Why do all good things come to an end…?

… but do they  have to?

an homage to my group.

After two months of passionate blogging in our group – ITineraryforvision – the end is near.

Final exams are right around the corner and the assignments are fulfilled.

But does this mean that we say goodbye to blogging and the subject of IT? 

surely not. Our group of 6 members gained a lot of experience through blogging which will definitely form a base for a lot of challenges and tasks which are still ahead of us! To vary from managerial skills and organization to fine and informative writing… we covered it all by:

Hands-on experience as a team!

The start-up period:

We formed our group not really knowing what was ahead of us. Eventhough everyone had an idea of blogging, the task in a dynamic and periodical manner was a new, exciting and maybe a bit intimidating thing to deal with and to discover. But one thing was clear, everything works better in a team. Knowledge and skills add up, there’s always someone to talk to who might have the same questions and problems to be solved.

Distribution of tasks:

A team is built by it’s individuals, right?   And all those individuals contribute to the whole and support eachother with the help of their skills. Or some reassurance. Or just with a good idea.

All duties of webmaster, groupleader, tagger and mapper were identified and divided amogst us, we started discussing possible subjects, lay-outs and helpful writing style and… we stepped up to the plate:

Are you ready ? Attention ! GO!

Full creativity demanded. Interesting, informative ideas need to be found and discussed. The first blog maybe took 5 hours of our precious time, but after some weeks of continuous blogging we all found into our workflow, our writing routine. Contents became more informative, more appealing…more professional? We managed to keep our blog up-to-date, which means that we tried to post every day of the week. After a short time we figured out that a fixed day for each blogger would be the easiest way to deal with the question of continuity. Sonja posted on fridays, Yannick on saturdays, I posted on sundays,… and we swapped days if someone struggled.

And here just some things we learned and internalized:

I guess that we all agree on this one. We learned how to smoothly keep our group work going, how to work as a group in general, creating something big, something amazing with the help of all of us. Management was a significant part of our assignment, but also web design, the efficient use of web content, links and videos,…we made big steps forward to a professional mode of work, to more professional and informative writing.

And now… dear group members… let me tell you something.

Thank you guys, I enjoyed !

(and hey…maybe we can keep this blog alive ?!)

Yes- I have to admit, I am among the people with a natural (understandable) fear of technology. And I cannot say what this fear is about; it is not a general distrust, rather the complexity of technology that sort of scares me. I found this really appealing quote on a website addressing people over 50 fearing technology (kind of sad since I am 21 and thus supposedly part of the geeky, technology fascinated generation): “As Yoda once said, fear leads…to hate. Conquer the fear, get educated, and experience the freedom, power, facilitation and imagination that being tech savvy provides.” Sounds good to me and after all technology can be simply turned off, so there is nothing to lose.

Feeling all motivated and encouraged to approach the numerous topics we were given in our BusApps course such as plug-inns, CSS, and templates the first step for me was to find out what actually stands behind those terms. I quickly came to the conclusion that the topic that aroused my interest the most was the Google reader. And I am telling you, it was a good choice! And here is why:

Google Reader-Why you need it

Google Reader is a single site that constantly checks your favorite websites, such as a blog or some online newspaper website, and informs you when they are being updated with new con­tent. In other words, there is no need any more to visit each site independently, looking for updates and new content. One can simply open the Google Reader website and then either visit the website and take a look at the new post, or simply read it inside Google Reader itself. Summarized and according to their website GR helps you to (1) stay up to date, (2) simplify your reading experience, and (3) discover new content.

How to Get started

1)The first thing to do is to get a Google account. Chances are good though that you already have one-like me. Otherwise you have to hit ‘Create an account’ and then simply follow the instructions.

