I'm going to have a lot more free time soon due to side projects finishing up.

I've been having an itch to get back into some hobbyist software development for a change of pace, and to use it to further my new hobbies of pharmacology/biochem so I can have large head start for whenever I am able to go back to school.

So with that in mind, what reference/analytical/calculation based software would be useful to students/professionals in these academic fields? I am also not composed of creating some type of "suite" with a plethora of tools/functionalities to make the user's software experience consolidated.

If you could find something useful, and want to increase chances of me taking it up, please answer the following:

1. If current software exists that performs the same functionality, please link me to the company's website or a trial version, and describe how it could be done better.

2. Would you be able to give me and assist with the specifications, or would they be easy to understand/discover on my own? Example: A calculator to compute some equation, I would need to know the formula, and preferably have someone knowledgeable in it confirm my implementation's accuracy.

3. Would it require access to any copyrighted or commerical data sets? If it does, would you be able to assist me in gaining legal and authorized access to such data for the purpose of development? Example: Merck Index

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If I end up taking on something from here, and someone helps me in any way, I can guarantee the following:

1. End product will be free for personal, non-profit, non-commercial use. Anyone other than inviduals and charitable organizations, I'd like to pay to help supplement my income for future projects like this, including academic institutions since they should be fully capable of justifying and paying the expense. Students however, would be considered personal use as long as it's used at home (homework for example).

2. Final product would be high quality, and portable. I want to make a project like this my first forray into cross-platform Java development. Coming from C# .NET framework development, shouldn't be too difficult, but will be interesting for sure.

3. Nexus users would be allowed (if you consider such an ability a privilege) or asked (if you consider it a chore hah) to test, and hence, would get sneak peaks and input on final design.

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Note... I am horrible at UI design. I can't make graphics, and any UI I create will probably violate many rules of UI design. So... a graphics/UI designer capable of assisting me with layouts/graphics for such an application... would be highly beneficial.

Also, I am very much willing to setup an SVN and let people contribute to the project who are capable of doing so. However otherwise it would be closed source.

To all:

This is interesting. Let's not jump so quick to negative replies and give the OP a chance to explore the idea. I see much negativity lately and we all need to turn this into something positive and productive. Otherwise, we're just hindering ideas.

-a1pha

Thanks,

Not even looking for anything specifically complicated by the way. If anyone has an idea, even if it's something they personally would find useful, and it's related to the subject matters, I might take it on. If it's small enough, might even be pretty quick.

I just don't know the needs of professionals/academics in the field to make something useful or better than what's currently available, or have any ideas of something that'd be useful to me, that isn't simply a "reference/lookup" type application based on what I've learned so far.