Last week, Google unveiled the 150 mentoring organizations selected for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2009, and students can begin submitting applications now.

Recently, I spoke with Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager for Google's Open Source Team, and I asked her about what's new for this year's Google Summer of Code. Leslie says that she's most excited about the Melange project, which will make it possible to host GSoC and other projects on the Google App Engine. She says that all but one member of the committer team is a former GSoC student or mentor.

In addition to Melange and many returning projects – including the Asterisk Project and the Django Software Foundation – look for some new GSoC projects, including Sugar Labs, the community organization behind the Sugar learning platform. The Honeynet Project and Xelerance Corporation also make their GSoC debuts this year.

To search through the project list by category, visit: http://delicious.com/gsoc2009/

The deadline for student applications is April 3, 2009 (12 noon PDT /19:00 UTC). For more information, visit the blog announcement.