91Èȱ¬

A celebration of the riches of the web.

Eyes down, look in - there's much NHS Bingo and word spotting to get on with. Share your favourite bits of the web by sending a link via the letters box on this page.

• Web debate over the last week has been a fertile ground for Web Monitor's very own game: NHS Bingo. The idea suggested in WM previously was simple enough - NHS Bingo can be played when flicking through the opinions on US health reform. The first to find six references to the NHS is the winner. But so far, we've had no takers for the big prize (kudos - no physical prizes available). Maybe we need to make things simpler - how about an explanation of the from the ? How about that explanation on the back of ? Oh I see, you want to go back to the bingo idea now? Well there's plenty to get started on. seems to be playing NHS bingo - charting last week's NHS love-fest on Twitter, where Gordon Brown and David Cameron both added their comments to the #welovetheNHS trending topic. The Investors Business Daily made a booboo when they that physicist Stephen Hawkins wouldn't do too well in the UK as, it suggests, the NHS forgets about people with disabilities. It was , that Hawkins does live in the UK. This was and the article was changed. So come on, eyes down, look in, let's play Bingo.

• Life doesn't often imitate Robocop, let alone Robocop 2. But a fantasy advert in said film for sunblock with an SPF of 5,000 seems to be nearing reality. a new term - SPF creep - which describes the trend for higher and higher sun protection factors in sun creams. Wordspy spotted , reporting the introduction of Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Dry Touch Sunblock SPF 100+ they also noted that Canada's that Health Canada has approved a sun cream with a 110 SPF, but the earliest citation of SPF creep was of this year. Can you find an earlier use?

As words evolve, some disappear as well. Media 'expert' (press critic and journalism professor to be precise) Jay Rosen believes that the next word to go is blogger. He says it will become a redundant word, or as the people in :

"We asked Rosen what he thought of the term "blogger" and how there is not a word to distinguish a journalist who blogs and a numbnut who blogs. "

Yesterday's Web Monitor challenge to find the word for new words for old objects surpassed by technology has been met with gusto.

Neil Golightly in Manchester found the word to explain the concept. As well as landline, other retronyms found by Frederick Heath-Renn in London include: "acoustic guitar", "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope", and "silent movie". Richard Cochran added "film camera". And many of you corrected Web Monitor on one point - landline, including Irene in Atlanta:

"I think 'landline' is more a case of a word that used to be only known to specialists. I believe I first came across it in a Freeman Wills Croft detective novel set in , and probably also written in, World War II."

More details are in Your Letters. The search is still on for a blog tracking retronyms, so keep clicking away.

• The political blogosphere has some new words in it aswell. Well, when we say new, we mean Welsh. Welsh is a new language to Web Monitor, who doesn't often come across Welsh blogs but was happily surprised to find out our colleague Vaughan Roderick's 91Èȱ¬ blog on Welsh politics in Welsh at number nine in the top 40 political blogs as . Surprising when considering the 91Èȱ¬ Voices pages says:

"According to the 2001 UK census, 582,000 people in Wales claim to be able to speak Welsh."

Vaughan Roderick has commented on the vote:

"Beth fedra i ddweud? Mae'n rhaid bod mwy o bobol yn deall Cymraeg nac oeddwn i'n meddwl! Diolch i bawb wnaeth bleidleisio!"

• on creative interpretation of the word "London" by those at Oxford Airport who have rebranded it as London Oxford Airport. on the bright side:

"B&Bs in Victoria can now promote themselves as the perfect base for a weekend in the Cotswolds."

Meanwhile, creative writing is also being seen at Heathrow airport - as Alain de Botton has become the resident writer there :

"If you were asked to take a Martian anywhere to try and understand what the modern world is actually like, you'd probably take them to the airport. This is where modern civilisation has, as it were, got all the bits on display. You've got high technology, you've got globalisation, you've got environmental threat, you've got consumerism. It's all here in the airport, which is what makes a journey to the airport a trip in itself."

The pop-philosopher is not the first to ask the big questions about airports - as reported in Web Monitor, about his love for airports:

"Borders will be torn down. Others will go up. Identities will disappear. Others will take their place. Languages will die. Others will arise. The non-places of today are the places of tomorrow."

Bure and de Botton seem to argue that the airport is not merely part of the journey but the destination in itself. The airport review site , goes one step further, seeing the airport as a potential roof over one's head for a night. It gives users' reviews to whether you can get away with saving on a night's accommodation and sleep in an airport or if it really is less hassle to splash the cash on a hotel. , whilst Paris's .

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