Apple iChat uses a protocol formerly called Rendezvous (renamed Bonjour due to trademark disputes) to provide a buddy list and messaging among people on the same local network. Gaim developer Mark Doliner has started a Rendezvous plugin, but it is far from release-ready. Your task this summer will be to complete this protocol support.

Rendezvous uses multicast DNS for presence support and the technologies used are all open and documented. Access to a Macintosh running iChat would certainly be useful, though.

On UNIX systems, Gaim includes a separate utility called gaim-remote. This utility is used to execute commands on an existing Gaim session. gaim-remote uses a protocol we made up called CUI which was initially designed to allow entire user interfaces communicate with a headless Gaim "core" process. This idea has not been developed at all, but the limitations of that protocol's design prevent gaim-remote from doing things people actually want to do with it. Further, other applications would love to communicate with a Gaim process for desktop integration reasons. Requiring each of these to implement the CUI protocol is unnecessarily cruel to them.

D-Bus is an emerging system for inter-process communication. It provides mechanisms for applications to locate and send messages to each other. Although still in active development, it seems likely that D-Bus will soon be an essiential element of the UNIX desktop.

Your job for the summer will be to rewrite the gaim-remote functionality using D-Bus. As D-Bus becomes the standard for communicating messages between applications, all these applications will have the ability to communicate with Gaim. In addition to duplicating the functionality already present in gaim-remote you will be adding tons more features that can be used to remotely manage a Gaim session (changing status, reading the buddy list, sending messages, etc.).

Gaim has supported perl scripting since September, 2000. Unfortunately, the current embedded perl interpreter is in poor shape due to a rapidly changing API and nobody working on Perl. At present, it is generally not possible to do anything useful in a perl script

Your task this summer will be to bring the perl plugin up-to-date with the current API. This work is mostly done in XS, a system designed for wrapping C functions in perl. Essentially, every function in the Gaim plugin API will need to be wrapped in perl. It will probably also help if you develop some way of testing that each function works as it should.

Mono is a free software implementation of Microsoft's .NET platform. .NET programs compile to byte code and are then "Just-In-Time" compiled at runtime (this is similar to Java). We would like to see Gaim plugins written using .NET. Because of the byte-code nature of .NET, these plugins could be written in a large number of languages, including C#, and compiled to work on any Gaim, regardless of platform, making plugin distribution much easier.

Your task for the summer is to embed the Mono runtime into Gaim and provide a .NET wrapper to Gaim's API. There exists a lot of good documentation for doing this.

Tons of people have difficulty transferring files or otherwise directly connecting with Gaim because they're behind a NAT device. NAT devices allow more than one host to share a single IP address and are very useful for users with multiple computers but a single Internet connection. These devices are usually sold as "broadband routers." Unfortunately, because multiple hosts share a single IP address, neither can be addressed specifically without additional (confusing) configuration.

UPnP is a protocol from Microsoft that, among other things, provides NAT traversal: a way to allow each host behind the NAT device to receive incoming connections. Implementing this in Gaim would fix most file transfer problems for people with UPnP-enabled NAT devices (most currently sold are). Your task this summer is to implement just enough of UPnP in Gaim to allow for NAT-transparency.

Gadu-Gadu is a Polish instant messaging protocol that Gaim has supported since December, 2001. However, since its original maintainer lost interest, its support in Gaim has lacked the love needed to ensure it works, much less up-to-date with the features of the official Gadu-Gadu client.

Your task this summer will be to bring Gadu-Gadu up-to-date with the functionality of the current official Gadu-Gadu application. Speaking Polish is definitely a plus (actually being Polish and a Gadu-Gadu user even more so). There exist working free software implementations of Gadu-Gadu already, so reverse engineering may not be necessary

SIP is another popular protocol used for VoIP, and it also has an IM analog in the form of SIP/SIMPLE. Your task this summer will be to write a plugin that supports SIP/SIMPLE. SIP/SIMPLE is an open protocol with a documented specification.

The ICQ protocol supports file transfer, but Gaim doesn't implement it. Your task this summer is to fully implement ICQ file transfer in Gaim's OSCAR plugin. This may involve reverse engineering the protocol, but there do exist free software implementations you can use as a reference.

This is solved by a system known as "certificates." An SSL certificate authenticates that the server is who it claims to be. If the user trusts the certificate, she'll know her communications are safe.

Your task this summer is to write a certificate manager for Gaim. This manager would display SSL certificates to the user and keep track of those the user has trusted. This way, the first time the user connects to a server, she'll be required to confirm the certificate is valid; subsequent connections to the same server with the same certificate will not prompt her again.

This same interface can be used elsewhere in Gaim not directly related to SSL. For instance, several third-party plugins exist to encrypt Gaim messages. These would benefit from a generic certificate manager.

Musicians are known to be social, but this rarely presents itself outside of the typical garage jam sessions, all night caleighs at the camp, or swingin blues sets at a smoky bar (you get the idea). With the new age, plenty of software has been made available for musicians, but it is all for independent work, or for those music gatherings.