2)The second step is to add subscriptions to sites such as our ITineraryforvision blog. There are different ways of doing so: One is to simply hit a subscribe button (the orange button on the picture); you are subscribing to a RSS Feed. The other is to go back to the GR website and hit ‘Add a subscription’ and paste the URL in there. This is what it looks like:

So far, so good. Those were the basics, but of course there is more to the Google Reader. What is really cool is that you are able to share articles or sites with others.  Here is a picture of how to do it:

This is also very helpful if you are having problems to come up with websites that you would like to subscribe to. Now all of a sudden you read all those cool articles that you would otherwise not bump into that easily. I found this article called ‘The world’s craziest basketball court is in Munich’ which I thought was fun to look at.

I must say that the Google Reader is a really helpful tool to me; it is an easy way to keep up with new information. It is as easy as checking your mail. Additionally it was fun to deal with it and play around. It feels good to work through something all by yourself that seems to be complicated at first. We shouldn´t be scared of exploring and discovering new tools . Nowadays there are so many video tutorials on the web that explain how to do things. At the end it feels good to conquer the fear, learn something new and profit from thenew knowledge and  faciliation.

When I got the task to install a new program like Wamp that I had never heard of before, I haven’t been too thrilled of the idea of having to deal with it cause I could already picture the difficulties with installing such a program and handling it.
As it turned out, installing it wasn’t really hard, but getting along with how this program works in all its complexity is a different matter. I can honestly say that I was able to create my own blog post and edit it on my Wamp server, thanks to group work with my wonderful class mates. I was yet struggling with importing my WordPress files on my Wamp server. I tried to gain help from the youtube tutorials  but it is frustrating when the guy in the video says‘ click here and this window will appear’ but if you try it a completely different window appears.
I tried this for a few hours and looked up WordPress ‘read me’ help desk but still I didn’t get that far either. There’s always a point where I get stuck, that’s why I call it ”dealing with the fear of technology”. It was again due to the help f my friend that I was eventually able to manage  importing my blogposts to my localhost - thank you Karen:). I have to admit it feels good to see something working out in the end, even if you didn’t solve the problem all by yourself.

I also installed the Force-TLS Add On to my Firefox since we learned about it in prior Business Information System class. I thought it was very useful, as it secures ‘web sessions’ in unsecured public networks, however when I installed it my internet was way slower and in the end I couldn’t log in to my email account and facebook anymore so I eventually dropped it.

After all this semi- satisfying experiences with technologies, I decided to concentrate on Google Reader, a comparably user- friendly and useful application.  Turns out it really is as easy to work with as presented in that video 

which we also saw in class. At first I thought this was a superfluous application since we might as well check out our favorite websites for any updates ourselves and it wouldn’t make a big difference to have it all filtered in a reader. But now that I tried it and added some blogs, newspapers and of course local news from my hometown to it, I really started enjoying this program. It is just so convenient and contrary to the previous programs I tried out doesn’t make you feel stupid. I even added the daily menu from HWR Mensa, so I can see every day what the Mensa offers and if I should rather choose an alternative place to eat or not. How cool is that?

I also enjoy getting an overview of different types of news so I have a mixture of political, economic, local and personal news from bloggers and I can still decide if I wish to read the whole posts/articles or just skim through the different headlines. It is really convenient. You don’t even need to download and install this programme, you only need to log in to your Google account. Since we already had to sign up on a Google account in the previous semester, this was really easy. I’m quite impressed with the various programs Google offers apart from reader, as Google docs where you can upload all your documents so they are secured in case your computer crashes, which mine frequently likes to do, or using Google books or scholar for research reports or Google blog search. I’m only concerned about the whole lot of information Google then receives from my favorite pages on reader, etc. but there’s hardly a way to get around it. That would be off topic now.

Before this course, I have also been rather suspicious about blogs and didn’t know anything about Word Press. By posting every week I learned more details from time to time, from tagging or adding the ‘read more’ tag to linking words and so on. It definitely made me more interested in blogging and reading other people’s blog posts.

