Web Monitor
16:41 UK time, Wednesday, 29 April 2009
A celebration of the riches of the web.
Web Monitor is scouring the web to find and share interesting stuff which may otherwise go unnoticed. Feel free to share your bits of internet gold dust (either comment on the box to the right of this or recommend to 'bbcwebmonitor' on Delicious.)
• Now then, where to start today... How about the singer once again known as Prince. In a very rare interview, on PBS that he's loving angels instead. "I've never spoken about this before, but I was born epileptic and I used to have seizures when I was young... One day I walked in to her and said, 'Mom, I'm not going to be sick anymore,' and she said, 'Why?', and I said, 'Because an angel told me so.'" Prince also said, "We live in a place now that feels like a plantation." Smiley questioned this, pointing out there is now a black president, to which Prince answered: "I don't vote and I have nothing to do with it... I'm one of Jehovah's witnesses - we never voted."
• The cast of American TV news can seem strange from this side of the Atlantic. Two of the dramatis personae are currently battling about waterboarding. Fox News' Sean Hannity vowed on air to re-enact to prove it's a fair and necessary interrogation technique. Rival channel "What kind of person would turn such a dark page in US history into a stunt?" and then offered a $1,000 per second Hannity withheld it. Having received no response from Hannity and his Sunday invitation for a waterboard unattended, Olbermann found a former army interrogator to conduct the experiment. "I'm willing to bet I can get Sean Hannity to say that Countdown with Keith Olbermann is his favourite show."
• Bookmarking site, . The Huffington Post will be asking these questions but there's no need to wait as commenters have kindly answered the questions on Branson's behalf - maybe a trend that could take off for celebrity interviewing? The most recommended question is "When does money become immaterial? Having $1 million is different from being broke and I imagine having $10 million is different from $1 million. Is $1 billion significantly different in terms of lifestyle impact and implications than $250 million?" This answer came from user Bowraven: "$1 million is certainly not enough especially right now as this will only produce a mere $30k a year, not an amount you can retire on."
• If you rush home from your holiday to upload your photos to show everyone, you are not unique. It lists the most photographed landmarks in the world gleaned from photo-sharing site Flickr. Surprisingly, the Apple building in Manhattan comes in at number 28. More predictably, the top seven most photographed landmarks are the Eiffel Tower, Trafalgar Square, the Tate Modern Gallery, Big Ben, Notre Dame, the London Eye, and the Empire State Building.
• Talking of Flickr, the world's media is judging how Obama has fared in his first 100 days in the White House. The most new-media-savvy president so far can be followed on the . The un-posed reportage style photos give a sense that it could just be some intern taking mobile pics on the sly.
• Lionel Ritchie has revealed his surprise musical influence was Led Zeppelin to Radio 2's Ken Bruce, "Rock came into my life in about '68. ..Led Zeppelin was at the top of the list. Stairway to Heaven inspired me to write so many songs. How they recorded it was just phenomenal. Because remember we have all the gimmicks today we can do in 15 seconds digitally but back then you had to be clever to get those sounds."
• Science fiction site, io9 hasn't got its sensitive hat on about the outbreak of swine flu. In their words: "Just to make you feel more panicked, we've put together a list of that show what happens when humanity is attacked by unstoppable viruses." These include 28 Days Later where a contagious virus is accidentally leaked across the UK and I am Legend, where Will Smith plays the sole survivor of a pandemic.
• It's odd how old posts become popular again. At the time of writing, a from 2007 was . It's the discovery by Elmar Fuchs, a scientist from Austria, that water can create its own bridge, with the help of electricity. His YouTube video accompanied by acoustic guitar is strangely moving.
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