On 10 September 2015, Okan Türkes participated in the MobiCom 2015 App Contest with the smartphone-based opportunistic data dissemination application called "Friend Finder". The application was selected as one of the 6 finalists out of 13 submissions. The selection criteria included originality and innovation, perceived value, importance, quality of user experience, and business viability. During the contest, Okan gave a demonstration with an Android-based smartphone network setup as well as a pitch on the motivation, objectives, and technical details of the implementation.
Implemented on top of the Cocoon framework, Friend Finder provides local connectivity between smartphone users in case there is no internet or cellular networks. It is a platform-independent solution for information dissemination with ad hoc fashion. During outages/overloads of situated communication systems, it allows short message dissemination between people having common interests/concerns. In the demonstrated application, a user is able to share his/her daily plans to the other users over a lightweight WiFi ad hoc network without forming connections.
