GSoC/GCI Archive
GSoC/GCI Archive
Google Summer of Code 2012

OpenIntents

Web Page: http://code.google.com/p/openintents/wiki/GSoC2012Ideas

Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/openintents

We focus on promoting and developing examples for Androids’ Intent system which is designed to promote code re-use. We started this open source project in Dec 2007 to create developer tools and applications showcasing the use of intents. OpenIntents’ open source applications have had over 5 million application downloads from the Android Market (with the most popular, OI File Manager, having over 2.5 million). They are also available via several channels outside of Googles’ Android Market, incuding being pre-installed on devices and community developed ROMs. Our Sensor Simulator application is considered by many an essential developer tool to simulate hardware sensors on the emulator.

Projects

  • A Design and Implementation of Web Intent Agent on Android Web Intents is an upcoming framework for web-based inter-application communication and service discovery. This project explores possible ways of integrating Web Intents with Android intent system. To my knowledge, there are only two ways of using Web Intents: 1. Some versions of Google Chrome and Chromium 18 have native support to Web Intents. 2. By using the JavaScript shim provided by http://webintents.org/ Firefox also has some experimental experiences in this field as described in web-activities-app-discovery. But I found that it seems very difficult to work on these in Andriod by myself. The reasons are: a. currently only ICS i.e. Android 4.x has brought in support to Chrome while all other versions seems not working if I continue my work on Chrome; b. Chrome extension for Web Intents is developed in C which is out of my reach. So after some considerations I decided to develop a new Android app named WIAgent which is a very simple browser now designed specific to Web Intents. Thus I can do my exploratory work on this app and have more control over it. In addition, this app is not restricted by ICS.
  • Cloud Sync The aim of this project is to design and develop an architecture for data synchronization using Intents. The architecture will be designed to support heterogeneous data for different Android applications to be synchronized using the main SyncApp developed in this project.
  • Desktop web client for OI apps The OpenIntents project offers many very useful applications for everyday businesses. To provide a much better user experience, it would be nice if one could access the data from a Laptop or Personal Computer at home or at work. Then you don’t have to use the small phone, but will benefit from a big screen and input devices. The easiest way to achieve this would be by using a web browser to connect to an android phone. This way you need no additional software except a server running on the device and it is a platform independent solution. Exactly this server is the app I want to design and implement during this year’s GSoC and which I’m going to describe in detail within this proposal.
  • Desktop Web Client For OpenIntent Applications The idea is to develop a web client for OpenIntent applications to manage their data from a desktop web browser over a WLAN network. A server application will be developed that will be installed on the Android device and will act as an interface between the installed OI apps data and the web browser.
  • OI File Manager redesign, code cleanup and performance enhancement. OI File Manager has been online since the early days of Android. This is both an advantage and a responsibility as on the one hand it has a really big user base, but on the other hand it has been running long enough for the code to become messy and the UI obsolete. Now that the Ice Cream Sandwich Style Guide has been released, it is of great importance to follow it as early as possible and provide a product that will be consistent with the rest of the platform, so that a great user experience will be ensured. Furthermore, most of the other file managers on the market don’t follow these guidelines, and promoting one of the most successful OI applications through the timely use of the latest and greatest features of the platform can only be good for the OI whole brand.
  • Porting OI Shopping List to iOS platform The proposed project takes OI Shopping List, and converts it to a Native mobile application that can runs on iOS devices, with similar UI design and functionality.
  • Porting OI ShoppingList to Windows Phone 7 Project consists in porting existing applications to the Windows Phone 7 platform. The application is to create, edit, and exchange of shopping lists. User will be able freely create and manage lists and share them with other users via SMS, e-mail, and store the data in the cloud.