Polly

Newspapers have an increasingly difficult problem finding a sustainable business model. It’s an all known fact that newspapers have trouble surviving and making profit. At first the switch from paper to digital seemed a solution but it turned out that people won’t easily pay for online news content. This, in combination with ad-blocker and many traditional advertisers who fear internet marketing, results in new problems. There might be a new business model that can actually work. It seems that people won’t pay for content but they don’t mind sharing personal data in return for free online news articles. Big data is becoming highly important and functions as a currency between successful companies and organizations. Publishers can sell data to advertisers which makes it possible for the advertisers to locate their target audience and set up successful marketing campaigns. Data does not only functions as a currency but also as knowledge, called ‘ knowledge management’. Creating prof...

Smartphones and other new technologies are changing enormously fast, it’s almost a full-time job keeping up with the latest trends. Smartphones are becoming more and more crucial to our lives. We are slowly getting into the area of the internet of things , which means that different objects are linked to the internet and to our smartphone. Examples of applications on the internet of things are smart parkings, smart trash cans, smart washing machines, etc. Linking these objects to the internet makes them smart, an empty parking spot can give you a notification if it’s empty or a litterbox when it’s full. The internet of things is still evolving, here in Belgium it’s more something theoretical than practical, although it’s probably only a matter of time. But even without the internet of things we are highly dependent on our smartphone, we use it for photos, for payments, for getting in touch with family and friends, for finding our way and many more. The internet of things will probably...

Boring Hollywood Last week culture magazine HUMO came with a free cinema ticket for Trainspotting 2. This of course another attempt to hold back the negative impression numbers, but this aside. I remember how impressed I was after watching the original Trainspotting, which must be over 5 years ago right now. I was interested to see how the characters would be off 21 years later and the free ticket was an excellent excuse for it. I liked the film but I wondered: what is the value of a Trainspotting 2? Of course it’s fun to see how the young junkies turned into 40 year-olds, but still, should you make a new movie about that? Couldn’t we just leave that to our imagination? Let’s take a look at some of the temporary blockbusters and films who will be released in 2017: Belle and the beast, Fast & Furious 8 , Despicable me 3, Spiderman: home coming, Cars 3, Fantastic beast and where to find them, The LEGO batman movie, Kong: skull island, etc.   I can easily give some more...

🙋😀🙏🏼🙈    ♻️   📝🆎㊙️  ❓ *** Could you understand the title without looking at the English translation at the end of the page?   Scientists are heavily debating whether or not there will arise a new emoji language. With  1851 emojis we are already far ahead of the ancient Egyptians who had to communicate with ‘only’ 700 hieroglyphs. The rising use of emoticons induces more and more academic interest in this new form of communication. Emojis are definitely a hot topic in the academic world. The biggest problem with communicating trough text or chat message is that it’s impossible to use intonation, emotion or hand gestures. The invention of emojis turned out to be a great solution for this problem. It's true that certain emojis have an emotional undertone. The ones we use the most are the smiles and hearts. When words fail but we still want our correspondent to know that we are thinking about them, we use emojis. There are two striki...