Web Monitor
14:14 UK time, Thursday, 19 November 2009
A celebration of the riches of the web.
Today in Web Monitor: when a star wants to change and his fans won't let him, a history of bowing in America and when customer feedback becomes a collision course.
• Singer Cat Stevens, now called Yusuf Islam, is trying to get round the idea of being booed by fans in . It happened in Dublin when he took a break from performing classics to preview from his new musical Moonshadow. But Stevens seems to be weary of the call for him to perform his old favourites all the time:
"My voice doesn't seem to have altered, which, for many fans, is a godsend. But not to expect me to sing my favourite new songs from two carefully and thoughtfully created albums, but to demand a 'Beam me up, Scotty' return to the Cat Stevens persona of yesterday is more than any amount of imagination can hope for."
• Much was said about President Obama bowing to the emperor of Japan over the weekend. But when into the archives, she found bowing used to be a custom in the US until as late as the early 20th Century. She looked into why the custom went out of fashion:
"In the revolutionary period, the practice was regarded, by some, as a vestige of a less democratic society. Thomas Jefferson, for example, liked to shake hands instead of bowing. Traditional signs of deference took a further hit during Andrew Jackson's presidency (1829-37), when many American self-consciously rejected the trappings of hierarchy and the Old World."
• And finally, magician turned psychologist a gem of customer pictures on Amazon. The feature normally is a chance for customers to upload pictures of their very own version of the product on sale. The is a clip-on desk you can attach to your steering wheel to prop your laptop on. But instead of the normal pictures of customers enjoying the item, Wiseman noticed people had been uploading pictures of car pile-ups - presumably their take on what would happen if you surfed whilst driving.
This isn't the first time customer interaction on the site has not toed the line.
Previously a T-shirt with three wolves on it sold on Amazon after its page was deluged with over-enthusiastic comments about the T-shirt's powers.
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