OStatic Interviews Cisco Developer Contest Finalists: Team Enhancers
by Kristin Shoemaker - Oct. 02, 2009Comments (1)- Related Blog Posts
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While Cisco prepares to reveal the winners in its Developer Contest next week, I got the chance to speak with Team Enhancers about its contest entry.
The Local Advertising Mesh Network, an advertising platform for local ad management, is Rajesh Kotagiri's response to the challenge Cisco put forth in the Developer Contest guidelines -- to use the "network as a platform" approach and develop an application using Cisco's Linux-based AXP (Application Extension Platform), a service module on its ISR (Integrated Services Routers).
OStatic: According to the brief summary on Cisco's site, you have a passion for developing solutions that have an impact and joined the contest to showcase your creativity. What drew you to a project related to ad networks in particular?
Kotagiri: Advertising to a targeted audience at an affordable price is one of the problems for small scale vendors. I have been discussing this with some of my friends. AXP gave an opportunity to localize the advertisements (targeted audience). A business angle was one of the main reasons for settling on the Ad Networks idea.
OStatic: The Cisco Dev Contest asked participants to create projects using the AXP platform, implementing any necessary features of the platform, open source libraries -- and ultimately produce an application that's extensible, documented -- and useful. There are a lot of potential networking projects that would be good candidates. How did you ultimately decide on proceeding with the Local Advertising Mesh Network project?
Kotagiri: Having understood the power of AXP, a lot of thoughts crossed my mind. All of them revolved around the webserver. Finally, I settled on this idea as it has business potential for the owner of AXP, to make extra revenue. I am more a technology user, and have very little knowledge about networking, probably that is another reason for not choosing other projects. I would like to thank Cisco for developing a platform on which Java developers without much knowledge of networking can enable services on a router.
OStatic: What feature/function of your application are people most enthusiastic about when you explain the application?
Kotagiri: The key function my friends are impressed about the application is use of position of AXP as locality, for targeted advertising. In fact they keep adding improvements to the existing framework, which we will probably take into the product.
OStatic: Has work on the Local Advertising Mesh Network inspired you to innovate in new ways/previously unimagined directions? How do you think that the ad networks landscape is changing, and how do you see Enhancers shaping that landscape?
Kotagiri: Frankly speaking I am confused with lots of ideas that are passing through my mind today. Each idea has pros and cons. Going forward, need based ads on the mobile should be the order of the day. As I shop for shoes, I should be able to see the ads of latest and greatest available ones in nearby malls on my mobile. As a first step I would realize the idea into a product. I would like to exploit the changing technologies to enable last mile advertisements, that has huge potential.
The crew here at OStatic would like to thank Mr. Kotagiri for taking the time to tell us a little more about the Local Advertising Mesh Network proposal, and wish Team Enhancers (along with the other great finalists we spoke to this week) the best of luck when the Cisco Developer Contest winners are announced next week.
