Hausnotruf

Hausnotruf is a system offered my organisations such as the German Red Cross (DRK).

People who do not want to move into an old people’s home, but still want the peace of mind of being able call for help in an emergency use the system.  The have a red button on a necklace that they can press in an emergency, which contacts a base station which in turn dials an emergency call centre.  They then send out someone who has a key to the flat or house to help.

Some systems also offer a an option, whereby the user has to press a button on the base station eg. every 24 hours.  If they do not, they receive a call or help is sent out.  This can be useful if they are not able to press their button.

For more details on the Red Cross system, visit www.drk.de.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:

(Press the “play” button to listen to the podcast)

Download the MP3 file | Subscribe to the podcast

Lanzarote on Twitter

It rained on Lanzarote yesterday.  How do I know?  No, I did not visit an online weather site.  Instead I simply followed the word “Lanzarote” on Twitter.

Reading Twitter can either be timeconsuming or fascinating, depending on who and what you read.  So in the past few days I have been watching out for tweets that contain the word “Lanzarote”.  (You can see the current tweets by using the Twitter search).

Every day there have been people, mainly in the UK, writing about their forthcoming holiday to Lanzarote, many of them announcing their day of departure.  Others are already on holiday, presumably tweeting from their mobile phones.

Then there are the residents (eg. users juliecj, themadcatlady and lanzarote), who tweet about their lives on the island.

Using this source in the past few days alone, I have discovered Nick Ball’s article on Travelaholic Anonymous and an assortment of pictures posted on TwitPic of Papagayo beach, the airport, and even a local menu.

I am also trying out a tool called “TweetDeck”, where you can follow keywords instead of people.  This way, I see the tweets from anyone writing about the island, even if I haven’t followed them in the past.

So whilst I may not always want to know what people had for breakfast, there are some interesting facts and photos to be found.  Search for yourself and see!

Bio-ethanol in motorsport

Following last week’s video of the Volvo XC60, their name came up again today as I read on Street Import Online that they are to use bio-ethanol in their C30 model for the Swedish Touring Car Championship.

It’s good to see bio-ethanol used as an alternative fuel for racing cars, and I wonder how long it will take for other areas of motor racing to follow suit?

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