The technology behind CheerLights starts with monitoring Twitter for keywords. Anyone wanting to control the lights can tweet to the @cheerlights account along with one of 10 colours – red, green, blue, cyan, white, warm white, purple, magenta, yellow and orange. Scharler gathers the tweets up and lets others get hold of the last colour using the ThingSpeak API. You can check up on the last colour here.

To connect the data relating to the last colour to the lights, it requires a combination of Arduino and ioBridge. A controller that subscribes to the “cheerlights” keyword receives the latest colour command and sets the colour on your lights. Arduino can be used to signal the lights, and ioBridge provides the web connectivity.

There is an Android app which displays the colours, a Chrome widget which shows the colour in the top left of the browser and a web widget which adds it to a webpage.

This Garage was founded two years ago, after a group of students at Aalto University visited MIT for a class trip. They were attracted by the culture of start-ups at the university and thought of importing it to Finland. Now, this space is one of the largest student groups in Europe, with partnerships with Stanford and cities across Russia and the Baltics.

One of the initiatives which takes place at the Garage is Startup Sauna, a non-profit seed accelerator programme funded by the University, which helps promising young teams in northern Europe to develop their ideas for a new company. 15 to 20 teams are selected to take part in an intensive six-week training programme at the Garage. After this period, the top three teams are offered seed money of 5,000 euros, office space for six months and even given the opportunity to fly to Silicon Valley, or anywhere else in the United States, to forge connections out there.

For example, one of the programme’s success stories is Campalyst, currently based in New York, which has developed a proprietary algorithm for working out if social media is actually delivering a profitable return on investment for a company.

The Fair Trade movement advocates the payment of a higher price to producers as well as higher social and environmental standards. Fair Trade labelling is a certification system designed to allow consumers to identify goods which meet agreed standards. Overseen by a standard-setting body, called FLO International and FLO-CERT, a certification body, the system involves independent auditing of producers and traders to ensure that the agreed standards are met.

Fair Trade certification aims not only at fair prices, but also at the respect of the principles of ethical purchasing, which include ILO agreements, such as those banning child and slave labour. Fair trade principles also include guaranteeing a safe workplace and the right to unionise; adherence to the United Nations charter of human rights; and a fair price that covers the cost of production, facilitates social development and respects the environment.