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Topic for master thesis

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 11:53 am
by tores
Hi,

This might not be the right place to ask this... But what the heck... Maybe there is someone out there with a better imagination than me.
This spring I'm supposed to do a master thesis in comuter science (It's a full semester). The problem is that I don't have any topic...
My supervisor wants me to come up with my own topic, which later may be refined into a well-defined thesis.

The only thing I know is that I want to do a web-based assignment, preferably using PHP or Python, possibly in combination with
MySQL. A good thesis should venture into some high-tech, new area of computing. As you might now, there never is anything "new"
in computer science. Most "new" stuff are just remakes of things that have been done in the past.

So if you have any ideas / suggestions / comments about topics that you think could be interesting to investigate,
or where to find them, feel free to post... Any feedback is appreciated.

regards tores

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 12:02 pm
by feyd
All I can really say is avoid anything that's commercially viable, unless you really love the school and want them to reap the rewards of the project (commercially). As it is with most schools, they very well may own complete rights to your thesis and any ideas or software it creates. So be careful with what you choose.

Web 2.0/Social Networking is a hot topic right now. Ajax and Web Applications are also quite hot topics.

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 12:59 pm
by Moocat
I agree with feyd's statement about the school owning anything you create, but also remember something you like is sometimes easier to write on than something you don't really care about. You could try something along the Web 2.0 lines or possible specialize in an area like AJAX or maybe the conversion of web projects from a static medium to a customized dynamic source of information and postulate on what the next evolution (Web 3.0?) will be.

If it were me, I'd figure out how to write about BBGs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser-based_game

apparently links are not working (url)

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 5:13 pm
by pickle
How about mouse tracking? Write some JS that tracks the path of a user's mouse in the course of their page viewing. See if different layouts affect excess mouse movement and try to come up with the ideal layout based on that.

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 6:07 pm
by Deemo
pickle wrote:How about mouse tracking? Write some JS that tracks the path of a user's mouse in the course of their page viewing. See if different layouts affect excess mouse movement and try to come up with the ideal layout based on that.
now that would be cool. a nice little research thesis is always good, and you dont have to worry about the school stealing your patentable idea because its just research :P

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 9:46 pm
by josh
Yeah, like sample the (X, Y) every .5 seconds and compile a time-lapse video with a thousand mouse cursors flying all around at the same time, you'd have to convince a high profile site like /. to run your code for a day or something :lol:

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 10:05 pm
by neophyte
On /. at day's end I think you'd end up with a screen full of pointers!

:lol:

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 10:18 pm
by John Cartwright
I never really understood the whole pointer tracking.. I move the cursor to where the links are.. :lol:

A more intriguing experiment I saw a while back was a site doing a study on where their visitors are physically looking on the webpage. Great experiment for ad placement. :wink:

Posted: Tue Jan 24, 2006 11:26 pm
by Gambler
Neural network principles applied to something similar to Wikipedia?

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 1:25 am
by Charles256
actually the mouse pointer position makes sense to me..then again i tend to highlight things as i read them...and highlight frequently... dunno..i think it entertains my body while my brain gets entertained