wallowr

RJI Student Competition 2007-2008:
JUDGE'S WINNER
VIEWER'S CHOICE WINNER

As social networks became more and more pervasive, it became harder to manage the plethora of networks one person could be involved with. Activity on Facebook, Digg, Flickr and more was all isolated to the single network, with no quick way to see what's happened across them all. Utilizing the AIR platform from contest sponsor Adobe, we created a single, desktop application that could pull data from many different social networks into one consolidated view. Further, the system could pull news and other non-social data to provide a comprehensive view of the world and consolidate many of the information sources our users view throughout the day.

Press:
rjionline.org: "And the winner is..."
Adobe Developer Connection: "Direct from Adam Hosp and Nick Leonard" MizzouWire: "The super social network"

The ADverse Network

RJI Student Competition 2008-2009:
FINALIST

Prompted to think of a way to enhance the RJI�s interests (journalism and advertising) on the iPhone, we immediately began thinking of geolocation. While fledgling advertising networks existed for iPhone applications at this time, they all offered only static solutions - one app, one ad to be displayed no matter who was viewing. To remedy this, we created The ADverse Network, a context based advertising system. Developers would register their application, including some information about what kind of application it is, and include a code snippet to pull the advertisement. Advertisers would register advertisements with a geographic location (when applicable) and information about what�s being advertised. The system would then deliver a relevant ad to its users based on their GPS location (when available), the application showing the ad, and the content and location settings of the ad. In this way, a local business could find their ads in iPhone apps when being used in nearby locations. Advertisers and end-users alike would benefit from the increased relevancy in advertisements, and developers would be able to increase their revenue. We felt this would be especially valuable for journalism applications, as our research showed that they were typically unable to charge for them given the free alternatives. By adding relevant advertising through The ADverse Network, these organizations would be able to see revenue while still offering their apps for free.