REVIEW: Olympics Web Coverage Disappoints
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Though NBC is blanketing seven networks with 1,210 hours of Olympics coverage, there's this pesky, bill-paying task called work that keeps me from fully enjoying the televised competition.
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The 2004 Olympics haven&#39;t even ended yet, but German sports officials and policy-makers are already starting to moan and groan about the German teamâs performance in Greece and are demanding structural changes in the way Olympic hopefuls should be
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(InfoWorld) - When Beijing won the right to host theÂ 2008 Summer Olympic Games, officials promised to use it as a showcase for new technology and China's economic development. But the reality is that while the games will display the world's top athletic talent, it will be using old, mature technologies. A lot of new technologies, and even some mature ones, have already beenÂ cut from the roster. Microsoft Windows Vista, for example, won't be the OS used on any of the PCs responsible for vital functions at the Olympics; its predecessor Windows XP will. WLAN (wireless LAN) didn't make the grade either. All networking for the games will be done by wireline. Officials have even prepared a mobile Web site for the Olympics based on WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), instead of GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) or 3G (third generation). The site is designed to provide up-to-the-minute scoring information, and it's already online. "We're only using proven technologies at the games," said Hou Xinyi, deputy director of the technology department at the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, which has taken the acronym, BOCOG. If China's 3G system is up and running by the end of this year, the official Web site for mobile users will be more useful to people, he added. So far,Â China hasn't said when it will start issuing 3G licenses. The nice thing about WAP is its reliability and usability. Most wireless networks can be used with it, including CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), PHS (Personal Handy-phone System), TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access), and most OSes allow people to read information from WAP sites. It's just not as fast as 3G, not by a long shot. But while the technology may be lacking, attendees to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games will be treated to some spectacular design work. Not only are some of the stadiums being built for the games unique -- and unusual for Beijing -- the torch to be used in the round-the-world relay is also easy on the eyes. And it was developed by a PC vendor, China's own Lenovo Group. Lenovo won the design contest for the 2008 Olympic torch. The company's PC designers came up with a 72 centimeter tall, 985 gram aluminum torch in the shape of an ancient Chinese scroll. The torch is two colors, split in half in the same manner as the Yin-Yang symbol, said Y.J. Yao, a vice president at Lenovo and head of the design teams. The upper half of the torch is silver with cloud designs outlined in red, while the lower half is red, covered by a special paint with a rubbery feel, a no-slip safeguard so runners won't drop it if they're sweating during their 400-meter portion of the global torch run. Originally, the company thought about using a dragon design on the top of the torch, but "the dragon is a symbol for the emperor, not for everyone, so we can't accept the dragon," Yao said. The cloud is for everyone, and represents the coming together of heaven and earth, he added. The name of the torch is the Cloud of Promise. The form of the torch -- the scroll design -- denotes paper, a useful item and a Chinese invention, Yao said. The color was chosen via a survey. "We asked, what color is China? Over 99 percent of respondents said red," Yao said. The color represents fire and warmth, friendliness and luck. People who like pictures of the torch might be interested in buying one of the laptop PCs Lenovo designed using the torch colors and styles. The company plans to auction off 2008 of them online and donate the proceeds to charity. EbayÂ is helping with the auction, but it won't be an eBay URL (uniform resource locator), said Yao. "We have a passion for the Olympic Games," Yao said. "You know, when it's happening in your city, you have a passion for this." The other top Olympic-related design work has gone into the new National Stadium, referred to by many as the Bird's Nest due to its unorthodox construction. The opening and closing ceremonies of the Summer Olympic Games will take place in the stadium. The exterior of the 91,000 seat stadium resembles a bird's nest, a steel exoskeleton wrapped around the outside of the site. The design is bold, and striking. It's hard to tell how it's going over with local Beijing residents, though. Many complain that there's nothing Chinese about it and one of the best comments this reporter heard on a recent trip to the city was "I guess it will take some getting used to." Beside the Bird's Nest is the National Aquatics Center, where all swimming and water sports events will take place. Based on the geometry of water bubbles and crystals, the center was nicknamed the Water Cube because of the design of its light blue and white outer membrane. The Cloud of Promise, Bird's Nest and Water Cube are all attempts at innovative design. Unfortunately, the technology used at the games won't be quite so bold. Â
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LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Olympic athletes may be allowed to blog for the first time at the 2008 Beijing Games.
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The IT infrastructure for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing depends on mature technologies like wireline networking and WAP.
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By MIRON VAROUHAKIS      ATHENS, Greece  -- If you're planning on attending this month's Olympic Games, you'd best be careful what you say and do in public.    Software will be watching and listening...
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The Olympic Games are a week old! Not bad for an event first recorded in 776 BC. The Games have so far gone much better than anyone really expected.
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JEDDAH, 20 August 2004  First, let me make it clear that I have always enjoyed watching the Olympic Games on television ever since I was a child. The problem nowadays is that the Olympics have been turned into gigantic business proposition both for the ...
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Yesterday China Herald tipped me that the Yahoo.com website (the English version) didn&#8217;t resolve. I checked, saw that it was true and thought I would check back the next day if the situation had changed.  At times these things happen here in China and it could have been a technical problem instead of a block. [...]
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Mainstream news sites cover "markedly different" topics than sites that allow users to participate in choosing, a new study says.
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There are some people who feel that Michael Phelps has been overpraised at these Olympics, that the attention on his medals came at the expense of others.
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Before heading over to the Web 2.0 conference at the Palace Hotel in SF this morning, I couldn't resist doing some more digging into alternate user interfaces for news reading based on the NY Times keywords.  One thing I learned the hard way is that when you access the Times site from a script (not through a browser) if you try to read an article that's too old (not sure what the time limit is) it tries to redirect you to a login page (which is pretty pointless considering that there's no human being around to log in). I hit this problem yesterday, and then hit it again this morning, but couldn't remember what the problem was. So by writing it up this time I hope to remember.  No doubt some debunked hack journalist posing as a tech industry mogul will slander me for this, but the asshat asshole has no idea how blogging works, and who the fuck cares what he thinks anyway. "cheesecake"
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For photographer Joe McNally, who has covered the Olympics for Sports Illustrated and is now in Beijing to promote the 2008 Games, it&#146;s the limits of the human body &#151; and the stories inherent in them &#151; that capture his imagination. He counts on Aperture and Apple technology to help him tell those stories.
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NBC Universal's most recent  acquisition isn't wasting time getting into the swing of things  with the company's Olympics coverage.
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A look at NBC's coverage of the summer Olympic games from Athens:
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Midway through the race between Olympics past and present, this year's edition is outrunning its predecessor from four years ago.
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Today's mixed bag of a press review covers, among other topics, the acquittal of a terror suspect by a German court, the Russian shot-putter stripped of her gold medal in Athens and a Georgian disco.