Like last year, I’m mentoring Ronald Heft, Jr’s. He is working on TypePad AtomPub-based Content Importer. Ronald has been good about keeping me updated, asking good questions, proposing solutions, prioritizing issues, and sharing his results with the community.

Today seemed like a good day to take a look at the code and take it for a spin. I identified some issues and Ronald immediately responded with a plan to investigate and address them.

It isn’t quite ready for you to test importing from TypePad, but things are looking good. It’s getting close.

It’s going to be an amazing time, thanks to Google, and all the mentors that have already committed. It’s not to late, if you are still interested in participating as a mentor.

Students, now is when to start researching and documenting your ideas. Please see the WordPress Summer of Code 2008 page in the codex and our application template. Please join us on our mailing lists to discuss your idea. You will be able to submit your applications from March 24 through 31.

Update: Leslie Hawthorn has posted Meet Your Mentors on Google’s Open Source Blog and it includes:

… After reviewing over 500 applications, we finally narrowed our selection to 175 Free and Open Source projects. …
….

Remember, some of our most successful student projects come from ideas suggested by the students themselves, so take advantage of this time to explore what areas of development most excite you. You can then find people to help you brainstorm about your initial thoughts and further refine them. We’re hoping this additional time for up-front dialogue will help our student applicants craft the most well-informed and targeted program applications possible.

Congratulations to all of our future mentors! We look forward to working with all of you this year, and to working with many of you once again.