After a large number of complaints Google pulled the daily Google logo – an Olympic Luge logo – from the home page and now features a very similar snowboarding logo instead. I think this was appropriate, but it’s always odd to me how harshly people react to this type of thing rather than paying attention to the monster issue of our time such as the health catastrophes facing much of the developing world.
But hey… I guess I’m doing that myself with this post? Shame on me, too….
Olympic Village … 4 months ago…
Originally uploaded by JoeDuck
The Beijing folks are such amazing capitalists that they were literally selling off the Olympic Village housing complex as luxury apartments in April – about four months before the Olympics!
The Olympic area is to form a new upscale residential area for Beijing, which has grown out many miles via concentric rings of development that began at the “center” of Beijing at Tiananmen Square.
OK, so I’ve got Gymnastics on the TV and Table Tennis early rounds on the computer. HUGE kudos to NBC and Microsoft for providing such a superb streaming and downloadable video environment – this is definitely NOT your father’s technological Oldsmobile Olympics.
Effective with Beijing we are seeing how powerfully technology can cover major events. In this case the coverage was very expensive, but as these technologies mature and bloggers become more adept at webcasting we can expect a lot of visibility where there was little before.
Cool.
Erick at TechCrunch has a problem with the coverage and is calling NBC lame, but he’s very wrong about compatibility and lameness. Bob Kostas’ deadpan nonsense notwithstanding, NBC rules.
Wow, when I first read this I thought it was a conspiracy theory but the UK Register report appears true. Some 55 seconds of fireworks during the opening ceremony were computer generated. The fireworks *really did happen* and presumably looked very similar to the clip, but fearing they could not film this in all it’s spectacle NBC spent about a year creating the fake clip.
Of course this would be crazy if the fireworks did NOT happen, but given that they did it clouds the issue of misrepresentation. ie they didn’t do this to “fake us out”, rather to better represent a reality that would have been hard to capture in real time. Still, I don’t like it. When you fake something like this it is incumbent to present it as a simulation or animation. Not doing so raises a lot of credibility questions, which are particularly unsavory for the main reporting agency in the world’s top sporting event.
Sheesh – I was prepared to be very complimentary of NBC ever since I heard their great presentation at CES Las Vegas where they talked about Beijing coverage. C’mon NBC – let’s provide transparency in coverage and distribution and everybody can be happy!
Wow, I just finished watching the opening ceremony (recorded) which was absolutely spectacular. It was fun to see the Birds Nest having just been there a few months ago, though I just missed getting a tour of the insdie by having to leave a few days before it was open for visits.
China’s presentation went off flawlessly and in super spectacular fashion with a historically unprecedented, stunning and breathtaking blend of technology, humans, and history. Wow.
Olympic Stadium from Pangu Plaza
Originally uploaded by JoeDuck
Wikipedia has a great summary of the Beijing Olympics. I’m a little concerned about the delayed coverages by NBC since I’m a night owl and would enjoy sitting back and watching in real time, but I’m thrilled that NBC will have all the events online so I can watch the Table Tennis, which generally is hardly touched by TV coverage. China is favored to take most if not all of the Table Tennis medals, but the champion has had a bad prior two major tournaments so he may not take the gold.
Model of Olympic Village Apartments in Beijing
Originally uploaded by JoeDuck
It’s fun to start to see so much Beijing stuff on TV after just being there. The Travel Channel is playing Samantha Brown china visits and the news increasingly features Beijing Olympics items. I have yet to see much about the three major big ticket Beijing buildings though. These are the “Birds Nest” Olympic Stadium, the big blue Aquatic Center, and my favorite feature which is just off the new Olympic Green – Pangu Plaza apartments and the Pangu Plaza‘s brand new seven star hotel. I’m trying to find my picture of the Olympic Media Center which really had an ominous look from the outside as the rumors swirled about how restrictive the Chinese Government would be with respect to Olympics coverage.
Here’s a New York Times article suggesting the internet will be censored (as it is during normal times in China) for Olympic journalists.
However I think people have the wrong idea about both the extent and the effectiveness of censorship in China. In Beijing we were watching CNN international’s coverage of the Tibet protests around the world and I even brought up the topic with several people who, rather than sympathetic, seemed more nationalistic about Tibet, suggesting it was part of China and the protests were not representative.
Certainly some of this view was helped along by China’s own government news coverage which is very propagandistic, but I didn’t get the idea people in China are too far out of touch with the rest of the world – rather they are proud of their country and defensive about the criticism.
Joe Duck 