2010-10-25

What is the next project?

I've got a problem, I always have many ideas that I could turn into small projects,
But I just don't know how to get started... Recently I had a couple of projects ideas that I could work on.

Here they are :

Desktop Pomodoro Technique Tool
I'm currently reading Pomodoro Technique Illustrated from The Pragmatic Bookshelf.
Reading the book, made me think of a tool that could be running on my (Linux & Windows) desktops at work to help me use the Pomodoro Technique.

Here is an interesting post that discuss the use of Pomodoro Technique at work

The tool could manage the activity list, the "to do today" list, the timers, the interruptions and the time tracking.

Coffee Pod Ordering System
We have a plan at work to buy a fancy coffee machine that will use coffee pods. However all the management of the pod ordering could be quite complicated, and I will not volunteer to keep track of all the orders with a spreadsheet or a piece of paper :)

The system would consist of :

  • A simple order entry system for the people to order the number of pods they want.
  • An interface to create a consolidated order with all the pods for the team.
  • An interface that provides an easy way to split the pod boxes when the shipping arrive. It should manage partially filled orders as well.
  • A management interface to enter prices, quantity per box and types of pods available.
  • User management + login window.
I want to learn Rails, so it might be a good project to start with it.


Standalone WYSIWYG blog
I really enjoy butor.com wiki  it might be a bit old, but the wiki editing is still quite amazing, (especially for publishing code). Since I decided to write a blog, I think that I could reuse the editor, and fork butor wiki into "butor blog".

An interesting feature to be added would be the possibility to paste images from clipboard directly to the blog editor.

Since the editor is pretty much "pure" javascript, I can use any back-end. Would it be a good opportunity to look into Scala & the Lift framework ?  However, for now Blogger.com is doing the job...

Multiple / "snoozable" / "mp3 enabled" alarm application for cell phones
I've always wanted to do an app for my phone (a Blackberry Bold 9000). I need an alarm application where I can set a lot of different alarm, I must be able to "snooze" and I want the alarm to be sorted by time. I've bought SwooshAlarm which is very good, but has too many features that I don't use.

An alarm application would be a nice little project to learn how to program on JavaME.

Conclusion

The coffee pod ordering system seems to me to be the most interesting to do. So, even if things aren't settled  at work yet and I still don't know for sure if we will use the coffee pod machine, this is the project I will start to do.

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