Royal wedding breaks Internet records

Not too long ago, the networks said that the royal wedding coverage of William and Kate will be small and nothing like the same coverage for Prince Charles and Di. Well, the networks are wrong again.

I have always loved the monarchy in England. Queen Elizabeth bloodline is a quintessential example of a true dynasty. The British colony expands over 52 countries worldwide, and everybody around the world looks up to the UK with admiration and respect. People would have asked why we need a monarchy in the UK. The answer is quite simple. Most Brits wants to keep the monarchy. In fact, only 15% of Brits wants to see the monarchy dissolved. The fact remains that tourism to the UK is base on the monarchy. Since most people are celebrity-driven fans, the monarchy is no different to Obama, Bush, Bon Jovi, Elizabeth Taylor, or Kenny Chesney. The Brits are very traditional, and the monarchy stretches beyond generations. The monarchy holds all the colonies of the UK together. It gives the colonies pride and honor to be part of a tradition and legacy. The monarchy links the future with the present and past. It is why the British monarchy has been around a very long time.

Ironically, America needs the British monarchy. During our darkest times, the monarchy has cheered us up. We have seen it in 1947, when Queen Elizabeth married Prince Phillip after the Second World War and America's Great Depression. In 1981, after experiencing the worst recession under the Carter Administration, American saw the fairy tale wedding of Prince Charlie and Diana. And today's unrest in the Middle East and the recession in the USA, Americans can take solace to enjoy the wedding of Prince William and Kate.

(Digital life) The live streaming of Will and Kate's nuptials had 1.6 million concurrent video views, making it the biggest event to be watched on the Web, exceeding last summer's World Cup, according to Akamai.

"I can tell you the World Cup (last June) was around 1.6 million concurrent views as well, but the royal wedding has edged that out just a little bit more," said Jeff Young, spokesman for Akamai, which provides streaming-media services for more than 300 news websites, including msnbc.com, as well as other companies.

The wedding, streamed by YouTube and other sites, also surpassed "other major video events, like Michael Jackson's funeral and the inauguration of President Obama," Young said.

It's yet another sign that the Internet has "become a broadcast medium," he said. Obama's inauguration in January 2009 and Michael Jackson's funeral in June 2009 were "both really large events, but as time goes on and technology improves, you’re finding more people consuming more video on more devices," such as smartphones and tablets, Young said.

"Over those two years, there’s been an influx of connected devices, tablets, mobile phones."

The Associated Press said another company, Livestream, which partnered with the AP, UK Press Association, CBS and Entertainment Tonight for its live stream, "said it surpassed its own record with, at one point, more than 300,000 concurrent live streams."

In terms of Internet traffic for news, the wedding ranked 6th, behind the U.S. mid-term elections last fall, based on page views, Young said. At one point during the wedding, Akamai reported a peak of 5 million-plus page views each minute.

"At about 6 a.m. Eastern time, there was a sharp increase in traffic, and it peaks at about 9:30 a.m., with more than 5 million page views per minute," said Young.

Memory lane

This postcard of Queen's Road in Hong Kong (c. 1951) pre-dates my childhood life there, which began in 1966-7, at the time of the Cultural Revolution in China. But this and the one below are reminiscent of areas of the colony that were familiar to me, but which began to change rapidly in the 1970s, and has never really stopped, making it a first world and international city of extraordinary energy and wealth.

Edward Seago

The British artist Edward Seago painted many scenes of Hong Kong, including this of Queen's Road (West), and a number of panoramic scenes of the famed Hong Kong harbour, which are held in a private collection in Hong Kong, and are truly breathtaking, and evocative of the time. The postcard below (of Queen's Road Central, c. 1955), is extraordinary because of the lack of people, in a city now bursting at the seams, but it was pre Cultural Revolution and therefore prior to the major influx of refugees from the Mainland.

Seago was a friend of Queen Elizabeth, and painted this below, (a canal in Chioggia), as a gift for her. As a result of this royal provenance, these pictures are extremely expensive.

This below, although not in the Royal Collection, is of Windsor Castle c.1955.

Avoid the big red bus

I finished reading this massive tome - over a thousand pages including its glossary - which I can highly recommend for those interested in the subject. My main criticism is the size of the book, and by that I'm referring to its sheer weight, which makes reading a rather tiring exercise. The only way I was best able to deal with that was to read it at my desk. Whilst trying to be careful not to mistreat the book, its binding split when I was about halfway through. As Sir Roy Strong suggested, it would have been better to have published it in two volumes.


Queen Elizabeth's longevity meant that she lived through all the significant events of the C20th, and beyond, (just), into the C21st. Throughout, one outstanding characteristic was her zest for life, and this is quite well summed up in these few lines:


The high point of her [centennial] birthday celebrations was the pageant in her honour in Horse Guards Parade...The organiser, as for her eightieth and ninetieth birthday celebrations, was Major Michael Parker. In the mid-1990s Parker had had tea with the Princess of Wales and the Queen Mother. When the Princess said to her, 'We're all so looking forward to your hundreth birthday,' Queen Elizabeth replied, 'Oh, you mustn't say that, it's unlucky. I mean I might be run over by a big red bus." Parker said he thought this was very unlikely, to which Queen Elizabeth replied, 'No, no, it's the principle of the thing. Wouldn't it be terrible if you'd spent your all life doing everything you were supposed to do, didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't eat things, took lots of exercise, all the things you didn't want to do, and suddenly one day you were run over by a big red bus, and as the wheels were crunching into you you'd say "Oh my God, I could have got so drunk last night!" That's the way you should live your life, as if tomorrow you'll be run over by a big red bus.'


One might not necessarily agree that living a healthy lifestyle is a bad or onerous thing, but you get the drift, more succinctly, of carpe diem.


The completion of reading the book coincided with finding a comment on my blog from a new contributor. This naturally led me to read her blog, and by yet another of those extraordinary coincidences, one of the writers on her blogroll faves had written about this biography. Serendipity yet again, or am I blessed with powers?

Reunited

The statue to the present Queen's father King George VI stood solitarily for over 50 years. This week their daughter unveiled a statue to the late Queen Elizabeth, who died in 2002, and so their 50 year separation came to an end, albeit symbolically in bronze. Here is the Daily Mail story. Photos are by Jamie Wiseman, and the lowest by Columnist, taken in 2007.