiu-Florin Bogdan wrote:
> I'd love to do something PIM and Akonadi related, but my teacher does not
> understand what Akonadi is and its use and I'm not experienced enough to
> better explain it to him.

Well, from a Software Engineering point of view it is a SOA (service oriented 
architecture) system. Profs usually love those :)

Its purpose it to provide uniform and data type independent access to local 
and remote data, currently mostly used for PIM (personal information 
management) data (e.g. contacts, events, emails).

One potential research idea would be to develop and/or improve tools for 
developing and/or analyzing and/or debugging such a system.
I.e. using Akonadi as easily accessible SOA system on which to base the 
research.

For example there is a developer tool called Akonadiconsole, which allows 
different views on the system, e.g. which processes are running, what their 
status is, etc., but it is currently very difficult to track how data flows 
through the system or how tasks get dealt with.

Another, rather different, idea is to ignore Akonadi as a technology and do 
something with the data it provides. IIRC Martin Gräßlin did that in his 
master thesis, using Akonadi as an enabler technology to research SPAM 
handling approaches.

Another angle would be research into user interfaces and/or workflows.
Current user interfaces and the workflows they enabled are very much data type 
centric, e.g. there is an interface for contacts which can to contact stuff, 
an interface for calendar which can do calendar stuff, and so on.

One could try different concepts of people centric interfaces, e..g accessing 
contacts/events/todos/emails associated with people or groups of people (e.g. 
teams, association members).

Or task centered interfaces, see 
https://conf.kde.org/en/Akademy2013/public/events/15

Cheers,
Kevin

> *Ovidiu - Florin Bogdan*
> GeekAliens.com <http://geekaliens.com>
> Kubuntu România <http://ro.kubuntu.org>
> <http://www.google.com/profiles/ovidiu.b13>
> 
> 
> 2013/12/12 Kevin Krammer <krammer at kde.org>
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On Tuesday, 2013-12-10, 22:03:29, Ovidiu-Florin Bogdan wrote:
> > > Hello world,
> > > 
> > > Me and my fiancée are students for a masters degree in Software
> > 
> > Engineering
> > 
> > > and we need to find projects for our dissertations.
> > > 
> > > We really want our projects to be something useful and to be a part of
> > 
> > KDE.
> > 
> > Very cool!
> > 
> > > We were thinking of a few things and would like your feedback on them on
> > 
> > if
> > 
> > > and how can this be achieved.
> > > 
> > >    - KDE Connect: seamless file browsing on android device (using
> > 
> > Dolphin);
> > 
> > >    SMS integration with Telepathy, to be able to respond and view the
> > > 
> > > message thread; Answer and make phone calls (through Telepathy, maybe);
> > > Contacts integration with Akonadi for the above two.
> > > 
> > >    - Akregator: Integration with Akonadi; A plugin to connect and sync
> > 
> > with
> > 
> > >    feedly: feeds synced across devices, search for new feeds,
> > >    categories,
> > >    tags, etc.
> > 
> > Akonadi porting is already being worked on, not sure how far it is though.
> > No
> > synching as far as I know.
> > 
> > >    - Akonadi: better contact integration: see if mail sender is online
> > 
> > for
> > 
> > >    chat and start chat, send email to the person chatting with (Kmail
> > >    and
> > >    Telepathy).
> > 
> > That is basically ready, called KPeople.
> > 
> > In general I am not sure if either of those ideas would qualify for a
> > master
> > thesis work, but that will of course depend on what the university
> > expects.
> > 
> > Speaking as a PIM developer we would of course love to have someone work
> > on
> > PIM stuff and PIM data and user interfaces in general make good research
> > material :)
> > 
> > I would suggest you also ask on the kde-pim mailinglist so you can get
> > feedback by more developers from that area.
> > 
> > > I have some experience with KDE development, I've looked over the code
> > 
> > of a
> > 
> > > few applications and made a few pull requests, so I know a few things on
> > > how part of KDE works, but I still need some guidance. Mostly I've only
> > > done translations and support.
> > 
> > That shouldn't be a problem. Aside from help being available on
> > mailinglists,
> > quite some projects have people who are experienced mentors.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Kevin
> > 
> > --
> > Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
> > KDE user support, developer mentoring
> > 
> > >> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to
> > 
> > unsubscribe <<
-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring
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