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Team: Pirate Captains. Assignment 1. But WHY?! There’s so many!. We are making another chat program. Why make another chat program?. Many good chat programs already exist . Have a massive user base (e.g. MSN, AIM) Work with multiple protocols (e.g. Trillian , Pidgin)
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Team: Pirate Captains Assignment 1
But WHY?! There’s so many! We are making another chat program.
Why make another chat program? • Many good chat programs already exist. • Have a massive user base (e.g. MSN, AIM) • Work with multiple protocols (e.g. Trillian, Pidgin) • Support many features • No cost to use most programs
However, they have their flaws • Some programs limit whom you can talk to (i.e. you can only chat to people within one or two networks).
More flaws... • Also, can you really trust your program? • Do you know what it really does? • Is it slowing up your computer? • You can't tell, because most are proprietary software.
Another flaw • Some programs are confusing, or they're filled with useless junk. • The user interface makes it challenging to do what you want. • It isn't fun to chat; it's stressful
Communication should be... • Fun • Easy • Useful
What is the solution? • We can do better. • We need a feature-rich, but easy-to-use, chat client that works with multiple protocols and operates efficiently. • All of this should be open-source.
Pirate Captains present to you... Parrot Instant Messenger
Parrot IM • Utilizes multiple protocols to connect to XMPP, Twitter, ICQ, and more. • Full of useful features. • Easy to learn and intuitive to use.
What's in the name? • Why Parrot IM? • You can teach a parrot to say things in any language. • Parrots are attractive.
Goals of Parrot IM • Easy to use • Running Parrot IM will connect you to as many people as possible. • Technical knowledge should not be a requirement to chat. • The user interface will be intuitive and clear. • Its features won't require a help menu to find or use.
More Goals of Parrot IM • Full of useful features • How do you let your friends know what you're doing without announcing it to the world? • Get the Chatbot to tell them for you! • Forgot where you're supposed to meet a friend? • Use the search feature for the following: “Friday meet Alice". • Find out in less than a second. • Don't waste your time scanning chat logs. • Want to update your Twitter status, but don't want to log into the site? • Do it from Parrot-IM.
More Goals of Parrot IM • Be enjoyable! • Chatting in real life is fun. • It should be on the computer, also. • Define your style. • Use fonts, colours, and emoticons to express yourself in text. • Using a chat program should be as natural as speaking. • All of the programs functions will be at your fingertips. However, they won't crowd up your space.
Target Audience • Anybody who wants to chat over the computer.
Behind the Scenes Who is making it? Is it on the right path?
Who is making it? • Pirate Captains • We are a team of ten budding software engineers who are committed to making Parrot IM the best it can be. • Our names are Rakan, William, Jihoon, Kevin, Jordan, Chenny, Vera, Ahmad, Aaron, and Wei.
Team Organization • Creating Parrot IM requires knowledge in the following areas: • Communication Protocols • Database • Graphical User Interface • Quality Assurance
Subgroups • Communication Protocols: • William • Jihoon • Wei • Database: • Ahmad • Aaron • Graphical User Interface: • Jordan • Chenny • Vera • Quality Assurance: • Rakan • Kevin
Planning • We are using an iterative development approach. • After a one month specification and design phase, we will release three versions: alpha, beta, and final.
Phased Release • Alpha (June 26, 2009) • Simple GUI, basic chat functionality. • Adding features are a low priority. • Beta (July 17, 2009) • More polished GUI, efficient database, most of the features implemented. • Final (July 31, 2009) • Polished, and well-tested program. • Elegant and clean GUI, all planned features functional.
Potential Challenges • Coordinating code submissions of the entire group is difficult. • Subversion protects us from overwriting each other's code changes. • Implementation time is hard to estimate. • Time management is vital to our success. • Staying ahead of schedule is our priority. • Testing is time consuming and tedious. • We are designing a fully-automated testing solution.
More Information and Documentation • Please visit our project page at: http://code.google.com/p/parrot-im/
Team: Pirate Captains Thank you