So after all I can say when it comes to dealing with my “fear “of blogging I was successful in overcoming it. However fully understanding how to work with all sorts of technological programs is still a challenge for me. At least I don’t strain away from new technologies anymore and try to figure them out. The first big step of overcoming this skepticism of technology has been done. The rest will follow eventually, with a little bit more practice from time to time

Before I thought a plug-in was some kind of a tool-set provided by the Firefox-guys itself. Again I was impressed by how much the web benefits from smart volunteering people who just like what they do and give it away for free.

Then I stumbled upon the Plug-in “Firebug”. I installed it, not knowing at first what it was good for. After having skimmed through some advice on different web sites I started to get an idea about how firebug works, and by the way how many websites are structured and designed.

I realized that there is a structured html code behind every website. When I started changing that code I understood that many websites as for example online newspapers use a fixed structure (which is like a pyramid) and only modify parts of it.

This only becomes comprehensible to a non-computer-nerd-person if it is extremely clear and well arranged.

Firebug manages it perfectly to make you understand the composition of a website by structuring it hierarchically and using dropdown menus. Whenever you click on an html code you see the part affected is highlighted on the surface of the website that you normally see.

So even when you don’t understand all of it, you can begin to make little changes: substitute a link, a photo or a headline. In the end I was quite satisfied when I ended up with this:

Actually there are so many things that can even make our lives so much easier if we only allow them to be part of our (online-) life.

I mean can it be coincidence that 85% of all Firefox users statistically utilise at least one Add-On?!

Well if you search the World Wide Web for a while, the answer is quite clear: It is not coincidence! Personalised Firefox-installations seem to be quite common, which the number of approximately 60 million Add-On installations per day proves. Add-Ons are free of charge upgrades to the “normal” version of the Firefox internet browser. Up to now there are around 5000 different Add-Ons available for download, which can perform a wide range of different “extra” functions. Good examples for pretty common Add-Ons are Toolbars, themes or search engines that help customers carry out everyday activities much faster and much more efficient.

As you might have noticed if you followed my blog posts in the last couple of weeks, I have a very strong interest for music. So I started wondering if there might even be an Add-On that could legally support my pleasure of listening to music and staying up to date with information about it in the internet.

Eventually I found a blog where the author introduced a ranking of his 3 favourite Audio Extensions for Firefox. Reading through his description of these Add-Ons I became very curious on trying out one of them myself.

The one I started searching for is called FoxyTunes. This application makes it possible to integrate players like iTunes or Windows Media Player directly in the browser window so that you have full control over your media player without switching from your internet browser window to your media player window.

At first I thought installing the Add-on was surprisingly simple (even for a technology-loser as I am…). Visiting the Homepage of FoxyTunes I immediately found the link for the download and a little graphic that already gave me a first impression of how the Add-On would look like in my Browser window after finishing the installation.

This actually convinced me to finally start the download, because it did not appear too scary to me… Unfortunately my euphoria disappeared very abruptly: After pressing the Download-button immediately a little window popped open informing me, that the Add-On was not available for the latest 5.0 version of Firefox. =(

I have to admit that I was a little bit discouraged because I actually had started to seriously become excited about this FoxyTunes Add-On and its advertised functions. I kind of really liked the idea of controlling my music while skimming through Facebook at the same time. Also the sleep timer and the alarm clock feature appealed to me. Not to mention the possibility to easily access a wealth of information about artists and tracks via the FoxyTunes’ menu…

Well obviously I had to accept that there seemed to be no other choice than trying my luck with another Add-On. But I decided to definitely keep track of the development of FoxyTunes and I hope that it won’t take too long until they adapt it to the newest Firefox-version.

