Standing in for Moorthy is tough to do! :-) We had five talks today showcasing a wide variety of projects.
1. Bobby Zheng SAGE http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/sage-senate-address-geo-coding-engine/
2. Ian Ooi Big http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/
3. Stephen Silber RPI Mobile http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/
4. Sheena McNeil koobkooc Reverse cookbook http://rcos.rpi.edu/user/140/
5. Thomas King SMS Vending Machine http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/
Bobby Zheng described SAGE (Senate Address Geo-coding Engine) developed and used by the New York State Senate (in part led by fellow alum Ken Zalewski!). Overall, the new contributions here will be getting this existing open source system to work with new census data and improved shapefiles that define all of the districts within New York State.
Ian Ooi talked about big, a configuration generator to help manage configurations/installations of Linux (by generating bash shell scripts). Oftentimes, it's easier to just reinstall the OS, so this tool helps save/restore OS configurations. Ian is working on expanding this to other shell languages and operating systems (beyond bash and Debian); he's also aiming to support multiple stored configurations.
Stephen Silber showed us RPI Mobile, which is an impressive (and successful) attempt at centralizing much of the data feeds and RPI-specific information available from a wide variety of sources. Part of the success is the consolidation of multiple data feeds (e.g. calendars, events) into a centralized form. Stephen is primarily working on incorporating other feeds and information, including dining hall menus, WRPI streams, interactive campus maps, etc.
Sheena McNeil discussed her reverse cookbook project, koobkooc (which is surprisingly difficult to type fast!). Given a list of ingredients you have and want to use, koobkooc shows you what dishes you can make.
Thomas King presented the SMS Vending Machine project, a project in which vending machines send TXT messages when items are sold out. Further, he described its current implementation in Ghana to sell condoms and hopefully decrease the prevalence of HIV/AIDS. Given these successes, the goal is to make these implementations more energy efficient (and better handle wavering cell service).
It was a pleasure to sit in for Moorthy. I got to "plug" the new CSCI-1100 course to be taught solely using Python! Please send real-world example ideas (including URLs to datasets?) to me at goldschmidt@gmail.com -- thanks all!
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