By SHARMILA NAIR

I HOPE that you are sitting down reading this – Paris Hilton is ready to settle down and start a family soon.

Okay, take a deep breath... there is no need for a panic attack.

During her recent interview with Life & Style magazine, the 28-year-old socialite opened up about her plans for 2010, and marriage is high on her list of priorities.

She gushed about her steady boyfriend Doug Reinhardt saying: “We’ve been together for a year now and never spend a night apart. He’s truly become my best friend. He makes me feel like a princess everyday.”

If we know Paris’ partying ways, the so-called marriage may not come for another five years. But then again, she could do a Nicole Richie and blindside us with a pregnancy announce-ment. Yikes!

Also possibly head-ing down the aisle is singer Katy Perry who got engaged to boyfriend Russell Brand while on a romantic tour in India recently.

The couple met at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards which Russell hosted and have been dating for less than a year.

Gossip site X17online.com is hinting that Katy may actually be pregnant!

The singer sparked the pregnancy rumours with her New Year’s tweet that said: “2010 is BUMPIN” and also when she tweeted this cryptic message last week: “Hey @rustyrockets i heard ur prego-ed”. (@rustyrockets is Brand’s Twitter user-name, by the way) .

So, does this mean that we’re going to see a loud, wacky and unkempt baby in

skinny jeans soon? I shud-der at the thought.

Another celebrity to pop the question is AJ McLean.

The Backstreet Boy asked for girlfriend Rochelle Deanna Karidis’ hand in marriage by going down on one knee at a swanky night club in Las Vegas (how classy), while celebrating his 32nd birthday.

With AJ’s engagement, that means Nick Carter is the last unattached

Backstreet Boy standing. Any takers? I didn’t think so.

Okay, and now for the scariest possible union between a man and a woman – rumour has it that Marilyn Manson is engaged to girlfriend Evan Rachel Woods!

Though the couple broke up two years ago, they reconciled last April and appar-ently got engaged in December.

Marilyn met Evan while shooting his video Heart-Shaped Glasses when he was still married to burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese.

Well, now that 2010 is turning into a year for engagement and marriages, maybe other celebrity couples should take note and move their relationship up another level.

High on this year’s engagement/wedding watchlist are Nicole Richie and her baby daddy Joel Madden, who have been dating for over three years and have two kids together. Though they already act and bicker like a married couple (check out their respective Twitter pages), it’d benice to see Nicole in a wedding dress,with Joel all cleaned up and kids

Harlow and Sparrow as flower girl and ring bearer.

Kim Kardashian and boyfriend Reggie Bush are also high on my list. With young-er sister Khloe all married and older sister Kourtney being a mother, Kim surely feels the pressure of settling down.

Well, only time will tell if these couples do walk down the aisle, but rest assured, I’ll definitely be there (online, at least) to catch all the wedding details.

Sharm says: Dear Hollywood celebrities, do you actually think you’ll get married and stay together forever? Haha, good luck!

STARTWO, WEDNESDAY 13 JANUARY 2010 R.AGE T5

http://hstheblog.blogspot.com

To say that Himmat is a tall blog-ger is an understate-ment. The 16-year-old student stands at

over six feet, and aspires to be an accomplished writer. His blog is the result of his passion for writing, and serves as an avenue to share his thoughts of various topics and issues.

Tian Chadwww.tianchad.com

Bloggers who frequently attend events will notice Tian Chad walking around with his trusty camera. This works best for his blogging style where he posts pictures over words including shots of his trav-els, events and random pictures.

Howard Uhttp://www.howard-u.com

Howard U, who is often referred to by his monicker GuaiChaiKid, is a first-year mechanical engineering student. His passion for photography means

that visitors to his blog are treated to a wide variety of pictures, focussing on food and events.

� Head over to http://blog.rage.com.myfor links to their latest entries. E-mail all-therage@thestar.com.my if you think you should be featured!

R.AGE Featured BloggersYou(ths) have a lot to say, and you say it in your blogs. Every week,R.AGE highlights three young Malaysian bloggers.

Paris Hilton and Doug Reinhardt

Katy Perry and Russell Brand

Mind your tweetsIn the absence of gatekeepers, Internet users should read everything with a pinch of salt.

niki@thestar.com.my

Happily ever after SHARMONTHESCENE

By NIKI CHEONG

ONE of my pet peeves related to the Internet is the amount of inaccurate information you can get. That the

Internet is technically infinite, and costs virtu-ally nothing for anyone to write and upload whatever they want, makes it fertile ground for falsehoods to fester – whether by malice, accident or ignorance.

For the longest time, before blogging and social media became buzzwords, it was forwarded e-mail that got to me. What bugged me more than the junk mail was the people who were blindly forwarding them.

Technology should not be blamed, though. Granted, the Internet is an efficient avenue to get information out there. E-mail can be writ-ten and delivered in minutes, and now social media gets things going in mere seconds.

However, I feel that it is the perpetrators – whether it is the original creator of the message, or the people helping to spread the news – who should carry the burden of blame.

Nowadays, with social media being so heavily utilised, the rate that information is being generated and spread is even faster.

Here are a few tips Internet users can adopt to help minimise the spread of misinforma-tion:

1. Read carefully before you tweetA tweet is fewer than 140 words, so read it

carefully before you retweet.

Just last week, local actor and playwright Jit Murad updated his Facebook profile status laughing off rumours of his death. According to him, someone had tweeted: “Jit Murad just passed by” and someone else read that Tweet as “passed on”. This was also the case when the late Yasmin Ahmad “passed out” during a meeting (which eventually led to her actual death).

This is of course not Twitter specific as it can happen also via e-mail, SMS, Facebook and blogs, for example.

2. Check you r factIt’s not gospel truth, just because it is in

written form. Often, we blindly send email we receive to people in our address book because we assume that everything we read is fact. A good way to overcome this is to use a little bit of common sense and spend some time fact checking.

For example, if something sounds off or strange, don’t assume that this “novelty” is the reason why the e-mail exists in the first place. It could just very well be a prank.

One easy way of getting around this is by doing a Google search. You can usually find more information on it (sometimes, pranks are busted really quick that it will even show on your search). Otherwise, there are some sites that specialise in demystifying facts such as www.snopes.com or www.truthorfiction.com.

3. Check your sources

With incidents which are closer to home, you can also check your sources. For example, during the unfortunate church attacks last week in the country, there were several rumours floating around the Internet.

Due to conflicting reports, some twitterers actually contacted the police to double check certain claims that were being made. This served two purposes: One, that they could check for accuracy of the claims, and also that checking could help correct any erroneous information.

4. Follow voices of authorityThe wonder of social media is it helps

people communicate directly with the mass-es. Many public personalities – whether poli-ticians, artistes or activists – have taken to the Internet to speak to their followers and fans direct. A good way to ensure that your infor-mation comes from the horse’s mouth is by, er, following the horse.

5. Use common senseThere is no underestimating good old

common sense. Access the situation and what you read. If it seems dubious, check up on it. If you are not able to verify it, hang on to the information first and pass it on only if you can confirm its accuracy.

With so much information available out there, just remember to approach everything with a pinch of salt. Often, there is no malice involved but things do get lost in translation, so it never hurts to be careful!

Himmat Singh