There have been less fraught opportunities to glean what might happen to the boy magician ahead of schedule. According to the author’s official site, J. K. Rowling visited mugglenet.com’s chat room last year with the hope of divulging inside knowledge.

“Nobody was remotely interested in my theories about what’s going to happen,” she reported.

“In the end, I gave up trying to impart any gems of wisdom and joined in the discussion about SpongeBob SquarePants (don’t ask).”

www.thesun.co.uk

www.JKRowling.com

www.mugglenet.com

Virtual reality

After Big Brother comes Big Blogger. Starting this week, 15 internet diarists are taking part in an online version of the Channel 4 reality show.

Expect a similarly excitable array of participants to those seen on television. On finally hearing that she has been chosen to compete, Vitrolica “cannot tell you how tense that was, I’m just too excited. Gordon wet himself and Zoe fainted.”

Will it catch on? “When I sell this to Channel 4 you may get to meet someone famous,” Big Blogger informs the contestants.

www.bigblogger2005.blogspot.com/

www.unkemptwomen.blogspot.com/

Online ayatollah

“Want to have breast implants but worried that they may not be so pleasing to God?” asks the Lebanese Daily Star site. It reports how in Iran the clergy are now offering “your very own online ayatollah”.

“We set up the site because different people are discussing Islam and . . . regrettably there is only a superficial understanding,” said Nematollah Daneshmand, who runs saneei.org, Grand Ayatollah Youssef Saanei’s site. The largest hub is al-shia.com, which leads to 51 Shia “sources of emulation”, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Iraq and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran.

And in case you wondered: “In summary, his eminence has ruled that if a specialist says that breast implants and liposuction are not harmful to the patient, they are permitted.”

www.dailystar.com.lb

www.saanei.org/fa/index.php

www.al-shia.com

Blogs on the scene

“Barring actual bloodshed in a central location . . . the Western press may have little idea what is going on,” Ethiopundit said shortly before at least 26 people were killed in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, after protesting that recent elections were rigged.

Several Western journalists soon had their permits revoked by the authorities for “imbalanced” reports. Blogs continued the flow of news.

Meskel Square, run by Andrew Heavens, a freelance journalist on the scene, posted pictures of the violence.

“Just to say that they fall short in showing the full tension here on the streets and the terrible grief and injuries in the hospitals,” he said.

www.ethiopundit.blogspot.com

www.meskelsquare.com

Mash gone off

Hippocamp is a “netlabel” that releases free music online under a creative commons licence, a legal framework designed to allow collaboration over the internet.

Its artists use desktop software to create tunes and conventional record labels are catching on.

EMI recently signed up DJ Dangermouse, whose work was the subject of several EMI lawsuits after he mixed, or “mashed up”, the Beatles’ White Album with Jay-Z’s The Black Album, to create The Grey Album. However, the online music scene moves fast.

“This can only mean one thing,” said a poster on suicidegirls.com. “Mash-ups are now officially uncool. Next!”

www.creativecommons.org/

www.hippocamp.net/

www.suicidegirls.com/

A blog for life

According to Jason Calcanis of Weblogs Inc, “only one in twenty bloggers wants to work for free”. Not Chris Nelson who was hired by CMT, the US cable channel, to write on The Dukes of Hazzard, the 1980s TV series, for $100,000 a year. “This job will change my life,” he said.

www.cmt.com

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