She's a Reader

Yesterday was the yearly World Book Day. Time to celebrate the written word and to encourage our closed ones to discover/to share the pleasure of reading. I've found my own way to celebrate this day and I took the time yesterday to analyze the reading behavior of Belgian women. Because reading - books or other media - is a great way to escape our daily life!

Belgian women loves reading

View more PowerPoint from Vanessa Sanctorum

Source: research study #Femininsight - part of the project I'm every WOMAN-  some 3.000 Belgian women, aged between 15 and 75 years, were surveyed about their daily life (in February - May 2011)

Google+ vs Facebook

Who will win the battle on the social networking front? The future will tell. But the topic seems to inspire a lot of people. Today in the picture: Beatriz Torres, best known as Zirta, a freelance illustrator, graphic designer and comic artist from Tampico, México. I have to admit: I gave +1 :-)

Qwiki launches app

Qwiki, in my eyes the future of encyclopedias, launches its iPad app today! With some 3,000,000 topics summarized your kids will have a lot of information available for their next school assignment ;-)

38 years ago: first mobile phone call

According to a lot of posts I've read, the history of cellphones all started back on April 3rd, 1973 when Martin Cooper made the first ever phone call while walking in the streets of New York. As pointed out in this article, there weren't cordless phones at that time. 


Martin Cooper is a man with a great sense of humour: one of his first calls was to his rival at AT&T Bell Labs (Cooper was working for Motorola).

"The battery lifetime was 20 minutes, but that wasn't really a big problem because you couldn't hold that phone up for that long". 

No kidding. At that time, mobile meant you had to carry around a 2 kg 'bricklike' handset. People would have to wait for another 10 years before even thinking of getting one. Oh yes, and the price was some $ 3,995 in 1983 dollars. Let's enjoy together how Motorola promoted their products at the time with this 80s cellphone commercial:

Spotted on Mashable - 10 Hilarious Vintage Cellphone Commercials by Amy-Mae Elliott

Happy 1st Birthday iPad!

Love the comment of the Qwiki editorial team about the 1st birthday of the iPad and the release of the iPad2:

The iPad turns 1 year old today and already an iPad 2 has been released. Only Steve Jobs can get hoards of consumers to spend hundreds dollars more on a second iPad by simply stating: guys - it's thinner.

Definitely, there is some truth to it. What about me? I received one (the iPad 1) as a birthday present. And no, I'm not planning to get the thinner version. I'm very happy with mine. It's thin enough to take notes at seminars and to do a lot of other stuff like playing with Angry Birds in my couch :-)

View IPad and over 3,000,000 other topics on Qwiki.

25th March 1995: WikiWikiWeb

Qwiki video about the launch of the first user-editable website. FYI: the first user-editable website and the application behind it were developed by Ward Cunningham. This man deserves a medal "For services rendered to Humanity Knowledge"... or something like that.

View WikiWikiWeb and over 3,000,000 other topics on Qwiki.

Happy f... 70th Birthday Captain Haddock!

From Bashi-Bazouks to Visigoths and Zapotecs, his famous curses and exclamations entered the legend. Anyone who's fan of the comic book series Tintin knows about his best friend and 'partner in crime' Captain Archibald Haddock. It turns out that today he celebrates his 70th birthday.


Captain Haddock was introduced in The Crab with the Golden Claws. Until Haddock's introduction, supporting characters would only appear irregularly, and mainly in the background. Apart from loyal Snowy, the canine companion of Tintin. 


With the introduction of Haddock, author Hergé realised the captain's potential to ventilate cynical side-commentary in a very unique way. This was at the expense of Snowy, whose role was somewhat reduced to accommodate Haddock.

Evolution du/des féminisme(s)

Heureusement, les féministes de tout bord, n'ont pas attendu facebook et twitter pour faire la révolution. Mais de quelle(s) révolution(s) parle-t-on? 

A l'occasion de la Journée Internationale de la Femme, OWNI nous offre un panorama comprenant les incontournables auteures, mouvements et décisions politiques qui illustrent le(s) combat(s) de la gente féminine.

OWNI est un site de médias français et européens où collaborent journalistes et rédacteurs, designers et entrepreneurs, étudiants et chercheurs

8th March: International Women's Day

Have you ever heard about the National Media Museum (Bradford, UK)? Take a look at the 'On this Day' section.

Today in the picture: Women in 1925! Like the swimsuits. Do you?

In the 1920's, women's fashion and social behaviour were revolutionised. As here, women made choices which scandalised more conservative people in society, by showing their knees or revealing rolled stockings.



7th March : Alexander Graham Bell patents the Phone

I'm a huge fan of Qwiki and the e-newsletter with links to (new) content. I consider Qwiki as the future of web search and to some extent: the encyclopedias.


Today in my mailbox: Alexander Graham Bell patented the Phone on this day in 1876. Can you imagine one day without yours? (Euh... I can... ... I use my mobile as alarm clock. And because I'm already thinking about the 1000 things to do... So my mobile stay at home, next to my bed)


View Telephone and over 3,000,000 other topics on Qwiki.