L.U.N.A. Ads Sustaining Wireless Access For Mobile Users

The LUNA Project aims to create a wide wireless network across several cities in Trentino, Italy. The network will be entirely wireless using mesh networking. The goal is to provide free or low-cost internet access to encourage an "e-society". The paper evaluates similar applications to Google Desktop, Jing, and Finetune to design a client application called LUNA Ads that will provide network services in exchange for viewing advertisements. A prototype was created with a moon-shaped icon in the desktop corner that expands to show tabbed services and advertising. Future work includes expanding the network coverage, adding a browser toolbar, and a downloadable prototype in early 2009.