Throwback Thursday for #ECSA2016,
and there are new projects in SPOTTERON!

The hype continues: millions of people worldwide are taking their smartphones, go out and hunt down virtual spieces called Pokemons. And those people are not just the hard core gamers or the pokemon fans out there - the phenomon reaches out far.

In the 80ties, NASA collaborated with the Associated Contractors of America (ALCA) to research which plants are best for filtering air and reducing the amount of various chemicals. Here is the Link to the complete study: Clean Air study - and the lovethegarden.com Community did put up this inforgraphic as a perfect guide for which plants you should cultivate at home and at your office. Our advise? All of them! SPOTTERON loves jungle:)

We just want to say Merry Christmas and a big thank you for this exciting year full of #CitizenScience and cool projects to run. SPOTTERON has gone a big step forward, becoming a sophisticated tool for Citizen Science and Environment Protection projects in international use. We are looking forward to 2017 with already upcoming App releases, but until then: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

SPOTTERON goes Australia! We are happy to announce that we are giving away a customised geo-locatable free Citizen Science app among all members of the Australian Citizen Science Association that take part in the competition and tell us how their proposed geo-locatable citizen science app will increase scientific knowledge.

For the current Give-Away of a free Citizen Science App on the SPOTTERON platform for Australia, we did a short introduction video about what we do for Citizen Science and about the traits of the platform itself.

Today we decided to went on a Easter Egg Hunt - and since it is raining heavily today we took this journey to another realm: the microcosm!

During the "Long Night of Research" (Lange Nacht der Forschung) in Vienna Austria at the Museum of Natural History (NHM) we met with Irmgard Greilhuber from the Citizen Science project Mycodata by the Austrian Mycological Society ÖMG. Irmgard is presenting the project and how Citizen Scientists can participate by submitting observations of mushrooms and fungi.

From 3rd to 5th of June 2018, the ECSA Conference 2018 and the general assembly of the European Citizen Science Association takes place in Geneva, Switzerland. As members of ECSA and platform for Citizen Science Apps we for sure take part during the whole time.

Every two years, a big conference about Citizen Science takes place in an European Country - this time we travelled to Geneva in Switzerland, where the ECSA 2018 was happening.

Thanks for the many interesting submissions and your paticipation in the SPOTTERON Citizen Science contest for getting a free App in Europe! We are finally able to announce the winner (and a follow up project as second place) here on our Citizen Science blog:

From 15th to 19th of October, the Citizen Science Summer School "Citizen Science in Theory and Practice" took place in "Grünau im Almtal", a small town in the south of Upper Austria. Grünau is particular famous for the KLF, the "Konrad Lorenz Reseach Station" where zoologist and Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz studied animal behavior and became one of the founders of modern ethology. Not far from the research station, a whole week was dedicated to Citizen Science and many interesting workshops, sessions and collaboration teamwork took place.

With the new SPOTTERON platform version 2.5 we bring two more highlights to all apps on the Citizen Science platform: First of all, the Offline Maps & Spots feature allows users to download map areas and spots on their phone for having them present, even when there is no internet connection available. This feature is a big improvement, specially for Citizen Science Apps, in which the main activity takes place often outdoors in the field where web connectivitiy is not always a given thing.

Thanks for all the CitizenScience! We wish you a happy New Year's Eve and many more exciting #CitSci moments in the upcoming year. We have already new projects coming up, the first one about light pollution and Citizen Science will be ready in 1st of February. But for now, we are off until the end of first week of the new year - see you in 2019!

We are very happy to be featured in the new Citizen Sience 4.0 article by Maximilian Ueberham in the gis.Business magazine (Ausgabe 01/2019). After a short introduction about Citizen Science author Maximilian Ueberham presents Citizen Sience projects, including the SPOTTERON Citizen Science platform.

On Wednesday, the 6th of March, the first "Day of Phenology" took place at the ZAMG in Vienna. We have also been invited by one of our project partners from the "Naturkalender App".

When developing Citizen Science Apps, the usability has a big impact on how well and frequent people use them in the end. The goal for Citizen Science Apps is to become an important part in the everyday lives of their users in the long term, so that users can gain experience and can contribute important data  to scientific projects.

Today marks the release day for our Citizen Science interview series! Continuously we are going to publish interviews with different head of projects running on the SPOTTERON Platform.

Last week, the Austrian Citizen Science conference took place in Obergurgl, Tyrolia and we took the occasion to arrive one day earlier to visit the mountainside and get a good view of the impressive landscape surrounding the area.As Citizen Scientists, we always love to stumble apon new things to record and contribute in various scientific projects.

This spring, the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Germany, organized a photo contest through our Citizen Science App "Landauf, LandApp". Users were encouraged to go on a historical expedition and find out how the cities and their surroundings have changed in the last few decades.