91Èȱ¬

A celebration of the riches of the web.

From lords sent to live on duck islands to sounds of horses in Kyrgyzstan, Web Monitor cherry picks the most interesting recent events on the web. To share a gem, send your links via the comment box.

• Could comedian, writer and broadcaster Hardeep Singh Kohli add Lord to his title? Well no-one has suggested this apart from Web Monitor here, but it turns out he's not even interested anyway as he wants to keep hereditary peers in place. He's been getting all hot under the collar about House of Lords reform . Reforming Parliament's upper house is back on the agenda and possible changes mooted include 80% or even 100% of the lords being voted in:

"What will they do with the hereditary peers? Put them on a floating duck island? ...The Lords is full of people that bring life experience with them, not just career politicians, industrialists, trade unions, just groovy people. And the level of debate in the Lords far outstrips the debate in the Commons - read through Hansard. If you've got insomnia I think you should do that anyway."

Incidentally, if you like reading through Hansard (the reference of everything said in Parliament that lulls Hardeep to sleep) you may also enjoy possibly the geekiest games in existence - . It's a crowdsourcing game which gets you to match video of the House of Commons from the 91Èȱ¬ with the text of Hansard from Parliament. Watch the video, match the text, the clip goes live, and you move up the rankings. As , "Improving democracy has never been so addictive."

• Michael Jackson's effect on the web is starting to move away from sick jokes and become innovative. The social media guide the trending topic on Twitter, which show the effect of Michael Jackson's memorial on the twitterverse. about Jackson, conducting a vote of their own on whether congress should honour Jackson forever - a resolution being put forward by Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee. Among the reviews of the show, like which called Mariah Carey up for wearing a "dangerously low cut dress", is . This database of all songs ever sung on American Idol, which rates each performance, has a by hopefuls.

• One area that Jackson's legacy is loosing its grip on is videos being posted to blogs, according to which lists the top blogged-about videos.
On Monday's Web Monitor pointed to a viral that had beaten Michael Jackson to the top spot on YouTube. But that was . Now Jackson is being beaten by a mere . Mind you, it is an advert about street-dancing babies. Is this a sign that advertisers are getting their way with the viral video world? Popularity of an advert in virals has not been seen since the that wasn't even shown on TV.

• Web Monitor has noticed that there aren't enough handwritten blogs around and as if by magic, when waiting for one handwritten blog, two came along at the same time. In the Pursuit of Happiness seems to make her commentors very happy indeed. The blog is actually a handwritten history of democracy in America. But Alfred Sirleaf's blog goes one further - it's written on a black board in the middle of a busy highway in Monrovia, Liberia - He's an "analog [sic] blogger". OK, maybe it isn't a blog but the , which flagged it up, does have a point - as Sirleaf's service is essentially doing what a lot of blogs do - summarising all the news in a way people can understand at a place convenient to them.

• From cavorting in Waterloo Station in the morning to the thugga-thugga of a pneumatic drill churning up parts of the ground outside the Bank of England a strangely alluring soundscape of London to give people outside the country an idea of the atmosphere. This reminds Web Monitor of the 91Èȱ¬'s Save Our Sounds, which is archiving soundscapes from across the world be they horses in Kyrgyzstan or Monks in Phnom Penh. You can spread sounds yourself with the help of , as pointed out in the Dot Life blog by the 91Èȱ¬'s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, who thinks an audio revolution could be taking place.

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