London 2012 Olympics: tech of the world's biggest games
London will host the 2012 Olympics this summer from the 27th of July to August 12th. A lot of preparation and technology goes into prepping for the worldwide gaming event, and we'll gather all the news we can find about it right here.
Lesson learned from #NBCFAIL: Olympic streams enhanced prime-time viewing
The start of the Olympics should've been a big win for NBC. As the exclusive rights holder to the event, the media giant decided against live streaming the opening ceremony, and instead delayed the broadcast for US primetime TV viewers. The decision prompted #NBCFAIL to almost-perpetually trend on Twitter as the network continued to save the best events for delayed broadcast. However, through stats obtained via Twitter, surveys, and digital analytics, the company discovered what we'd expected...
NBC broke even on London Olympics coverage, had more than 219 million TV viewers in US
NBC bet big on its coverage of the London Summer Olympics, and according to NBC Sports chairman Mark Lazarus the network ultimately broke even on the event, despite stellar television ratings. Speaking at the Bloomberg Sports Business Summit, Lazarus said that NBC's advertising sales for the event reached $1.25 billion, a jump of close to 50 percent compared to the previous Games in Beijing. He also revealed that the television broadcast of the Games ended up being watched by 219.4 million...
YouTube offers live 2012 Paralympics video to US and Canada
Cord cutters will have an easier time watching the 2012 Paralympics than they did watching the Olympics, thanks to live streams of all the events provided by YouTube. Unfortunately, the live streams only apply to people in the US and Canada, but the full archives of over 1,000 hours of archived footage will be available worldwide. Both live and archived video is available now at http://youtube.com/paralympicsporttv, where you'll also find video blogs from the athletes and interviews as well....
Paralympic opening ceremony turns stadium into Large Hadron Collider
The opening ceremony for the 2012 Paralympic Games in London last night was a celebration of science — titled "Enlightenment" and narrated in part by Stephen Hawking, the spectacle used dance and other visual effects to represent events including the Big Bang and the apparent discovery of the Higgs boson particle earlier this year. While the exact significance of some of the elements may not have been immediately clear to those in the audience, an official CERN blog post points out that the...
YouTube viewers watched 231 million streams during London Olympics
When it came to airing the London Olympics online, YouTube played a big role — not only did it stream the Games in 64 countries in Africa and Asia, it also supplied the technology behind NBC's streaming coverage in the US. Now YouTube has released some figures to show just how much its viewers made use of those options. In total more than 231 million streams were watched worldwide, 159 million of which came from NBC's Olympics site, while the rest came from the IOC YouTube channel. And of...
Culture
Portrait video and other things cameras shouldn't let you do
Image credit: albertizeme (Flickr)
Think of the most iconic sporting moments of the past couple of decades and then try to find the one thing they all have in common. That's right, it's the camera flashes. Like popcorn kernels hitting just the right temperature, cameras in the crowd explode with light as fans try to record those breathless moments that they'll one day be telling their grandkids about. As an expression of cultural togetherness, these synchronized photography sessions are...
By the numbers: the social and digital explosion of the 2012 Olympics
The 2012 Summer Olympics marks the first time that social media made a big splash with international sports fans. Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks have seen an explosion of engagement, and even traditional media outlets like BBC Sports took part in the digital revelry.
Twitter saw over 150 million tweets during the course of the games
Twitter saw over 150 million tweets during the course of the games with notable spikes during Kobe Bryant's dunk near the end of the USA-Spain...
Tracking athletes' Twitter mentions over the Olympics
The New York Times is back with another excellent infographic about the 2012 Olympics in London — this time showing Twitter activity on athletes' accounts. The graphic visualizes the number of mentions 140 verified accounts received over the games so far per 1,000 followers, honing in on when different athletes' mindshare peaked on Twitter. So, who won? Malaysian track cyclist Azizulhasni Awang (@AzizulAWANG) looks to have received the the most mentions per 1,000 followers (2,308) after his...
Usain Bolt: full-time Olympic legend, part-time sports photographer
Usain Bolt's grabbing all the headlines today following another dominant performance at the London 2012 Olympics, this time in defense of his 200m sprint title. In amongst the pictures accompanying coverage of his feat, however, you might find a few taken by the "living legend" himself.
In the immediate aftermath of his victory, Bolt borrowed a Nikon D4 from Swedish photographer Jimmy Wixtröm and proceeded to take some impromptu pictures of his surroundings — a first-person visualization...
Web & Social
Fans turn to mobile devices for Olympic searches, says Google
Fans have been turning to smartphones and tablets for Olympics-related information in record numbers, according to statistics released by Google yesterday, with Europeans making a higher proportion of mobile Google searches than inhabitants of any other continent. Writing on the company's Mobile Ads Blog — which means these self-serving figures shouldn't be taken entirely at face value — marketing execs Dai Pham and Adam Grunewald describe how, in most European countries, more than a...