As a conclusion I can only say that this first try to become friends with technology was a little bit disappointing. Anyways I think as an excuse I can accept, that the latest Firefox update can only be dated back a couple of days and sometimes a reaction on changes might take a little while (especially with technology)…

So I continued searching for another Add-On that would make sense for me installing. But somehow my disappointment from the first try wouldn’t let me go and I started disliking all other applications I found… I guess that I was just a little too critical about them but somehow they all seemed to be not really “special”. Most of those I found where just some kind of toolbar that would search for information on bands and titles automatically or give me links to lyrics or music downloads. Others promised to grant easy access to huge data bases or online radios – but they were all not very satisfying as they were not what I was searching for and what I expected…

However after a little while I came across something slightly different: A Plugin for Windows Media Player that enables Firefox to play media like videos or music data. For most people this probably doesn’t sound very special but actually I had never heard of this before and I even began to wonder if such a thing wasn’t maybe even automatically installed on my PC without me knowing of it. So I started searching the web for more information on it. First of all I needed a definition because I didn’t even know what exactly a Plugin is (I mean I heard the term like a 1000 times but I never really cared what is behind it…).

I found out that Plugins help the browser to perform specific functions like for example viewing certain graphic formats or playing multimedia files. The difference to Add-Ons is that Plugins add a completely new functionality whereas Add-Ons only modify or add existing ones.

So I decided to start a second try and download the Windows Media Player Plugin. It turned out that this wasn’t big deal. After having clicked on the download button the data file was saved on my PC’s desktop where I simply had to double-click and the installation was finished. In the Firefox menu I now checked if the installation really was successful. I simply had to go to the menu, open the tab “Add-Ons” and search through the list with all my installed Plugins. I have to admit that I was quite surprised of how many Plugins were already installed on my browser.

Now I became curious: What do all those Plugins mean and how do they make me better off?! There was for example the Adobe Acrobat. I already knew that Adobe was installed on my computer and that I needed it to open PDF files but what I hadn’t known before is that this also belongs to the category of Plugins. I also stumbled upon Shockwave Flash which belongs to Adobe as well and makes it possible to open graphics and animations which are programmed in “Flash” format (often used for banner ads).

Another Plugin that aroused my interest in my existing list was QuickTime. Let me tell you why: While installing the Windows Media Player Plugin I already started wondering why I never had a problem with listening to audio files or watching videos directly in my Firefox window. On the blogs I had read they all wrote that it was only possible to open those files “outside” of the browser or that there could even be a complete error if the Plugin wasn’t installed. But this had never actually happened to me… Now that I found out more about the QuickTime Plugin the explanation was pretty simple. QuickTime is another Firefox Plugin that offers the function of opening many different movie or audio files within the browser. It is available for windows as well as for Apple, which makes it very convenient. It can be easily configured and the user can choose himself which formats QuickTime should play.

I must admit that this is all pretty cool, and that I actually was a bit naïve before as I took all that for granted without thinking about how it is all possible.

Now I can only hope that I will get the chance to download the FoxTunes Add-On sooner or later and play around with it for a while.

And honestly: Although I will probably always stay a bit suspiciously when it comes to technology (especially downloading things from the internet) I am more and more convinced that there are also many amazing things around and sometimes one simply has to overcome his own fear in order to progress and learn new and interesting things.

“Daaaaaddyyy, could you please…”

…this sentence was the furthest I went when it came to new installations, applications and all general problems concerning IT.

BUT: those days are past. Moving out from home means getting independent.. and it means no daddy present who can solve all computer problems and who keeps the system up-to-date…

But: Never fear! Let’s face up to the facts.

It can’t be that hard. Step by step I start discovering the domain, gain self assurance and loose my doubts and fears regarding my ability to deal with technologies

Let’s discover something new… all on our own:

Firefox add-ons / plugins!

My first step:

…was the most essential thing. Installing the browser itself, as I used to surf the web with google chrome before. But I planned to install the browser anyways (I learned that firefox, with certain plugins added, is providing high security for the user…a tip of daddy by the way ). So I want to seize the opportunity and I face my fears by typing the words “mozilla firefox” into google.

The webpage http://www.mozilla-europe.org/de/ provides a download at no charge and leads you through the steps.

