Oddly enough I have not been doing too much programming for the past few weeks. I think sometimes you get burnt out and lose those coding until 3 in the morning urges. I feel it coming back though and figured I would drop some updates on my latest projects.
The first is more of a set of research topics instead of one single project. The plan is to form a talk to either use at Shmoocon or next years Defcon/Blackhat (or both if I am lucky). I will not point out too much detail now, but it will be in the spaces of C&C architectures, design and communications.
The second project that has been taking up most of my time is a new Drupal module. For the past 6 months it has been my goal to get a project hosted over at Drupal. My user directory module was not accepted (though it does seem to have helped some users out) and I don't really intend on trying to get the Facebook Fan module hosted up there. I have a few other modules that I built specifically for customers, but they too arn't worth changing to be hosted. The module I plan on submitting in the next few days is a Statistical Analysis module for Drupal.
The ideal use case for the module is on a Drupal site utilizing the different social-esk modules (activity, fivestar voting, blogs, comments, terms, etc) that Drupal has to offer. The module currently works with many of the modules listed above as well as a few others. It is capable of identifying top contributors, posting and voting statistics for an entire site or just an individual user, current week changes and trending over time, and support for charts to clearly show the data.
If the purpose of the module is not clear, then I will further explain. Web administrators hosting a Drupal site have access to so much information from their user base, but most do nothing more than look at how many hits they got and where from. While this information is nice, it would be even better to know when to make a post, at what time of day and with what terms, so that it is sure to reach your intended audience. From this information you can glean what content is most popular on your site, who assists the most and when most people interact with your site. Having this information can allow you to tailor your postings, your updates and your interactions on a site.
The next step going forward with this module is to implement algorithms to recommend articles, comment threads, terms, etc. based on how a user interacts with the site. We already find these things on Amazon, Netflix and many other sites, but what about just a normal blog that you occasionally read? After logging in maybe you see that based on your posting habits and voting that you would find article X to be interesting. Oh and after you read that, maybe go talk to user Y because he too has similar interests. Clearly this is not a new concept, but I don't see it in the Drupal world.
As usual, I will be posting my module through this site, but hopefully Drupal will accept it and host it. If that is the case then all updates, documentation, etc. will be moved to that site. Expect to see the module released sometime in the next few days. Thoughts, comments and testers are always welcome!