Google's latest Doodle lets you run hurdles like an Olympian
What better way to take part in the international spectacle that is the Olympic Summer Games than by mashing keys on a search engine home screen? Google's newest Doodle is entitled Hurdles 2012, and lets you control a hurdler’s sprint down the track with your left and right arrow keys and leap using the space bar. We confess, it’s a little tricky to get the timing right for the first couple of jumps, but believe us when we say it’s way easier than QWOP.
Thanks, John Fitzgerald!
Culture
Usain Bolt vs. 116 years of Olympic sprinters
The New York Times has published an incredible series of visualizations, using 3D models to compare today's top sprinters, swimmers, and long jumpers with athletes from every Olympic Games since 1896. The standout is a video analyzing Usain Bolt's blistering 9.63-second performance in the 100m dash last night, showing just how far ahead he is, not only of the current crop, but also of the top sprinters of yesteryear.
If Thomas Burke, gold medallist at the first modern Olympics in Athens, ran...
Web & Social
BBC's Olympics website breaks records of its own with 29 million video requests
After NBC revealed some impressive statistics following week one of the London Games, the BBC is providing some numbers of its own. Engagement has been a particular strong suit, with 17 million people having watched at least 15 minutes of footage from the company's 24 "Red Button" livestreams. In total, the BBC has seen 29 million requests for Olympics video content.
The company is also breaking previous web traffic records, citing a total of 18 million unique browser visits during the first...
NBC's Olympics website garners 744 million page views, quadrupling Beijing Games
NBC's televised coverage of the London Olympics hasn't been without a heavy dose of negative criticism, but that hasn't stopped people from visiting the channel's dedicated site for the Games. According to Wired, NBCOlympics.com exceeded 744 million page views for the first week of the 2012 Olympics, more than four times the amount of viewers who visited during the Beijing Games for the same time period. Even with a flurry of complaints regarding the quality of videos on the site, footage of...
Culture
Photojournalist covers the Olympics with an iPhone
You'd think the 2012 Olympics would prove the perfect opportunity for sports photographers to give something like a new Nikon D4 a workout, but Guardian photojournalist Dan Chung is taking a slightly different approach. He's keeping a photoblog entirely comprised of pictures taken with his iPhone, covering everything from fast-paced action on the field to colorful portraits of fans.
Most of the pictures used an iPhone 4S — "the snapshot camera of today," according to Annie Liebovitz — and...
'Wi-Fi police' hunt down unsanctioned hotspots at the London Olympics
Firearms, knives, and illegal substances are unsurprisingly prohibited at the 2012 London Olympics, but here's one you might not expect: unsanctioned portable Wi-Fi hotspots. Ryan Seacrest Productions' Sadao Turner tweeted an image of a member of the Olympics' "Wi-Fi Police," carrying an absurdly large frequency detection device that ironically screams "free hotspot this way." Wireless interference is part of the concern, but it stands to reason that Olympics partner BT — which runs some...
Web & Social
Netflix streaming activity may have dropped 25 percent due to the Olympics
Last week Netflix CEO Reed Hastings warned investors that the company's streaming services may take a hit due to the 2012 Olympics, and his fears may have been warranted: according to one report, the company's US streaming service saw a 25 percent decline earlier this week due to the Summer Games. Variety points out data from broadband company Procera Networks, which states that Netflix experienced the drop down from its normal level of US activity on Sunday night; NBC saw a 2-percent ratings...
Dr. Dre skirts Olympic rules with Beats marketing campaign
The IOC and London Olympic organizing committee have gone to great lengths to protect their official sponsors from outside competition, but Dr. Dre appears to have circumvented these regulations with an ambush marketing campaign for his Beats headphones. As the Guardian reports, Beats representatives have been handing out specially branded headphones to select athletes, despite the fact that the IOC prohibits non-official sponsors from advertising around the Olympics.
Thus far, Beats products...
Culture
Olympic swimmer blames social media influence for failing to win gold medal
Emily Seebohm, the Australian swimmer that set a new Olympic record in qualifying for the 100m backstroke final but narrowly missed out on the gold, has admitted that spending too much time on Twitter and Facebook may have affected her performance. After establishing herself as a hot favorite with her preliminary swims, Emily was showered with congratulations and encouragement on the social media sites, which, she says, made the victory in the final feel almost like a job already done.
HD & Home
NBC blames you for poor-quality Olympic streams
NBC's much-hyped online Olympic coverage has been proving a headache for some, with users — and Verge writers — complaining of streams stuttering, freezing, or not starting at all. Don't worry, though, it's not NBC's fault: in a statement given to The New York Times, the network suggested that the issues were down to problems with users' devices or connections. Rick Cordella, vice president and general manager of NBC Sports Digital Media, said that the company would continue to tweak the...
