A Googling Queen

Regal takes on a whole new quality when Britain's Queen puts up her own Royal Channel on YouTube. The royal technology twist on modernity is not complete without dedicated stiff upper lip minions taking her dictation and pressing send on Her Highness's royal emails to blast out into the ether world. Mind bending is Queen Elizabeth II uses her own iPod and its fully loaded. Crown jewel priceless, is an image of the longest reigning monarch in world history with earbuds singing to the music, making Her seem almost like the rest of us. No doubt, a bevy of royal grandchildren hipped Her to a new tech life. Word has it, she has, insert gasp, a cell phone and a crackberry to summon Buckingham Palace staff, which leads to hilarious speculation about her choice of ringtones, what ringtone lets her ignore Prince Phillip's text messages and whether the queenly pocketbook now vibrates. (Reuters photos/BBC)

Her latest tryst with technology is believed to have emerged at her granddaughters' urging. According to the British newspaper The Observer, the queen was unfamiliar with the popular video-sharing Web site, until her granddaughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, sold her on the YouTube phenomenon.

A statement from Buckingham Palace said that "the queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people," pointing out that last year, her Christmas message was podcast as well as broadcast. This year the address will be simulcast live on TV and on the Web site. (AP phot0/Steve Parsons)

Fifty years ago today, marks the very first Christmas message from the Queen of the British Commonwealth on the old tube, the TV. It is up on YouTube now and she is already the most downloaded monarch in history. One can click and see previous garden parties and other state occasions plus A Life in the Day of Prince Charles - too bad we don't get to pick which day. QE II is a tad over eighty years old, never learned to type and knows all about facebook. God Bless her and every other senior who makes an attempt to learn! (Hi Mom, you're doing great!)

A spellbinding movie about Elizabeth II won an Oscar for Helen Mirren, the actress portraying her during one of her most stressful and painful times on the throne. The Queen gave a famed 1992 anus horriblus speech speaking about how bad the year was all around, culminating with the marital separation of Their Royal Highnesses' Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Now that Diana is gone, she is not yet on the Royal Channel which expects to add more archival material. Fergie's MIA too.

The Queen, a 2006 film, is a must have - must watch DVD yielding a layered performance that gives a fictionalized, yet accurate view of Her Majesty and the battle of wills with her British subjects over the People's Princess.