User:Nealindia

Identity
Name: Neeraj Agarwal

Email: nee.agl@gmail.com

Project title: Improvements of Maps Extension and making it more user friendly

Contact/working info
Timezone: +0530 GMT

Typical working hours: 1300 - 0200 with some intervals

IRC or IM networks/handle(s):IRC: nealindia, IM: nee.agl at the rate of gmail

Project summary
The goal of the project which I am proposing is to create an extension or rather extend an already existing Extension:Maps by Jeroen_De_Dauw. I will primarily extract the geographical information out of the articles and place them on the Maps without any user intervention. The user can also display customized maps with the parameters of his choice. Integrating the OpenStreetMaps with the extension as well also comes within the scope of this project.

I will also be integrating the feature of KML for showing certain area of interest on the maps.

Each point would be marked by a clickable marker on the map which will display a pop-up displaying brief information about that particular place in the pop-up. This would enable direct visualization of a place to the user. For example, we can have tourist attractions marked up with thumbnails photographs of such places on the map which zooms in when clicked.

Also, I will be generating a map marking the locations of the contributors to that article. This will help in the geographical analysis of the contributors of the article and its significance.

About me
I am a third year student from BITS-Pilani BITS-Pilani India. Computer programming is what makes me crazy and am doing it for my last 10 years of my life and loving it! I have been involved and using many Open source packages like LAMP, Linux, etc and now I think it's time to return something back to this large community by being the part of itself.

I would love to be a part of MediaWiki and GSoC and spend my summers writing lots of code for the MediaWiki community and helping making the sum of all human knowledge available to everyone. Once we get done with this project, it would be making a good impact on Wikipedia's articles and making it easier for people to visualise the facts about a place, monument, building, or whatever.

I am experienced with PHP, MySQL, Javascript, Ajax, C incl. Network Programming (TCP/ UDP), Java and have good experience in working with many other APIs including Google Maps which will help me a lot in this project.

Deliverables
Would deliver an extension which I would build on top of Maps Extension developed by Jeroen_De_Dauw. No use starting from scratch and have a pile of Maps Extension doing one or the same thing. Involves working with both Google Maps and Yahoo Maps and also integrating OpenStreetMap

Required deliverables

 * An extension with automatic content analysis and extracting positions/ geographical aspects like city, town, etc and then using Geocoding services for displaying it on Maps.
 * Introduce KML in Maps so as to show a region of interest.
 * Markers pop-up to display brief information about the markup point on the map itself.
 * Showing a map reflecting the locations of the contributors for that article.

If time permits

 * Ability to show images on the markers itself to make it more intuitive
 * Integrating Bing Maps as well.
 * Integrating the Flash version of Maps to make it more visual appealing to users.

Project schedule

 * Week 1: Discussing with the mentor and other people on IRC about the structure and studying the already existing Extension:Maps by Jeroen_De_Dauw
 * Week 2-3: Learning the OpenStreetMaps, Yahoo Maps APIs and testing it. Already have prior experience with Google Maps so that would help a lot, I suppose.
 * Week 4: Preparing a layout the structure for my extended extension with new features and creating a new user panel for it.
 * Week 5-8: Content Analysis based on the article, extraction of geographical information and improving upon it
 * Week 9-11: Based on the extracted information, makes marker pop-ups along with brief information about the selected spot, adding relevant images, and adding region as per the article.
 * Week 12: Generating a map which shows the location of different users who have contributed to the article. Making it more clearer about the geographical analysis of the article.

Participation
I expect to have regular chats/ conversations with my mentor for guiding me, code reviews as well as discussing new ideas as they might come during the course of the project. I will be maintaining the code on my server for development and trial basis and committing it whenever required. I would mostly be taking help from documentation available online, my mentor and through the IRC channel.

Past open source experience
I have a lot of experience in working with many Open Source technologies like LAMP, Java, etc Have implemented prototypes of many networking protocols like SMTP, DNS, HTTP incl. CGI support, DHCP, etc I have also coded 12 modules for the Joomla/ Virtuemart community for which the link is: www.joomla-modules.com

I have experience with the Google Maps APIs in using it for one of my project at www.streetadsite.com which involves using markers, pop-ups, geocoding services. Have mostly used JS for this and LAMP. It's still under development phase.

Any other info
I love to code most of the time inspite of heave academic load. I have many courses like Artificial Intelligence, Network Programming, Object Oriented Programming, etc which have contributed to stronger logical skills. I have won several competitions at my school and my college. Have worked on many other open source projects like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, OpenSocial, Facebook API, Twitter API, MySpace APIs, etc.

I would love to be a part of MediaWiki and serve this beautiful community.