Vancouver 2010 Olympics Coverage Daily - Tech Talk

Symposium underway

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 04:41:00 -0800

The symposium is underway. My computer has been taken over by Dr. Andy Miah to give the first presentation. Kris handed his computer over and I've taken a few pictures with my cameraphone. Robert is taking pictures with his "good" camera and taking a few notes as well.

We started by going around the room and having everyone introduce themselves. Internet service providers, website developers, research consortiums, and content providers are here. Words like innovation, promotion, and research are being used a lot. This is a very interesting group of people, and I'm already thinking of just opening up my 15 minutes in a very different way. There are many experts in the room and I'd love to hear them all speak.

A representative from Top-IX talked about taking technologies from something that people are perhaps aware of or at a research level, and promoting them and making them real to people. Their challenge is about promoting home Internet broadband -- I pointed out that we have much to share. Canada has some of the highest per capita home broadband usage, but we lack sadly in mobile technologies.

Blogging, Athletes and web sites - to be continued ...

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 16:41:03 -0800

So, as Boris pointed out, the IOC has told athletes not to particpate in journalistic activities, which to them, means blogging. This is good and bad. Bad cause i want to read the personal notes of the athletes rather than the contrived emotion and occasionally inane interviews. In some ways this ban is GOOD because it shows that the whole citizen as journalist/artist/communicator trip is on the radar of the "grey suits" who run the IOC (and of course control the world ;-)).

This is lame because many athletes use blogging as a means to stay in touch with family, friends and supporters.

A few examples of web stuff i've come across:

Kari Traa - the (uhh sorta hot) Norwegian mogul skiier keeps a "gossip" section on her site which she blogs about "controversial" content like where she is sleeping at the village (big screenshot on Flickr). However, the IOC has decided that her actions are verbotten (big screenshot on Flickr).

Mobile tech is easy in Italy

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 09:02:18 -0800

On our first day, we headed straight for the nearest cellphone store, which ended up being a Vodafone provider. First of all, we were astounded at the amount of cell phones available. Canada doesn't have as much of a selection, and most are barely differing older phones with few new features.

In any case, Kris and Robert had been given advanced devices by ComVu to do direct pocketcasting with. I had my Nokia 6630, which I bought the last time I was in Europe. We all had to pull out our passports in order to get Vodafone SIM cards, which was a surprise.

Not speaking Italian, it was a bit difficult to figure out the different plans. In the end, we got a 60 hour data plan for only 30EU. Contrast this with my $50CDN unlimited data plan which is only available to grandfathered accounts before Fido was bought by Rogers. And let's compare speeds. In Canada, it's a GPRS connection that is at most 40kbps, while the UMTS here in Italy can be up to 320kbps. That's about as fast as some of the broadband lite plans that people have for their desktops!

Competition in the comfort of my own home

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 13:43:41 -0800

The Gotham Gal wants more out of NBC Olympics coverage:

I'd be thrilled to pay for the opportunity to sit on my couch and watch the entire day of snowboarding. No ads, no play by play, perhaps a small interview with the athlete that won the medal (small being the optimal word here) and NBC would make their money through the viewers. My guess is, in time, that they would have more viewers and make up the costs. They could also stream over the Internet and you could pay to have access to that too.

I guess NBC's video on demand for the Olympics isn't what she had in mind: she wants more unfiltered, and more coverage of everything.