And I see, it’s no big deal. Victory in the first round, fear tackled down and weakened. Strike!

Second step:

…finding out what plugins (or respectively add-ons) actually are.

After researching the term in my so-called “add-ons-Manager” (to be found as an element of the menu bar of the browser), I know that add-ons are applications you can add to your firefox browser. This can be additional features or styles, Firefox can be expanded according to personal taste and requirements of the user.

Third step:

…playing around with add-ons I find out how many applications are out there to facilitate, posh up and provide security for my online activities.

After trying the add-on “videosurf” (shows you video summaries in the form of sequenced pictures before selecting to watch a video) and the add-on “persona” (adds customizable visual styles to your browser) which I found more or less superfluous, I found some really helpful applications.

Here are my favorites which I instantly added:

• WOT – Web Of Trust

colored symbols indicate if a page is rated to be trustworthy or not. Green stands for a positive evaluation, red for a very negative evaluation and yellow is in between. This is how  google results look like using the plug in WOT for firefox:

• Yoono

Yoono is a social network add-on which collects all updates from facebook, twitter, Linkedin, youtube and more, all at once. This is really helpful in terms of saving time, like a news reader which is collecting news at a glance.

Conclusion:

Discovering the web and technology on my own is not that hard and confusing as expected. I am more confident, learn about helpful things like the firefox add-ons.

I see: trying is the first big step to knowledge

Now I went through Dr. B’s power point presentation for the 8^th time and finally decided on a topic. At first I had no idea at all what CSS zen garden, Plug-ins on Firefox or the box model stand for. After watching youtube-explanation-videos, checking wikipedia and forums I found out more about these topics. All seemed to be quite useful for me, but I wasn’t sure which one to install and use.  Here is my way of decision making:

1. Because zen garden CSS really looked beautiful, I wondered why not to explore it. But then on the webpage they said: “Please join only, if you’re a professional designer”. Sorry I am not.
2. Ok, why not using css4you to make my blog posts look better? I downloaded all three versions but couldn’t open a single one on my computer.
3. So what’s about creating an own website? That would be really fun and useful! I already came up with a cool topic I had in mind for a long time ( a network for cat owners) but even though thesitewizard.com is a wonderful and well explaining page, I couldn’t find a free homepage supplier and I was really afraid of becoming victim of a black sheep and paying a lot.
4. When I got really desperated I decided on simply installing the Google reader. To me it seemed a nice tool for following webpages like our groups’ posts and I wondered whether it could be useful for facebook, too.

First I opened the Google reader. After reading the definitions and explanations on Wikipedia, I simply started and tried to add Facebook my so called “subscription”. Facebook didn’t work, so I tried Spiegel-online and yes it worked. After this I added all groups’ blogs including Dr. B’s page. So now I can be up-to-date with our class-work.

Then I started thinking: How else can I use this application? I counted all the websites I use: Facebook, Wikipedia,…what else? Actually, all the pages I visit, I need for a special reason like booking a flight, buying something, and so on. So I don’t need updates all the time.

Menawhile I was thinking about this, google reader already updated so much. When I tried to suggested some pages to the publicity I found what others published and it was so interesting, that I was stuck for half an hour.

Thanks to google reader explanations I figured out how to suggest pages and I immediately did it with our blog. Now I hope that lots of people will see it! This is a way to make a blog more popular!

Then I liked some articles on Spiegel-online and also published a comment on Dians blog about Optimization.

So I can for sure say that this google reader is a cool invention, especially when you work in an area where you have to follow a lot of web sites. As I am still learning and exploring it’s really fun and I hope to find more and more useful applications! First I will use it as an overview when entering the internet!

„Blind Booking könnte im Grunde ja auch Rudi’s Resterampe heißen – es geht lediglich um das Verkaufen der übrigen Plätze, ob der Passagier fliegt oder nicht sei dahin gestellt“

On first glance, the concept of “Blind-Booking” or “Jokerfliegen” I proposed in last week’s post seems like a great deal- paying a fairly low price while keeping it interesting not knowing which destination one ends up.
But is it really such a good offer? Because, as we know, not all that glitters is gold.

