Web Monitor
A celebration of the riches of the web.
Paper Monitor has had its grubby fingers round Magazine readers' free time for too long. His/her reign of inky terror is ending, with the dawning of Web Monitor.
Web Monitor's brief is simple. Look for and share interesting stuff which might otherwise go unnoticed. You are more than welcome to help with this task (you can recommend anything via Delicious to the "bbcwebmonitor" account, or use the box on the right of this page).
• Where to start, then... how about engagement rings? Fashion website about the price of celebrity engagement rings. It points the finger at Beyonce Knowles for being the celebrity with the most expensive ring - at $5m and equated this with 100,000 starving children in Africa who could have been fed for a year instead.
• Perhaps the most off-the-wall reaction to the outbreak of swine flu is - what they call, "fun face masks to fend off swine flu ", although the that masks would have any health effect at all.
• Ex-³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ DJ about his alcoholism and time in prison for breaking his restraining order against his ex-partner. The paper reports that the judge at the time referred to his life as "turning into a Greek tragedy." Kershaw said in the article that he now wants his job back, but agreed with the judge on his past. "What happened to me was a personal tragedy, the destruction of my family life, the denial of any contact with my kids for more than a year and the end of a 17-year relationship." (A Radio 4 interview with Kershaw which was due to have been broadcast this morning was pulled at the last minute, as Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer explains.)
• Barack Obama, the Pope and Oprah Winfrey have all been beaten to title of by an unheard-of online entrepreneur, Christopher Poole, also known as moot. Accusations across the web of Poole or his fans manipulating the online poll have been rife. : "Not only did they help moot win the poll", but they also arranged the next 20 names to spell out the name of a chat room. Despite this, Time Magazine denies being hacked. Social media guide, , saying he's influential in his own way . "In the world of odd memes, obscure anime images and bizarre photoshops - and these make a very large and important portion of the entity we refer to as "the Internet" - moot is king."
• News reader how he can't get over how much the world has changed since he was a boy. "The only television programme I'd seen before I was about 15 was the Coronation," he says."It was on a vast walnut cabinet with a very small screen on which it appeared to be snowing, in a corner of a neighbour's living room. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be watching it one day on a BlackBerry."
• The unofficial anniversary for the campaign to legalise cannabis in America has just passed. what it calls 'The Great American Pot Smoke-Out' with a photo gallery showing police walking through crowds of smokers without arresting anyone.
• Friend of Mike Tyson, rapper for the Daily Beast. Ice T takes the opportunity to defend Tyson's life choices. "You take a brutal sport, and you train someone to fight like a barbarian and then ask them to be a gentleman....Mike really did the best he could..."