Web & Social
Olympics Opening Ceremony sparks 9.66 million Twitter mentions
Twitter's grand ambitions for the 2012 Olympics seem to be off to a mixed start. On the positive side, the service saw 9.66 million mentions of the Opening Ceremony from the start of the event at 8:00PM in London until the end of the delayed US broadcast. For the most part, the chosen time period eliminates anticipatory tweets about the event (with the exception of US viewers, who had to wait for NBC's delayed broadcast of the Opening Ceremony). On the negative side, many US viewers took...
Culture
NBC insults viewer intelligence, says Olympic Opening Ceremony is too 'complex' for online audience
The 2012 Summer Olympics have finally kicked off, and while NBC has been boasting about the digital options it's offering US sports fans, the broadcaster offered no live streaming of the opening ceremonies, instead funneling viewers towards its tape-delayed primetime broadcast this evening. NBC has now defended the decision to the Los Angeles Times, telling the paper in an emailed statement that the ceremonies "are complex entertainment spectacles that do not translate well online because...
Culture
How to watch the 2012 London Olympics online in the US: have an offline option
Finally, the 2012 London Olympics are upon us. Prepare yourself, for the next several weeks will bring more details than you ever cared to know about this year's competition — and thanks to our hyper-connected culture, you'll be hearing about it through every online outlet you can imagine. For those of us the US who just want to follow along with the games, however, NBC has us covered with unprecedented coverage in excess of 5,000 total hours across TV, web, smartphones, and tablets. If you...
Twitter and NBC launching 2012 Olympics spotlight site to 'carry the roar of the crowd'
We heard a few days ago that Twitter and NBC were partnering to be the "official narrator" of the 2012 Olympics. As the event kicks off today, Twitter and NBC announced they are launching a dedicated page to highlight tweets from "Olympic insiders," including players, coaches, and teams. The page is similar to event page Twitter previously used for NASCAR and the Euro 2012 Football championship, with a curated mixture of tweets (rather than everything that goes up with the Olympics hashtag)....
Culture
Airbnb is cashing in on the Olympics, and why that's a good thing
Airbnb, an online service that facilitates the short-term rental of rooms, houses, apartments, and more, has revealed a huge uptake in London bookings in the lead up to this month's Summer Olympics. The company told Bloomberg that it expected a three-fold increase in its London business this summer, with pricing averaging out at 25 percent higher than normal.
London is preparing itself for a huge influx of visitors as the games begin, and the vast majority of hotels and hostels are booked,...
Mobile
Olympic venues clamp down on threat posed by Wi-Fi hotspots, oversized hats
To say that LOCOG, the London Olympics organizing committee, has seen its share of negative press would be an understatement. It's been flagged for draconian rules on social networking, mixing up the Czech and Croatian national anthems on iTunes, and refusing to allow fries to be sold without a minimum quota of fish. In a document titled 'Prohibited items' the committee lays out what you can and can't take with you to the games. As well as expected bans on firearms, knives, narcotics and...
Web & Social
Twitter to be 'official narrator' for London Olympics under NBC deal, says WSJ
Twitter and NBC are set to team up to provide an official hub page for the London Olympics, with the microblogging service serving as an "official narrator" of the Games. The Wall Street Journal reports that tweets from athletes, fans, and TV personalities will be curated and hosted online on a page that NBC will heavily promote throughout its broadcasts. Neither party is paying for the privilege, but Twitter reportedly sees it as a golden opportunity to expand its audience beyond the current...
NBC launches Olympics mobile apps, includes live-streaming with one-time authentication
NBC announced that mobile was going to be a part of its London Olympics coverage back in May, and today the network has released a pair of apps for iPhone, iPad, and "select" Android devices. The "Live Extra" app will let you live stream the full 3,500 hours of Olympic content from your mobile device, as well as watch replays — though you'll need to be a subscriber to a cable or satellite package that includes both CNBC and MSNBC. Adobe, who worked with NBC to build the apps, says that...
NBC embraces Facebook for Olympics coverage both online and on-air
The once-every-two-year nature of the Olympic games means that it offers a convenient way of observing the changes in mainstream technology, and for this year's games social media is playing a bigger part than ever before. NBC is teaming up with Facebook for the event with changes to the NBC Olympics page and website. The Facebook page is being transformed into the primary hub for up-to-date news, and, of course, there will be interactive features like polls and trivia questions. What's more...
Oscar Pistorius to make history as first amputee athlete to compete in track and field at Olympics
Oscar Pistorius is set to become the first Paralympian to compete in track and field at the Olympics after South African sports officials relaxed their strict qualification rules and named him in both the individual 400 metres and 4x400 relay. The 25-year-old double-amputee — who races competitively through the use of Ossur prosthetic carbon fiber blades — will now get the chance to realize a lifelong dream: he'll be taking part in both the Olympic Games and Paralympics in the same year. ...