What I propose is a music meet of the new age. Real-time has been explored (biggest draw back being latency times - but still dealt with formidably), but what about the casual input? When we chat on Gaim it is a social event. So far no developer has tapped into making that social arena appeal to the musician looking to socialize as a musician.

What I envision is software to connect musicians in a suite of different activities they could partake in. From composing music to playing music for others, etc. For the scope of SOC (Summer of Code), I propose a feature added to Gaim that will allow 2 (or more) people to actively edit a score of music in real-time. After which they can export it to MIDI and do as they please with the composition.

The ability to send music, ideas, riffs, and solos is something that a musician always dreams of, and with the technology available today, it's pretty surprising to see the lack of methods available. This is what Music Messaging would aim to overcome.

Though groups can help the user sort his buddylist, a buddylist can easily grow to an unmanageable size, without the user wanting to actually delete "buddies". This project proposes a method to identify and group the "buddies" the user actually seems to have an interest in communicating with.

The idea is to use statistics on the users communication patterns to identify relations between the user and "buddies": 1-to-1 IM sessions can relate the user with one single buddy, while Multi-participant IM sessions, in addition can relate buddies with regard to the user. This way groups of "buddies" can automatically be identified.

Graphically the groups can be managed by the user. The user is placed in the center of a circle made up of his "buddies". "Buddies" with whom the user communicates a lot, should be positioned closer to the center, while less important "buddies" get pushed to the perifery. If relations has been established between buddies, these buddies can form a cycle of their own, with a center on the circle perifery.

This project's idea tends to relief people from the tedious task of writing SMS's on mobile phones. Instead, the user of this application would be provided with an interface on the computer that allows him/her to write the message on the computer using the keyboard. The message will then be routed from the PC to the mobile phone using Bluetooth link. The mobile phone will send the SMS automatically to the desired number.

I plan to update and extend a plugin called Crazy Chat that I made for Gaim for my senior software project at Stanford University. During a Crazy Chat session, the program uses the input from the local user’s webcam, and does image processing to detect key facial features such as the eyes and the corners of the mouth. It uses these features to determine parameters that describe the user’s expression, such as head tilt, head distance, mouth shape, and blinking. These parameters are then sent across the network, and are used to render a 3D “cartoony” version of the person’s face on the remote user’s computer (in the current version of Crazy Chat, there is a dog and a shark face).

Crazy Chat has several appealing benefits beyond the inherent fun of being turned into a three dimensional Labrador. The first is that it is extremely low bandwidth. For each frame, we only need to send about one hundred bytes, rather than many kilobytes for streaming video. This could potentially allow for large multi-conference Crazy Chats, in which each user represents a different creature in an online RPG troop. Another advantage of Crazy Chat over ordinary video conferencing is that it allows the user a higher degree of privacy. Rolled eyes, bed hair and messy rooms are all suppressed behind the exaggerated smiles of an urban hyena or razor sharp winks of a lady killer whale. And of course the inherent fun alluded to earlier should not be casually dismissed. Gaim is first and foremost and entertainment application.

I propose to make a Gaim plugin that allows users to interact with others using the Yahoo Instant Messenger IMVironment service 'Doodle.'

'Doodle' provides the ability for users to draw and sketch together in real-time. Some subject matter is difficult for many to verbalize; therefore, 'Doodle' is an extremely valuable tool for communication.

Gaim provides users with a unified and unique set of features. There are only a few which it lacks--a handful of such features one sacrifices while using and supporting Gaim.

The addition of a 'Doodle'-like application for Gaim would widen Gaim's popularity and the open-source platforms it supports as well.

A plug-in for gaim that would allow developers to join a chat room where they can collaboratively edit files specially tailored for coding. It would have color syntaxing for various languages, locking portions of code and it would be highlighted with a color that will be assigned to each user who joins the chatroom, synchronizing of code and much more.

RVP is the protocol used by Microsoft Exchange messaging. It is used mostly in corporate environments. Your task this summer is to write support for the RVP protocol used by Exchange. The protocol is open and well documented, but to test it, you will need to provide your own access to an Exchange server; no public servers exist.

The popular Voice Over IP (VoIP) program Skype also supports plain-text instant messaging. Your task for the summer will be to write a plugin that implements this portion of the Skype protocol; you will not need to implement the VoIP protocol. This will probably require reverse engineering the protocol.

Your task this summer is to implement at least one other MSN file transfer protocol: one that directly connects the two clients. You will also need to provide a mechanism that will easily fallback on the slow through-the-server method in case your new method fails. This may involve reverse engineering, but there are other free software implementations you may use as a reference.

Your task this summer is to perform a full review of the Gaim user interface, propose a list of improvements to the gaim-devel mailing list, and then carry out the desired changes by making the appropriate modifications. Our goal is to make the computer do the work instead of the user.

Knowledge of human computer interaction is a plus. Some useful references are the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines, the Apple Human Interface Guidelines, Havoc's essay on Free Software UI, the book The Inmates are Running the Asylum, and any other book on software usability.