In our mind, the mobile phone's not associated yet with the environmental, social or economic problems that it leads to. However, some figures are scary: nearly 30 kg of raw materials are necessary to manufacturate a device of about 100 grams! And in the world, one estimates that a billion devices are living!

In Belgium (and that must be about the same thing in the neighbor countries), the average lifetime of a mobile phone is around 18 months. Briefly, a belgian mobile is abolished every 10 seconds! In one year, that represents 3 million devices. Among them, only 2% will be recycled.

Conclusion: at the end of your mobile's lifetime, the WWF advises to not simply give it up in a drawer, nor to throw it away, but rather to give it to a friend or a company of social economy. You can also exchange it while you purchase the new one, with the guarantee that it will be reconditioned for one second life. If it can be used never, abandon it in a park of selective collection or to a distributor that collect old mobile phones for free.

Source: WWF.be

Wednesday, the 13th of December 2006, Ve is watching TV. She lives in Belgium so she just watched the news on RTBF and the next TV program starts, while Ve lies on the sofa, thinking to something else. The next program is "Questions à la une". Allright. Good enough.

The show is soon interrupted by a special announcement, yadi yadi yada, everybody knows the story now. Video.

Ve wakes up and opens wide the eyes. She listens all the words of François De Brigode, she can't stop listening. She is told that the motorway is paralysed in Brussel, that the trains are stopped at the linguistic border, that Antwerp became crazy. Vi sends SMS to her friends. She is told that the King escaped to Kinshasa, that the planes are deviated to Liege and that the Ministers of Brussel Government are lockep up in the Atonium. Ve calls a friend.

Well, it was a joke, we all know it now. A really well done joke, we can guess that. But 6% of the belgian viewers believed the information until the end. Like Ve did (80% stopped believing when they saw "fiction" on the screen or sooner). This portion of Wallonia is said outraged, scandalized. And politician with them. Investigation, etc.

So what ? Should we conclude that 6% of the Walloon viewers are stupid to eat oats by bags of 100 kgs? It's hard because Ve is a friend. And we'd like to heard that Ve would switch to another channel (she receives more than 20), switch on her radio (the FM range is 87.5 to 107.9) or surf on a news website. But Ve staid tuned to the RTBF, and now she promises not to watch it anymore. It's like a non sense.

We want to say bravo to the RTBF as we would do to Orson Welles ...

Researchers from Switzerland, Italy, Germany, France and the UK have developed a system that can turn walls, tables, and other surfaces ... into virtual touchpads or keyboards.

The Tai-Chi system(Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer-Human Interaction) uses acoustic sensors connected to the edge of a surface that are able to track the vibrations of another object touching it. Tiny piezoelectric sensors allow to distinguish two objects touching it at the same time. There is also an identification method: each contact point can be identified thanks to a database of "vibration fingerprints".

"One advantage of the system is that for little cost you can have a much larger touch-sensitive area. The whole surface of your desk could become your keyboard and mouse-pad."