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Cristiano Ronaldo and Paris Hilton to sing Elvis songs on Celebrity Big Brother

Time for a new competition, which I think we will call the Britney Spears award.

Recently I posted on an deeply unnecessary BBC programme. The post was headed "Lindsay Lohan, the porn star and the BBC." A fellow blogger accused me of "Google whoring". I had to look up this phrase  on the internet.

But now I know what it is, I am able to provide Comment Central readers with an opportunity for fun that is almost endless.

Google whoring is stuffing your headline full of key words and phrases likely to feature in popular internet searches. The story does not need to be, ahem, robust so long as it can appear under a string of terms that people look for on the net.

Let me give you an example. The Telegraph featured this fantastic story:

Britney Spears to play lesbian killer in Quentin Tarantino film

I wouldn't start queueing for tickets in anticipation of this movie actually being made.

So now I want you to invent your own Google whore headline and post it here on Comment Central.

My colleague Anne Spackman suggests:

David Beckham's celebrity sex tips

Or you might try:

Cristiano Ronaldo and Paris Hilton to sing Elvis songs on Celebrity Big Brother.

Can you do better?

What happens when you reply to a Nigerian scam e-mail

I have just received some good news in my inbox. Here is how it starts:

Greetings to you. With due respect, I am Mr. Lukas Ociuo (esq), the legal director here at the Ministry of Works Abidjan Ivory Coast.

Mr Ociuo is a very assiduous man. He wishes to send to me the money due to a deceased contractor, who shares my surname and might therefore be related (building contractors called Finkelstein abound in the Ivory Coast I understand). And all I have to do is reply to his email.

It's as easy as that! Perhaps I should get Fraser Nelson in on the deal. He can use the proceeds to cut taxes.

Anyway, I was idly wondering what would happen if I replied and I came across this fabulous, laugh out loud funny, exchange that took place when Will Sturgeon of Silicon.Com replied to a Nigerian email scammer.

Will began with this masterful reply:

Dear Madu Frank,

Thank you very much for contacting me with this wonderful offer, it sounds almost too good to be true. It's amazing, only this morning I was saying how I could do with having a bit more money - I must be a very lucky man.

Of course I would be interested in helping, but would also be very interested to hear who recommended me, as you say you have been told that I am a "reliable" and "trustworthy" person. I assure you I am, but would like to know who I have to thank for this wonderful opportunity.

Just to clarify, you say I stand to get 30 per cent of the total money transferred - this is £6.75m, right? Wow!

I look forward to hearing from you.

Now read on.

The mobile vote

Pollsters have long worried that they're missing an ever growing portion of the population. In polls that dial only landlines, what happens to those that can solely be reached by mobile?

Fivethirtyeight suggests that the gap in results is fairly substantial. They look at fourteen recent election polls to dig up the following data:

The cellphone polls have Obama ahead by an average of 9.4 points; the landline-only polls, 5.1 points.

More evidence that younger people will be turning out for Obama.

Why Wikipedia works

The great Stephen Pollard, like my colleague Oliver Kamm, does not admire Wikipedia.

And today he has posted about an alteration to his Wikipedia entry that he was "told about by a friend". He says it proves that:

No entry on Wikipedia should ever be regarded as reliable.

Here's what the rogue editor had added to Stephen's biog:

Today, Pollard is one of three bloggers for The Spectator, with the majority of his posts pouring praise on the far right Israeli Likud, in common with fellow blogger, Melanie Phillips. These bloggers have cultivated a band of hard right Israeli symphathisers whose comments contain a level of vitriol against Muslims that can be offensive.

I accept that this is wrong. But here's the thing about Wikipedia - you can remove errors when you spot them. And people do - unlike with other publications.

So, having read Stephen's post I thought I would have a go. I created an account on Wikipedia and went in to change the offending paragraph.

Only I couldn't. Because someone else was in the entry removing the paragraph altogether.

Stephen's post was intended to demonstrate the weakness of Wikipedia. I think he demonstrated the opposite.

Saved by the bell: the British phone box

Bells will continue to ring out from everyone's favourite British icon after a telephone box reprieve.

BT had announced final call for the seldom-used symbols. But today they've announced that areas can keep them - at a price. Councils must pay £500 for a working phone box or £250 to adopt one of the ideas put forward by Comment Central readers.

We know which one we're rooting for. Bring on the Tardis.

The biggest thing since West Wing

Please let it be true. Please let it be true.

Rumour has it that Aaron Sorkin, the genius behind the West Wing, is to tackle a phenomenon even bigger than the White House. His new target? Facebook.

Sorkin has a foolproof reseach plan for his movie - set up a Facebook page and hope the users tell him what to do. Or as he succintly puts it:

I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is

Indeed. Actually he probably doesn't need a foolproof plan at all. When the army of Sorkin fanatics meet the network of Facebook groupies, success is all but guaranteed.

Still, could Comment Central help out with a small casting suggestion? Bradley Whitford, meet Mark Zuckerberg. After Josh Lyman, playing a nineteen year-old techie should be a cinch.

Final call: Find a new use for the British phone box

What do you do with a redundant phone box? The red box is iconic. But also, in the age of the mobile phone, unnecessary.

At least, it is unnecessary as a residence for a telephone.

As a result British Telecom is planning to take them out of service.

So if we don't want to lose this important feature of our landscape we need to think of an alternative use for the boxes. And quickly.

Comment Central readers to the rescue.

Can you provide an alternative use for the great red British phone box?

Why the iPhone 3G is not available

Here is what the 02 website has to say about the availability of the new iPhone 3G:

Thank you for your interest in iPhone 3G. We are experiencing unprecedented demand for the device and whilst we are confident that all customers who want iPhone 3G will get one by the end of this summer, initial supply is limited and will be for some weeks.

This is a striking statement.

First of all, they claim the demand for the device is unprecedented. This is either unremarkable - since it is a new device any demand for it at all would be without precedent - or untrue - if they are arguing that no device in the history of devices has ever experienced such demand then I refuse to believe it.

Second, it is hard to understand why the demand would have taken them by surprise. All iPhone users on the higher tarriffs are being offered the phone free of charge, while being allowed to keep their existing devices.

Wasn't it entirely predictable that all of them would apply immediately for the new phone?

And Apple have been stoking demand, emailing and texting existing users to encourage them to get the device as soon as it was available. Yet if manufacturing difficulties are responsible they would have known for months that they were encouraging customers to apply for a product that would not be available.

Clearly Apple are aware that scarcity is a powerful social influence.