The software and technology company 2e Systems announced on their website that Germanwings’ success of its “Blind Booking” offer is further growing thanks to a new marketing campaign and its presence at facebook. Sounds positive, indicating that people seem to like it. But what about actual experiences with it? 

People keep discussing in online- forums about their experiences, if there are any, and the chances to end up at the desired destination. There’s one theory that is seemingly extremely popular amongst the forum- users, arguing that it would be possible to cross out nearly all destinations the airline is planned to approach that particular date, so that there are only 2 options left, like a 50:50 chance (see discussions in vielfliegerforum.de )

So if you’re more the risk-averse type of person, you can cheat or, put another way, “limit” the coincidence of choice. The discount-travel blog snappr.de points out that one can do so by checking the airline schedule in advance and looking at which destinations are planned for each day. It further lists the planned destinations for Condor for summer 2010. Since the old schedule doesn’t help us much now, here is the new summer schedule for 2011:

So, if we want to fly to, say Barbados, which departs on a Monday, we of course choose Monday as our departure date and further cross out one the other options for this day. You can however only cross out a certain amount of destinations, so that at least a 50:50 chance is left.

On the other hand, in Vielfliegerforum,, another observer replies that he actual was able to cross out all other destinations for that specific date so that he was able to get his desired destination “(…)Habe durch Probieren und Nachforschen alle Ziele ausschließen können und bin dann, wie gewünscht, bei den Malediven gelandet”  25.05.2010, 22:00 

In sum, forum users have different opinions on the likelihood of choice. While a small amount of observers argue it is possible to get exactly the desired destination, I rather believe the other group of discussion -participants that hold a 50:50 chance is the maximum you can get. After all, the concept obviously implies this ‘surprise-effect’.

“Es wären ja keine Wundertüten mehr, wenn du alles bis auf eins ausschliessen könntest” (anonymous)

What are actual experiences with blind-booking?

Opinions differ, as people make different experiences.
I read several forum entries where people recommended a trip with Germanwings. “Habe selbst schon mehrfach BlindBooking gemacht und kann es durchweg empfehlen“. Reisen.ciao. de gives another positive review, stating to have received destinations like Mallorca, Vienna, Lisbon or Barcelona for 19 Euros. Some did report however that they only got an inner-German flight, to Berlin or Dresden. Not everyone would be too thrilled of such a trip when expecting to see some other parts of Europe.

The downside is that chances are you arrive really late at your destination  What makes things worse, if you only book a trip for one night, it already happened (with Germanwings) that you arrive in London late at night and would have to return early the next morning. That does not make sense of course. The person that received this suboptimal ticket did not go (see forum vielfliegertreff.de).

After all, the prime reason for airlines to sell those ‘blind’ tickets is of course to get rid of their left-over tickets which would otherwise be a loss for the airline. What is more, the additional attention they receive through this marketing campaign is also highly profitable for them as customers using the “blind-booking offers” are likely to look at further offers of the airline as well. In short, chances are high to gain additional, maybe even loyal customers. Accordingly, for Germanwings and Condor it is definitely a win- situation. For customers, however, it is not a definite win-situation. It strongly depends on what you make of it; if you end up with ‘only’ inner-German tickets and were expecting to go somewhere beyond the German borders, you either enjoy yourself anyways or complain about it. So for those who are up for this surprise effect and don’t insist on a certain outcome of this “game”, it is definitely a win-situation as well, with a little bit of risk included. Ultimately ”no risk no fun” seems to hold true.

There is heaps of data to be administered and stored expediently. The organisers have to keep track of the amount of tickets sold, they need to keep the overview of actors and merchandisers that are part of the event and a specific timetable and organisational plan has to be worked out.

Is it possible to find a software that manages all those information at a time?!

