Google has just announced the project's for this year's summer of code:
http://code.google.com/soc/inkscape/about.html
Text Improvements by Gail Banaszkiewicz, mentored by Richard Hughes
Native PDF import capability based on libpoppler by Miklos Erdelyi, mentored by Jon Cruz
Live path effects in Inkscape by Johan Engelen, mentored by Aaron Spike
3D box tool for Inkscape by Maximilian Albert, mentored by bulia byak
UI for SVG Filter Effects by Nicholas Bishop, mentored by MenTaLguY
Raster Functionality in Inkscape by Christopher Brown, mentored by Theodore J. Gould
Importing from, and Exporting to, a remote ccHost instance by Bruno Lu Gon-alves Dilly, mentored by Bryce Harrington
Since the full text of the applications don't seem to be made public by google, could each of you post your proposal either to Inkscape's wiki or your own website, add a link to it from the Inkscape Summer of code wiki page, and report it here? I'm sure everyone is curious. :-)
Thank you to all the students who applied, and congratulations to those whose applications were selected. We will all look forward to working with you over the summer!
Bryce