Paris, 17 December 2007


EFITA newsletter / 340 / European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment


SMS ?
Iver Thysen told me recently that the Danish agricultural advisory service send SMS to around 10000 farmers to provide then with crop protection alerts (potato blight). And in your country, do you use SMS?
Contacts: Guy WAKSMAN, Iver THYSEN
Mél : waksman(a)acta-informatique.fr, iver.thysen(a)agrsci.dk


Bioenergy World Europe 2008
7-10 February - VERONA
See : http://www.bioenergy-world.com/europe/2008/


Potato blight network for Europe
See: http://www.eurobligh.net


Agricultural Metadata and Semantics
We would like to remind you that the Call for Papers of the Special Issue "Agricultural Metadata and Semantics" in the International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies (IJMSO) is published. Potential contributors to the special issue are strongly encouraged to submit an extended abstract for feedback as to the suitability of proposed papers until February 1, 2008.
See: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/callpaper.php?callID=804
Contact: Nikos MANOUSELIS
E-mail: nikosm(at)aua(dot)gr


Agricultural Events Application Profile (Ag-Events AP) is now available for use!
After a period of testing by FAO, GFAR and GFIS, the Agricultural Events Application Profile (Ag-Events AP) is now available to share information about upcoming events in the domain of Agriculture, Fisheries, Forestry and related subject areas. There are many aspects of an event, ranging from simple announcement to detailed description with session breakdowns so the goal of this standard was to provide enough information that allows users to 'know' about an upcoming event and guide them to the event web site which provides further detailed information. The standard can be implemented using web feeds such as RSS and Atom. In addition to the mandatory fields of RSS such as title, link, pubDate and description, the event feed needs to contain information such as start and end dates of the event and the city and country where the event is taking place
This information allows aggregators (Service Providers) to create services such as: browse events by country or region, one-click insert of event metadata into outlook calendars, filter events based on date to show upcoming events. The Ag-Events AP keeps the information communicated simple yet interoperable across domains and organizations. Examples of services currently using Ag-Events AP are AgriFeeds (www.agrifeeds.org) and Global Forest Information Service (www.gfis.net). A tool will soon be made available that allows users to
create the modified event related RSS feeds compliant with Ag-Events AP.
Browse Event Application Profile from: ftp://ftp.fao.org/gi/gil/gilws/aims/metadata/docs/eventap.doc
Contact: Gauri SALOKHE
E-mail: gauri.salokhe(a)fao.org


IBERCIB - Centro de Informacion sobre Innovacion Biotecnoligica
Me dirijo a usted para comunicarle que fruto de la colaboración entre International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) y la Escuela Agraria de Cogullada, Obra Social y Cultural de Ibercaja, hemos puesto en marcha IBERCIB - Centro de Información sobre Innovacion Biotecnologia, www.ibercib.es.
Nuestro objetivo es la distribución y difusión de información objetiva y gratuita, sobre las nuevas aportaciones de la biotecnología aplicada a la agricultura y los biocombustibles.
Si desea recibir mensualmente y de forma gratuita nuestros boletines informativos puede suscribirlos en www.ibercib.es/suscripcion
Estaremos encantados de que difunda esta información entre aquellas personas a las que considere pudieran estar interesadas en la misma.
Esperando que este nuevo servicio de la Escuela de Cogullada le sea de utilidad, se despide atentamente,
Web: www.ibercaja.es/escuela/
Contact: Jose Antonio Dominguez Andreu
E-mail: jadominguez(a)ibercaja.es


Dad!
A 7 year old asks his Dad, "Dad can you do my homework for me so I can play more video games?"
Dad replies, "No son, it wouldn't be right."
Son says, "That's probably true, but just do the best you can."


OJ and the devil

OJ Simpson has a heart-attack and dies. He immediately goes to hell (where else) and finds the devil is waiting for him.

"We have a problem and I 'm not quite sure what to do here," says the devil. "You are on my list of internees, but the place is full up - I have no room for you. However, you definitely have to stay here." The devil thinks for a minute. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I've got a couple of folks here who weren't quite as bad as you when they were alive. I'll let one of them go, but you have to take their place. And I'll even let YOU decide who leaves."

OJ thought that sounded like a pretty good deal and agreed to cooperate. So the devil opened the door to the first room.
In it was Ted Kennedy and a large pool of water. Ted kept diving in, and surfacing, empty handed. Over, and over, and over he dove in and surfaced with nothing. Such was his fate in hell.
"No," OJ said. "I don't think so. I'm not a good swimmer, and I don't think I could do that all day long."

The devil led him to the door of the next room. In it was Al Gore with a sledgehammer and a room full of rocks. All he did was swing that hammer, time after time after time. "No" said OJ," this is no good; I've got this problem with my shoulder. I would be in constant agony if all I could do was break rocks all day."

The devil then opened a third door. Through it, OJ saw Bill Clinton, lying on the bed, his arms tied over his head, and his legs restrained in a spread-eagle pose. Bent over him was Monica Lewinsky, doing what she did best.
OJ looked at this in shocked disbelief, leered and finally said, "Yeah man, I can handle this."

The devil smiled and said . . . . . . .

"OK, Monica, you're free to go."


About the EFITA mailing list
You can use the efita moderated list (>3500 subscribers) to announce any event / product / web site / joke (!) related to IT in agriculture, environment, food industry and rural areas.
If you do not wish to receive our messages, please see: http://www.efita.net to remove your E-mail address from our mail list.