Training of Trainers - Library - Network of Aquaculture Centres in ...

E-mail is probably the simplest, most ubiquitous and widely understood Internet technology. Email newsletters canprovide a personal and highly effective way to inform relevant stakeholder groups of new information published onyour website or links to relevant web pages, publications and other information resources. It is a good idea topublish a link or sign-up form for the newsletter on your website, so that you can encourage people to sign up to it.Recommended service:•Your Mailing List Provider: http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/. Includes tools to import/manage contactlists and to generate attractive html email newsletters.Mobile phones, location-based services and SMS gatewaysMobile phones continue to develop rapidly and are a driving force in mobile computing. Nearly all modern phonesship with a built-in data modem that can be used to access the internet, either directly through the phone orthrough a computer linked to the phone via Bluetooth, infrared or cable. 3G mobile phone services offerbroadband internet access speeds. This is expanding the reach of internet services into areas where cable andADSL are not available. With larger screens and smarter interfaces, mobile phones are becoming a viablealternative to using a computer to browse the web and access email etc.Web-to-phone and email-to-phone SMS gateways services are available for a few cents per message. Thesebasically allow you to send an SMS message to one or many mobile phones at the same time. These can be usedto provide convey short pieces of information or announcements to mobile-owning stakeholder groups. Clickatell isa reliable provider (http://www.clickatell.com). The Twitter social networking service (http://www.twitter.com) alsoallows you to post short messages directly onto a personal webpage by sending SMS from your phone, and alsoto receive messages posted by others that you have chosen to ‘follow’.An emerging trend is the development of location-based services for mobile phones. The approximate location ofeach phone is known to the carrier and more accurate GPS services are likely to become standard features in thenear future. This has lead to the development of services where contextual information (eg. weather reports)relevant to the owner’s location are provided.Sharing videos and photos through Youtube and FlickrYoutube and Flickr offer excellent free video and photo hosting services that you can use to upload and presentmaterial on the internet, to a wide audience. These services also deal with many technical issues such asencoding, compression and resizing automatically, ie. your materials will be optimised for presentation over theweb. Both services provide HTML code you can use to display your video and photos on other websites (such asyour blog) via link. If you have access to a digital camera or video camera you can experiment with producingshort documentaries or clips on better management practices.• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/• Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/Broadcast audio recordings: PodcastingPodcasting is simply publishing an audio recording on the web for people to download and listen to on theircomputer or MP3 player (some of the first podcasts were prepared on iPods, hence the name). It is anincreasingly popular format and widely used to publish talk shows, lectures and presentations.89