Web Monitor
15:47 UK time, Thursday, 28 May 2009
A celebration of the riches of the web.
Web Monitor has clicked its way through the countless virals, games and blogs to round up the most interesting bits here. Make sure you send your favourite links by commenting on the box to the right of this or recommending it to us on where we're called "bbcwebmonitor".
• When asked by Hannah Pool in the Guardian if she is an outsider, she could have made a show about meta-physical poetry a ratings hit if only given the chance. Unfortunately she got the Vanessa Show instead, which prompted this comment:
"I have been branded a vulgar, cheap tabloid person. And in many ways I am, and I don't think there's a great deal wrong with that. "
• Sweden's Ministry of Health and Social Affairs has made a cool game to . On the front of their magazine mock-up you can make the model's boobs bigger, eyes bluer and even change the colour of her t-shirt. This reminds Web Monitor of the extremely successful , which has over eight million hits on YouTube.
• The Architecture blog latest photos from Saddam Hussein's palaces in Iraq. Some of the 81 palaces are being used as dormitories by US soldiers. Mosse told the blog:
"Troops scurried beneath vaulted ceilings and glittering faux-crystal chandeliers. Lofty marble columns towered over rat runs between hastily constructed chipboard cubicles... Life is hard on the front line, and it seems more than a little surreal to be ticking off the days in a dictator's pleasure dome."
• advertising on the website Craigslist is a bad thing, citing the loss of the safety the site created for sex workers. They also say it's bad news for beat cops, who will find it harder to crack down on the sex trade as they can no longer find it at a click of a mouse. Meanwhile in the UK, that banning sex ads on just one local paper cost the Southern Daily Echo £200,000 in lost earnings.
• The the trend among high school students to hug as a greeting. Some high schools are banning hugging, citing anything from worries surrounding sexual harassment to hallway clogging and late arrivals to class. But, one high school student explains it's the new hell. Katie Dea, an eighth grader opines: "The high-five is, like, boring."
• When Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered in 1823, the New Scientist says they extended the span of recorded history by around 2000 years and allowed us to read the words of Ramses the Great. Now the . Researchers are working on decoding ancient writing from Easter Island to Pakistan. The key to being able to crack them is if there is a link to another language. Let's hope they've got something worth saying.
• Naomi Farmer explains in the from bloggers to get rid of words that no-one knows or uses. One such word she picks out is mallemaroking meaning "carousing of seamen in icebound ships". She argues that it is exactly these obscure words that need to stay in the dictionary as they are the ones that are going to be looked up.
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