The Internet Explorer 6 from Microsoft is a horror for every internet developer. Now Microsoft has to fight against its own mistakes.

Internet Explorer Is To Web Standards What Ebonics Is To Standard English

What this means for CoboCards:
Supporting an 8 years old browser is hard work. To support the Internet Explorer 6 is much harder. You need a lot of time. Time which you can use for other things really better.

Hence, we will officially stop supporting Internet Explorer 6 in order to advance CoboCards more efficient, more economic and with new and better technologies.

That web giants like YouTube or Facebook has stopped their IE6 support shows that this way is not uncommon.

Therefore we recommend all CoboCards users who still use the Internet Explorer 6 one of the following options:

1. Use Firefox, Opera, Safari or Google Chrome.
2. Upgrade to Internet Explorer 8

We apologise for any inconvenience. .
For a better CoboCards, but also for a better internet.

A couple of weeks ago we told you that we support the young team of 2aid.org. Now they have started their water project. If you want to you can support 2aid as well.

How to do this? Two ways:

1. You send a SMS with aid to 81190
   and you support 2aid.org with 5 Euros.
2. You visit Paket4Aid, enter your mobile phone number. You receive a SMS which you have to confirm. 4,83 € will go directly to 2aid.

To be honest, I don’t know if this service is just available in Germany. Please check with 2aid before sending any message.

5 Euros help to guarantee clean water for one person for 20 years. If you donate you will get a calendar as a gift (again, please check with organiser, if you live abroad). Additionally one person can win various prices if he twitters about this event.

It will last until 18th of December. Good luck!

Yesterday we were on a local event called “integration day”. 153 companies and NGO’s had the opportunity to present themselves. We also participated and tried to promote CoboCards.

Besides local VIP’s the minister for generations, family, women and integration of Northrhine-Westfalia was present and of course, he had a laudation. Somewhere in the middle he said:

“The team of CoboCards is a perfect example for our city” (the minister himself is from Aachen)

What? The minister praises our project? Fantastic!

He continued talking about our success winning the “start2grow” award and about the many many users of CoboCards he heard of.

Of course, after his speech I had to shake a lot of hands. Later he passed by at our exhibition stand and asked about the functionality of our tool.

Great motivationg gesture. We are thankful for his laudation and the time he spend with us. We won’t forget to thank the organisers of the event. Thank you all!

Because some of our users did not know if it is allowed to publish flashcards in the Pool and make them available for everyone, we created a new wiki-page regarding “Copyright”.

But due the fact that the majority of our users are from Germany, it is an abstract about

a) what is allowed and

b) what’s not allowed

regarding German Law.

Please feel free to add a “Copyright”-page for other countries if you feel competent to do so.

Your CoboCards-Headquarter

We hope to have an English

Last Thursday I flew to Graz (Austria) to participate at the eduCamp, a barcamp focussed on education. During the flight I asked myself the following question:

Is it worth to spend the time and money?

I booked a cheap flight and checked in a hostal like all the other guys from Germany (Bremen, Aachen, Augsburg, Ilmenau). At least I could save some money by doing so.

So what has happened on the eduCamp?

The first eduCamp in Illmenau had a revolutionary character, cause it was the first time we met. Since then all the topics are more or less repeated. I have found out that not the tools will improve education but the way education goes itself. Good education uses supporting tools to make education better. Bad education cannot be improved by good supporting tools. First there must be a change of thinking. You usually meet people who started to change the way of thinking on an eduCamp.

I was amused about:
- All the new people I met. They want to change things in education and are willing to use tools for that
- It was very nice that the mayor of Graz gave us a short welcome
- Graz itself is a very beautiful city with its castle and the art house and definitely worth a visit.

What I didn’t like:
- I didn’t get new ideas. Everything is repeated more or less.
- We (CoboCards) wanted to be a sponsor of the eduCamp but the prices were not start-up friendly at all.
- Such an event should gather at least 100 people. Unfortunately this was far not the case.
- We have not discussed about „hot topics” going on at the moment. I just found out while travelling back to Germany.

Conclusion:
If there should be a eduCamp in Graz again, I don’t believe that we will participate again. The costs are not equal to the benefits.