Posted by Dr Fritz Solms on 26 Apr 2012, 16:29 (last modified on 17 May 2012, 20:16)

Karl Zöller from the Computer Science department of the University of Pretoria is one of the six m2Work finalists. The other finalists are from Brazil, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Korea, and Armenia. m2Work is a worldwide challenge and a joint project of infoDev and Nokia’s Ideas Project.

Karl's project aims to enable game park visitors to make geo-tagged animal photos available for cost-effective animal tracking. The photos are uploaded onto a central server. The server uses the geological position information and other metadata to decide which micro-workers should receive the photo. Micro-workers typically use mobile devices to identify the animal and submit the information back to the server. This enables cash-strapped parks to perform cost-effective animal tracking and statistics collection.

Each finalist receives $2000 as well as some business and technical coaching for their idea. The grand prize winner receives $20 000. A jury will announce the grand prize winner on 17 May 2012.