New this week
>> Monkey Olympics
If you saw Eastenders last night you may have spotted the first trailer for the BBC’s coverage of the Beijing Olympics, featuring music and animation created by Gorillaz collaborators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. Watch the full two minute animation featuring “the immortal Monkey King - as highly skilled in the art of magic as he is in speed, strength and agility” and his cohorts Sandy and Pigsy. The BBC Olympics site introduces the characters and explains how they were inspired by Journey to the West - one of the four most important works of fiction in China's history. More on the BBC Olympics site in a couple of weeks.
>> Google Knol
This is the first public version of a project described by Web User magazine as “Google's Wikipedia rival”. According to Google “A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions"
Something musical
>> Proms 2008
Just ahead of the first ever Doctor Who prom here’s a plug for the Beeb’s online coverage of the UK’s most popular and least stuffy classical music festival. This year’s super-colourful site includes a really good introduction to the history of the festival plus expanded 'Proms Plus' listings, embedded video and audio clips and a selection of wallpapers to download.
Something Arty
>> Wet Paint – Please Touch
We’ve seen a few online paint tools before, but this is the first one which hangs its virtual canvas on the side of an equally virtual building. Your invited to grab a brush, or roller from the side of the kerb in order to create your own “Can-you-tell-what-it-is-yet” style masterpiece. Uniquely there’s even a brush called the Jackson P which can be used to help create your Pollack-esque convas. When you run out of paint you can choose whether to pass it on to another online painter to complete, or whether to declare it finished and have it hung in the public gallery
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