Web Monitor
15:37 UK time, Wednesday, 17 February 2010
A celebration of the riches of the web.
Today in Web Monitor: no title envy, inventing words and recreating voices.
• Dame Judi Dench and Dame Helen Mirren are examples used by Mark Lawson on Radio 4's Front Row to give actress Vanessa Redgrave title envy. But she was having none of it, insisting she doesn't want to be a dame anyway:
"I don't think I want to be a dame because I'm a Unicef goodwill ambassador... I just don't want to be dame of the British Empire. It doesn't fit my skin."
• Comedian Alex Horne is trying his hardest to invent a new word and get it into the English dictionary. Four years on from the start of this mission and despite having a book under his belt on the subject, there is still no extra word in the dictionary thanks to him. how he is keeping his resolve:
"Take 'bootylicious', a striking adjective that recently succeeded in scaling the dictionary walls, thanks to a solitary soul called Beyoncé Knowles. Yes. She did it. Beyoncé got a word in the dictionary. And if Beyoncé could do it, I thought, I could do it (which isn't always a mantra for my life. I don't always compare myself to one third of Destiny's Child. But on this occasion I felt I was justified)."
• Roger Ebert is a television film critic in the US who has lost his ability to speak due to cancer. how his previous fame will help him speak again:
"CereProc [a company which tailors text-to-speech software] is mining Ebert's TV tapes and DVD commentaries for those words, and the words it cannot find, it will piece together syllable by syllable. When CereProc finishes its work, Roger Ebert won't sound exactly like Roger Ebert again, but he will sound more like him than Alex [the generic voice] does."
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