CourseOverflow

CHPC 2011 Team

• Bryan Mishkin
• Joseph Kaczmarek
• Kiran Ryali

Technologies

• HTML5/CSS3/JS
• PHP/MySQL/JSON
• CS projects server (hosting)
• CS newsgroup server
• html4nntp (newsgroup reader)
• GitHub (revision control)

Applications

• CourseOverflow API: A web-based API that can be plugged into any newsgroup reader (desktop, web, or even mobile) to add support for user reputations and class subscriptions.
• CourseOverflow Client: A mockup of a re-designed user interface for html4nntp. Using the CourseOverflow API, it's possible to sort comments by votes and highlight comments from high-rep users.
• CourseOverflow API + html4nntp: A demonstration of the CourseOverflow API using the original html4nntp client that is used at news.cs.illinois.edu.

Competition

Our extension of the CS newsgroups is intended to compete for Best Collaboration Tool. The API we developed could be incorporated into the web-based CS newsgroup clients to not only make life easier for students by remembering what classes they are in, but also allowing students to build a reputation by making helpful comments. In addition, the re-designed UI we built feels much cleaner and provides improved usability over the (outdated) existing clients.