 During my quest for an answer to this question in the World Wide Web, I pretty soon found out that I’m not the only person wondering about this organisational challenge. After a while I noticed that I had to broaden my point of view a bit, as I found out that also film and art festivals play an important role when it comes to huge social events.

I finally stumbled upon an interesting Blog with the title “Festival management in a box”. It is written by a festival manager himself who ran across two different film festival management software systems in the internet. The two software systems promise to facilitate festival administration enormously and although they are mainly designed for the context of film festivals they advertise their software to be suitable for “other cultural events” as well. The advantages those software systems offer are amongst others to limit paperwork, involving word documents, emails or excel tables and giving the festival organiser “full control over their festival.” That made me curious:

How does this software work?!

Visiting the Homepage of DataKal I found out more about their product called “StarBase”.

The software splits the festival organisation up into different modules like ticketing or budgeting and also creates a database for various categories, such as for example a Contact Database, a Hospitality Database, or an Inventory Database. It is programmed to support processes including for example Invitation, Correspondence Tracking, Travel, Accommodation, Media Information, Tasks Tracking, Payments Tracking , Scheduling or Data Exports – only to mention some that I found most important mentioned on the Homepage. Particular modules’ layout can be customised.

The software solution is based on the professional MS SQL database platform and .NET framework, which makes it possible to use applications from any independent platform (e.g. desktop application, web application).

Access to the information stored by the system can be granted to multiple users. Through password control procedures, each user has an account with defined permissions so that they can only gain access to areas they work in.

Another and very similar software system is Eventival. According to some Blogs I found, Eventival seems to be pretty successful lately. It is a web application “storing film content and related contacts and files in a secure database, and handling most actions typical for festival work.” On the homepage the company also claims that their application is not only suitable for film festivals but “users can also be organisers of theatre, dance, music and cultural and social events, as well as museums and galleries.”

But if this is all so perfect and easy I started wondering why I could not find real field reports on any of those software systems. So I started searching for the catch in it.

A big disadvantage seems to be the costs that come along with the usage of the software. I found that the software is probably only profitable for bigger events as with Eventival the access to the software has to be payed per year. Also service and support from the software company usually has to be paid extra.

Therefore it has to be properly thought through wether the amount of time and work saved is worth the money for smaller events.

But in general I am convinced that those software systems are a great invention that can make it easier to organise big events in way that makes both hosts and audience happy.

And sure, all those fancy features ease our life more or less but this week I would like to put a focus on something that actually really makes a change to lives. The GSMA just launched the mFarmer Initiative Fund with the help of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, thereby emphasizing the value and power of mobile technology in regard to agricultural issues. The fund will encourage mobile communications service providers to use mobile communications to send information and advisory services to small farmers in developing countries. Those targeted farmers earn less than $2 a day. The fund finances projects in India, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

According to Chris Locke, who is the executive director of the Development Fund “there are over 2.3 billion people living on less than $2 day, a large number of whom are rural smallholder farmers in developing countries and who face many issues which inhibit their agricultural productivity and limit their incomes. (…) Through the mFarmer Initiative Fund, the GSMA Development Fund’s mAgri Programme will accelerate the provision of high-quality agricultural information services through mobile and by 2013 we aim to provide two million farmers in developing countries with an invaluable and transformative business resource.”

The mobile technology can provide the small farmers with information that otherwise would not reach them. This information can improve their practices and increase productivity and income, and simply introduce them to a broader agricultural network. According to an article the African agricultural output stands at only 56 per cent of the world’s average. This can be due to multiple reasons such as a lack of access to essential agricultural information, or training and advice on certain topics such as pests, diseases and weather.

But not only the farmer is helped, a higher productivity influences the whole population. There is a direct link to the income and also food security of the population.

Devices like smartphones change how we do everyday things but it is remarkable that in the sense of the example of the  mFarmer Initiative Fund they have the power to transform lives in a drastic way.