Folk Calendar App a Runaway Hit, Says Gov't
The Rahvakalender app for mobile devices has been downloaded over 21,000 times in the past half-year, making it one of the most popular educational apps to come out of the public sector, the Government Office has announced.
"It is an outstanding achievement by Estonia’s standards,” said Jaanus Rohumaa, who authored the idea. Rohumaa is the head of the EV100 organizing committee based at the Government Office, which is rolling out many different projects for Estonia's 95th and 100th independence anniversaries this year and in 2018, respectively.
Featuring scholarly sourcing (hyperlinks to museums and ethnographic collections), a simple layout and attractive typography, the calendar app was introduced in February and profiles, on average, six to eight days of note per month.
For instance, users will find that folk and religious holidays are far from exhausted in the post-midsummer lull - Thursday is Seven Sleepers' Day, commemorating a martyrdom in the early Christian era and little-known even to ethnologists in Estonia. And June 29 is the feast day of the patron saints of medieval Tartu, Peter and Paul.
Rahvakalender offers up a recipe for an iced coffee, among more serious information, and comes with a "this day in Estonian history" feature.
What is conspicuously missing currently, considering the large number of movable feast dates, is the capability to look ahead to 2014. It is also available only in Estonian.