GSoC Information Seminar

The Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a program that is designed to bring in new people to contribute to the Free and open Source community. It's about introducing more people to the amazing world of free and open Software. It's about introducing to new people, the idea that there are still people in the world who create software, help other and do things just because they enjoy it. Open source is so ubiquitous nowadays that its inevitable you are benefiting from it every day even if you don’t know it just by using applications on the desktop, web, or mobile.

Google Students Club, IIT Kharagpur decided to spread the word and welcome more students to the Open Source Community by introducing them to GSoC. An interactive event involving several experienced seniors was announced, and a large number of open source enthusiasts turned up. The students were given an introduction to open source, and GSoC and explained about Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). A thorough guidance on the application procedure was given, were advised to select an organisation whose work they found interesting. Further, the students were encouraged to not get intimidated by the daunting task of approaching the organisation and give them their proposals. As the students regained their composure, they were walked through the different stuff to learn on their path to become an open source developer. And in the end, the seniors answered the many doubts and questions the students had in mind and helped them chill out a little.

At the end of the day, the students walked out of the hall, looking forward to contributing to the community and being part of the GSoC program. A light at the end of the tunnel was clearly visible now. 

THE DAY KGP LIVED THE DROID LIFE

               Android and Google have taken over the world as the leading mobile OS as Google continuously refines Android to a flatter, cleaner look with brighter, fuller colours and improving the greatest open source OS to a whole new level. Android was always a fun thing to use, to learn and to create. And so, Google Students Club at IIT Kharagpur decided to do just that, with a fun and interactive learning session on android app development.

          GSC organised a highly successful event on the 8^th of November, with George Machibya being the guest speaker. Machibya is an android developer who is a part of the Google Developers Group in Mwanza , Tanzania with multiple apps of his own up on the play store. The inquisitive students turned out in big numbers for the event and were ready, with everything set up in no time. The event started with an hour long live hangout with George Machibaya, laying the groundwork by covering the basics and essentials of app development. And soon after, Dhruv took over to brush up java concepts and did a brief comparision with structural languages like C and then an involved doubt session with experienced seniors, Avijit and Gaurav (Google Students Ambassador at IIT Kharagpur) followed. As soon as the students were fresh and out of all the minor doubts, a lecture on XML followed, flying through the Android Studio layout editor and shown the changes through XML in real time. Further XML concepts were then introduced, and the method to use XML to change layouts, and also about the various components like buttons, image view, etc thoroughly explained and then followed up by covering all the major design aspects. A quick doubt session ensued, and then the participants were further taken to the most engaging part of the event. The participants were encouraged to make a simple app with their own ideas! Several innovative ideas were seen and the participants were helped by the team members in the process, so they never have a setback. To wrap up the eventful day, a short presentation on efficient design principles was given, and a few examples of beautiful apps on the play store were displayed to capture the interest of the students and a brief introduction was given on material design, the biggest visible change in Android 5.0, a new design language with flatter icons, simpler shapes, and bolder bars of colour.

    And as they say, “A hard beginning maketh a good ending”. The students left the event with a whole lot learnt and a lot more to discover on the path to learning android. Peace.

Wall de Art - 2014

To add to the plethora of events conducted on campus, the Google Students Club, IIT Kharagpur in association with Spectra, presented Wall de Art, 2014, an art competition within the campus of IIT Kharagpur. 

     To suit the festive mood of the campus during the duration of the Hall Days, Wall de Art was an event aimed primarily at finding and promoting the hidden artistic talents of students here, which might have been benign due to their hectic academics. As the name suggests, it is a competition of the best artistic pieces one could make on the walls of his/her hostel rooms. This event provided a huge exposure for such talents and was quite successful in popularizing through social media like Facebook. The winners were chosen by the criterion of most popularity votes through the same. The entries could be viewed by clicking on this link. The winners were:

1st Prize : Saraj Manes
2nd Prize : R Hrishikesh and Abdul Nafey
3rd Prize : Prateek Jain
  
 Congratulations to all of them and to everyone who participated. We hope we can continue this for highlighting more talent!

Event @ BitWise - Showcasing Impact

The Google Students Club, IIT Kharagpur collaborated with the Computer Science Engineering Department, IIT Kharagpur to present an event at BitWise, the CSE Department Fest on 7th - 9th March. It was a 2 day event aimed at promoting the use of Google products and popularization of Google ideas within the campus and we're proud to announce it was a success. Here's a short synopsis of what transpired!

Over the 2 day event, we held several fun events like Doodle Quiz, Doodle Designing, Trivia, Rubik's Cube and Sudoku Solving. All of these events were held in parallel and the Club bore witness to over a hundred enthusiastic participants who took part in these events. The winners in the respective events were honored by being presented with several Google goodies and prizes.The main objectives of these events were:-

• To popularize the products of Google amongst the intelligentsia.
• To organize and attract the tech-oriented students in the campus.

A few glimpses of the event are below!

Event in Progress

Busy with Sudokus !

  

 

The team.

 

Google Apps Supporting Programs (GASP)

Apart from the consumer use of Google Apps, Google also provides services for education and support programs. Google proposes to provide a platform for universities to come online. The need of the hour is to provide exposure and access of useful and engaging Google Apps to the education sector, which will be able to harvest the maximum benefit of the services and applications.

The main motives of this program are:

• To get connected
• To get free Google Apps Deployment support
• To get free technical consulting and training
• Assistance with integration of Google Apps into core processes

Thus, it is imperative to build up a GASP interface between the students, Institute and Google for efficient dissemination of information and technical knowledge in today's fast paced world.

Online Safety and Security

One of the most common things we tread in our day to day life is the internet. We use it almost universally for a variety of applications. Not undermining the usefulness of the Internet, it is wrong to undermine the power which few people also misuse to their advantage. In this article, we will help you by explaining how to stay safe from such mishaps.

Most commonly, problems occur if you work on shared devices with friends, or log onto public computers with personal credentials. 

• The key thing to remember is to have a strong password, and solid backup options with the 2-step verification. This is a must especially if you have access to Internet/Mail through multiple sources.
• Set your recovery options, in the 'Security' tab in your Mail service. This will help you monitor and filter the browsers, places, etc.
• Take control of settings, via www.google.com/dashboard.
• A more comprehensive and detailed description is provided @ www.google.com/goodtoknow

Be secure and careful. Remember to log out of your accounts on public workplaces !

Google Cloud Developer Challenge 2013

It is time to roll out appreciation for the deserving. It is proud to name people who win laurels for the institute. As part of the Google Cloud Developer Challenge in 2013, a team from IIT Kharagpur reached the finals, based on the conceptualization of an App named janDarbaar. Hearty Congratulations to the team members, namely Mr. Arpit Tarang, Mr. Nadeem Shaik and Mr. Soumyadeep Mukherjee.


The App can be reached here at this link. It is conceptually based on the fact of 'change' and the properties of transformation that can revolutionize the world. As part of this, the team members won a Google Nexus 2nd Generation each and $1000 team prize money. It is of utmost pride and honor, thereby adding to the quality of the work expected, services delivered and changes that we as a Google Students Club want to see. Looking forward for more !