MS Software Engineering Project Ideas

Some of the grad students approached me during last couple of weeks about MS thesis or project ideas. Ideas keep coming 24x7, so I will list here, feel free to discuss or comment. 

Software Engineering Projects:

Mobile/web trends category:

• Price match alert app - A consumer web/mobile app that does low price match for a given item# and sends alert to subscribed email/SMS. Sounds simple? Well, the system has to match the item to the correctly classified category and run a web crawler against the web and other promotion data. Typically a retail store offers 30 days low price match or beat guarantee to the consumer on big ticket items such as appliances, large screen TVs or furniture. 
• Loan/Rent/Swap stuffs with your Facebook/Linkedin connections - Say, you have a lawn mower that you have no use now as you moved from single family house to a condo. The app will allow user to broadcast the offer to their connections and transaction will happen between trusted people. 
• Accommodation share with Linkedin connections - Business travelers can peer rent their house/apt to the fellow linkediners using this app. 

Business/Social problem area:

• Data visualization for solving foreclosure crisis - You need to understand the problem before you can jump on this. Why some pockets of bay area have no foreclosure? Is id demography? job market? good schools? or something else. Data visualization will help answer some of these questions and that will lead to some sort of solutions. 
• Data Visualization for solving unemployment / skills upgrade problems - same as above. In addition, algorithm to match existing job openings not to people's current qualifications but their potential. 

I will add more later. Good day !