30 Open Source Applications in 30 Days Completed
‘TheSoftWareJedi‘ vowed to complete one open source application once per day for a month on September 13th. Today his goal is complete. Most of the applications were created in Microsoft’s C# and require .NET framework. Here’s a list of some of the better projects.
Screen Broadcaster
Day 1 started off with a screen broadcaster. It allowed people from all over the world to see him coding in real time. Nice example of how to make client/server apps.
Google Wallpaper
This neat app sits in your system tray and gives you a new desktop background at a given time. The catch is the backgrounds come from Google image search, and are chosen via keywords that you give the program.
Jedi Console
We all know Microsoft’s CMD is seriously lacking features, so he decided to make his own. It has transparency as an option. It allows you to copy and paste without hitting “mark” as well. There were also some color changes to make it look nicer.
Jedi Visual Studio IRC Add-in
This is a plugin for Visual Studio. It allows a small IRC window to be docked, and pinned to Visual Studio. This is a must have for IRC junkies, and programmers alike.
Jedi Concentrate
Some eye candy for you. It’s like Apple’s Exposé. It darkens all non focused windows making it eaiser to concentrate.
Command Line C#
This simple command line application that allows you to execute C# code as if it were a script. It takes n arguments, where the first argument is the name of the file to execute, and the remaining arguments are passed on to the script.
Jedi Window Dock
You can dock any window inside his application. Great for sorting IM windows, or multiple explorer windows.
Google Any Text
This app allows you to highlight text and with the click of a button open your browser to the Google search of that text.
Why did he do it?
When asked this question, he answered simply “I want to inspire people”. To be fair that’s worked quite a bit. In his IRC server he has 60 or so idlers who are constantly inquiring about C# and programming in general.
However despite the anappaday project being completed Dana has stated he’s not done making the apps. Since it was so successful he’s going to continue the open source movement, on a weekly basis. He wants to start focusing on higher quality apps over a longer period of time next. Improving the apps he released on the 30 day trek is also something he’d like to do.
Throughout the month Dana has had tons of support. He’s had rooms full of people including co-workers thinking of ideas for him to code, and inspired dozens of people to undertake open source development. For a list of all things he’s made see the anappaday downloads page.
