D esign an application that takes a string as input.
 For varying point totals, your output could return:
                                                                                
 1) [1] the number of chars in the string
  1a) [3] the number of alphanumeric chars in the string
  1b) [6] the breakdown of alphabetical vs. numeric vs. non-alphanumeric
                                                                                
 2) [6] the number of each type of alphanumeric chars in the string
  2a) [8] sorted alphabetically
  2b) [8] sorted by frequency
  2c) [10] sorted either way depending upon user input
                                                                                
 4) [advanced: 20 ] a lossless compressed output 
 5) [uber-geek: 40 ] a lossy compressed file. lossy compression must result
 in an output message that retains the gist of the input message. simply 
 removing the first word is insufficient.
                                                                                 
 Input can be supplied by:
                                                                                
 1) [0 pts] hard coded 
 2) [5 pts] command prompt
 3) [10 pts] read from a file
                                                                                
                                                                                


I think that people should receive bonus points for:
                                                                                
 - especially pretty code
 - decent documentation (so I can figer out how it works easier)
 - using more than one language during the whole event
 - especially good algorithms [maybe]
                                                                                
      - Dave