Here are some sketches of previous projects in COS 333; they might be useful in giving you an idea of the range of ideas that have been explored and some people to talk to. My notes are too fragmentary to give a lot of detail, especially for earlier years, and many of the protagonists have safely escaped, but I will be glad to try to recall more if something seems worth pursuing further. It's a great collection of interesting and fun projects.
Princeton Entertainment Hub, William Mansky, Hart Montgomery, Dan Pall, Jon Ullman. Database of interesting events and a way to sign up for ones of interest.
Plan-o-matic Long-term Scheduler, Eirik Bakke, Arthi Ramachandran, Alison Reynolds, David Weiss. Multi-year planning of course of study, with information on prereqs, schedules, etc.
Princeton Events Database, Ed Davisson, Julia Manasson, Daniel Barrett. Managing the records of previous campus arts activities.
Portable Desktop, Zach DeVito, Stuart Lange, Jim Dickinson. Drag and drop gadgets and widgets to a web page for access from anywhere.
PrincetonBillboard.com, Kamil Choudhury, Alex Combs, Chris Wynnyk. What's playing online and how your preferences compare.
Princeton Maps Project, Ben Amster, Wale Oladehin, Lee Tien. Interactive information about campus buildings and people.
Princeton Ride-sharing, Tom Brennan, Michael Onorato, Parker Seidel. Google maps interface for sharing trips to and from PU.
Puddle.net, Dan Benediktson, Caleb Howe, Mike Lee. Shortest paths from here to there on campus while avoiding short term obstacles and construction sites.
"XDB", Arel Lidow, Emily Moxley, Sasha Ovestky, Chris Richbourg. An application that can access a dynamically changing database from Excel and publish it to the web.
"ELTRIC", Eric Knauft, Elika Etemad, Troy Savage. A content management system permitting multiple people to maintain a website, documentation, etc.
"Princeton Shopping Network", Kim Tzeng, Alvin Wang, Josh Probst, Josh Quinones. A shopping portal for the Princeton community.
"Integrated Course Engine", John Pym, Shirley Wuu, Sergio Garza, Paulo Quiros. SCORE, the student course guide, and the registrar in a single site.
"Room Draw Guide", Lester Mackey, Kay Ashaolu, Blake Dixon, Avi Flamholz. A web interface to all information on campus dorm rooms. Now gone public at rooms.princeton.edu.
"AIMailBox", Matt Plough, Cameron Brien, Jeff Pinner, Sratha Saengsuwarn, Patrick Ledbetter. Monitoring and forwarding of IM traffic when you're not online.
"MIMA Musician's Network", Michael Wenzel, Nate Starrett, Monte McNair, Greg Fields. Web interface for local improvisational musicians.
"What's My Image?", Robert Moore, Kevin Shi, Frank Macreery, Sameer Shariff. How others see you, based on your picture.
"WeShare", David Silver, Brett Antonides, Brian Tsang, Steven Saar, Amit Chatwani. Web service for sharing DVDs and VHS tapes.
"ADMADM", Brendan Miller, Geoff Patterson, Mark Daly. Management and searching of array data for genomics experiments.
"Pguide", Archer Batcheller, Marina Elson, Emily Huang, Josh Lee. Guide to upcoming events on campus, and personal notification system.
"Etude", Erik Lillethun, Frank Battaglia, Joseph Bradley, Joe Fruchter. A system for searching for and identifying music by Parson's codes.
"ULink", Michael Li, Reona Kumagai, Ben DeLoache, Cindy Lee. A local and independently invented version of Friendster and/or theFacebook.
"Poker", Ross Bogenschneider, Kent Cheng, Kenrick Kin. An online poker game system: chat for poker.
"Princeton Portal", Jamie Niemasik, Dave Kaplan, Darsh Ranjan. A portal system for undergrads; this is now available as point.princeton.edu.
"PowerPLANT", Rob Hazan, Jon Drummond, Michael Ten-Pow, Brad Zankel. System for creating Java applications as plugins.
"FAdMan", Rob Simmons, Peter Landwehr, Spencer Salazar. Management of advertising for the Prince.
"Ranganatron", Seamus Abshere, Michael Coenen, George Costow. Multi-faceted system for managing photographs, and other data bases.
"Robowars", Greg Prisament, Ben Elias, Jon Epstein, Sebastian Borza. System/framework for building robot games.
"INA Visualizer", Will Butler, Joel Diamond, Conall O'Callaghan. Visualization of international trade flow data.
"PIMP", Mike Weishuhn, Muoyo Okome, Drew Weyerhauser, Marty Taylor. DVD and VHS rental and commentary system.
"My Princeton", Amin, Atahuene. Web service to provide easy and adaptable interface to activities and information at Princeton -- news sources, campus events, etc.
"BookSearch", Liu, Orrechia, Oh. Finding best prices on books, by scraping Amazon et al and from some used-book outlets.
"Recipe Buddy", Bavor, Jennings, Levinson. Mac-based system for managing recipes, including local and Internet.
"Binary Independence", Gill, Labatt, Parker. A system for uploading photographs for potential sale; thumbnails, searching, and a watermarking scheme to protect larger images.
"Survey Creator", Hebden, Foulagdar-Mercer, Simbi. Web-based survey creation program: enter questions, formats, etc., and it generates a survey to be taken on the web.
"Gift-o-Matic", Nathan, Arellano, Slass. System for creating wish-lists on the web for others to commit to making gifts, loosely like bridal registry services.
"Option Manager", Belli, Wang, Durrleman. Option pricing, based on online historical data from the web.
"Y'All Messenger", Azad, Weiss, Dolgov. A cross between chat and instant email, for keeping track of who plans to do what in the amazingly active undergrad social life.
"Campus Newspaper Delivery Agency", Schreer, Stroustrup, Wible, Yehuda. Web-based system for managing the student-run campus newspaper delivery service: subscriptions, billing, delivery schedules and personnel, etc.
"PUGWeb", Georges, Teising, Beyer, Carnevale. Interface for pluggable games, primarily two-person strategy like Kalah.
"Meal Checker", Parparita, Seng, Subramanian. Web-based system for reconciling guest meal charges at the clubs, replacing an unbelievably Byzantine manual system.
"Ebay Estimated", Wei, Tonkyn, Melahn, Prevost. Estimating ranges of prices for categories by scraping Ebay historical listings.
"Map Maker", Peterson, Reyzin, Brooks, Friedman. Interactive creation and manipulation of structured graphical data.
"AudioCAT", Melo, Ventimiglia. Web-based search interface to the library's music catalog.
Estimating prices of derivatives for weather-based securities
"Smarter Tiger", a Princeton-based takeoff on "smarter child": a chat system for finding info about Princeton events, weather, etc., etc.
Purchase order system for managing flow of information through the University's labrynth of purchasing systems.
Two (count 'em) web-based calendar systems.
Creating instructional material like tests, complete with randomized questions, and keeping records; intended for school teachers.
Online course scheduler.
Interface to mantle convection programs from GEO.
XML editor, for creating and managing XML documents and schema.
Mail list archiver
Web-based note-takes and manager
GDB interface
Campus video web service
Web-based personal finance managment
Web-based flashcard system
...
The project was to build an integrated development environment for the language of one's choice. A big class, with 24 groups, and everything from C and C++ to robot software and Palm Pilots.