May 2012 Blog Posts (539)

While children have fun spinning on the PlayPump merry-go-round, clean water is pumped from underground into a 2,500-liter tank, standing seven meters above the ground.

I just discovered the kickstarter.com website and i am really astunished how great this system works and the idea behind it is just fantastic! it is very interesting to see all these weird and funny ideas, that would probably never get a chance to become big. But this platform supports such ideas and i really like that. After grubbing for interesting ideas on the website i found an idea called Makey Makey. It's an invention Kit which allows you to connect every possible object with a…

To my mind, money will come back to its roots. Once it was just a medium to weight and transfer goods. I think in the future it can be possible, that nations move up to each other and that there will only be one currency unit in the world. That might sound unimaginable, but why do we have different currencies in different countries? Why do currencies have different values? Why is a hamburger in Germany not as worth as in India or Brazil? As far as I know, it's a question of how strong an…

By reading some articles about money and alternative systems of currency I found a really fantastic example which shows the improvement of a town from third world to a first world city. The talk is of Curitiba , the capital and largest city of the southeastern Brazilian state of Paraná.

The story of Curitiba in Brazil illustrates how the introduction of a complementary currency was able to help a developing and impoverished city leverage its…

I read about Twitpay and i think it is a very good idea. But i think this system isn't legitimate enough, because twitter is a "fun-site" or whatever you want to call it in my opinion. It is only possible to transfers sums up to 50€ and each transfer costs 5Cents, when it's higher than 1€. But that's not important right now, because the idea is brilliant.

I am using Paypal or other alternative, easy payment-methods for years now, because standard bank-transfer are very annoying and…

I found an intersting way of transfering money. It works with SMS. The sender and receiver just need to register theit phone numbers and agree on a PIN and then they can easily transfer money via SMS.

I think it'a an easy way to send someone money in a fast way. We use our mobile phone every day. So you'll have access to the money everywehere at any time. It is also possible to pay bills or to send money home. And I think if this technology develops it should be easy to pay for your…

Saving money or changing the future of money is very difficult today. Therefore, i have looked back on the past and reminded me of the good change network. The manufacturer needed milk from the farmer and the farmer changed it with a sickle, which he needed for the high grass. Why didn't we follow our past? I have investigated in the internet and find one very good change network, named "Lets" in Munich. …

I´ve opt to help someone kickstart their project (ok, to be honest I´ve just donated 1 $, but I think this task is more about getting experience with things like this, so everybody should be ok with that I think).

The project I´ve chosen is this one:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hickies/hickies-turn-your-kicks-into-slip-ons?ref=category

as I think it´s a…

I would have the world build a giant water filter together. We would all then all start filtering all the water in the world.

I donated to the Credit Water Associate to help people get cleaner water.

For the first time, i tried the paypal. I always asked my boyfriend whether i can use his credit card when i wanted to do online shopping. But with Paypal there's no need to ask my boyfriend and I don't need a credit card - just perfect!

With the coming up of the Web 2.0 and its participatory idea, the web changed und still changes our attitude towards capitalism and our system of values.

The people want to get the bank less power, especially after the banking crises the people do not trust the banks anymore. The popular discontent with the capitalist system and the deceptive practices of the banks finds expression in the current occupy movement. They claim more responsibility and sustainability.…

My research discovered a local currency in Germany, which is called "the chiemgauer" (Chiemgau is a region in Bavaria). I haven't heard of it before and that is why I think it is very interesting.

"The chiemgauer" originally started as a school project from an economics teacher who wanted to teach his pupils something about finance. Therefore they created their own money which could be used in real shops and stores. The currency was pegged to the euro on a one-by-one basis with notes…

The clean water projec that caught my interest was the living machine. It is a small machine and it cleans dirty water in wetlands and other places.

I found an article which describes that people living in Brixton, an area in south London, developed their own money in the time of the big recession a few years ago. It did not become an officially accepted currency, but it was accepted in most of the local businesses. It helped to make people buy things they needed nearby and thus helped the local businesses through the recession. To me, this was a very simple, but effective way to make people strenghten their own, local economy and models…

I am coming home from work in the early evening, because it´s the 30th birthday of my wife/girlfrined and I want to take her out for dinner at first and after that our friends and parents and siblings are coming to celebrate with us.

So I´m going to park my electric car in my garage and plug it in to load it´s battery, for that reason there is a solar installation on the roof and since the efficency factor has greatly increased during the last years and the sun is shining high today, it…

I think micro-savings is a very good idea. As long poor people have a mobile phone this idea will work. Many banks in Germany work on this idea too. Because cash is costing us taxpayers a lot of money each year. To pay cashless is much more convenient as well.

But there are many problems:

For costumers: fear of steal private specifications

For dealer: too high costs, treaty with a bank

Another good idea, I think is paying by fingerprint. So you can go shopping easily…

I'm gonna have demon powers and on my birthday I will create a holiday called rage quit day were you go rage quit and beat up anyway who gets in your way, or annoys you or you just do it for no apparent reason. At the end whoever is the last man standing wins and its always me cause I have powers.

Many towns and cities are saving money on their power bills by changing from incandescent light bulbs to light-emitting diode (LED) lights. These lights can be used in traffic signals, crosswalk signs, and even holiday displays.

LED lights have an extremely long life span and use much less energy than incandescent bulbs. Switching to LED lighting can save 40 to 70 percent of the electricity a city uses for certain lights in parking garages, parking lots, outdoor parks, and on…

While searching the Internet I came across a highly interesting project a team of engineers without borders of the University of Illinois started in order to help a Mayan community in Guatemala to filter their drinkin water at a very low cost level. As a basis the students used a biosand filtration system (BSFs). What makes the project so special is that they had to cope with the problem of extreme virus contamination of the water which cannot be solved with standard filter systems. Even…