Photography & Video
First ever 'dead heat' photo-finish at US Olympic trials
US sprinters Allyson Felix and Jeneba Tarmoh both crossed the finish line in exactly 11.068 seconds on Sunday to tie for third place in the final of the women's 100 meter Olympics qualifier. The "dead heat" finish was captured by a single camera shooting 3,000 frames per second located on the inside of the track — a second outside camera that's traditionally used for photo-finish images was obscured from determining third place due to the athletes' arms (the torso position determines the...
BBC Sport launches new mobile site with video streaming over 3G
The BBC has relaunched its Sport site for mobile devices with a new design that offers easy access to video content over 3G and Wi-Fi. The site will not only include clips of past events, but also, like its desktop brother, use HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) to stream live events to your smartphone or tablet. HLS is supported by recent versions of both Android and iOS, but unfortunately Windows Phone doesn't yet support the standard.
While British smartphone users were already able to stream BBC...
Photography & Video
Getty to photograph London Summer Olympics in 3D, 360 degrees, and to use robotic cameras
Getty, the official photo agency for the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games, has announced that it plans to make use of some non-traditional methods when it shoots the athletic goings-ons this summer. The photographers covering the events will be shot in 3D, and some of them will be shot in a 360 degree format. Some of the events, Getty has said, will be shot entirely using robotic cameras. Getty has previously used its new 360 degree photography format last year at the wedding of royals Prince...
Mobile
London Tube Wi-Fi network now live at King's Cross St. Pancras and Warren Street
It's been a long time coming, but London's free Tube Wi-Fi network has finally gone live today in two stations, with four more to follow by the end of this week. Travellers at King's Cross St. Pancras and Warren Street will now be able to browse the web from the stations' platforms. To access the service, Transport for London (TfL) says you simply need to connect to the network and register your email address.
The two launch stations will be joined tomorrow by Oxford Circus and Green Park,...
Web & Social
London Olympics to be streamed to 64 countries in Asia and Africa via YouTube
Online streaming coverage of this year's Olympics in London is set to be a major part of the event''s coverage — NBC alone is planning to broadcast some 3,500 hours of content over YouTube, and the BBC is also planning to continually broadcast coverage over 24 different channels. Now, the International Olympic Committee has announced plans to 2,200 hours of the Olympics on YouTube, focused on providing free coverage to 64 countries in Asia and Africa. The IOC is focused on providing...
Visa exclusivity agreement forces the closure of 27 ATMs at the London Olympics
If you're heading to the London Olympics this summer, you might want to make sure you have cash ahead of time — thanks to Visa's exclusive sponsor status, 27 ATMs at the nine various Olympics venues around London will be shut down. In their place will be eight Visa ATMs that won't work with Mastercard or other card providers. Of course, almost 97 percent of debit cards in use in the UK are Visa cards, but the reduction in available machines is an inconvenience no matter how you slice it....
Mobile
First 80 Wi-Fi Tube stations named in London
After firing up the first base stations yesterday, Transport for London and Virgin Media just announced the first 80 Tube stations to receive free Wi-Fi for the Olympic Games. All the big names are on the list, with stations such as Oxford Circus, Stratford, Liverpool Street, Leicester Square and King’s Cross scheduled to come online first. The rest of the stations will be up by the end of July with hotspots accessible from the train platform, ticket offices, and escalators.
These...
Panasonic to deliver a record-breaking 12,000 TVs to London Olympics
Panasonic has just dished some of the statistics from its Olympics sponsorship this year, the highlight of which is a record-breaking number of TVs provided — over 12,000 — that will span a total display area of 1,730 square meters. That comfortably beats the Beijing Olympics of four years ago, when the relevant numbers were 10,000 TVs and 1,312 square meters, and includes 45 large-screen LED TVs, 47 103-inch plasmas, and two pairs of 152-inch and 145-inch plasma TVs. In Panasonic's...
Web & Social
NBCUniversal London Olympics coverage will total 5,535 hours across TV, web, mobile apps
NBCUniversal says it will broadcast an unprecedented 5,535 hours worth of coverage throughout the 2012 London Olympic Games across cable, the internet, and mobile apps. The centerpiece of the plan is NBCOlympics.com (powered by YouTube), which the company vows will stream each and every sport / event and all 302 medal presentations for the first time ever, ultimately reaching 3,500 hours of content. But an authentication system will restrict certain coverage (anything carried on NBCU's...
Mobile
David Beckham promotes the Galaxy Note as Samsung's Olympic Games ambassador
Samsung seems to be getting into the Olympic party spirit — first we had yesterday's announcement of the limited edition Galaxy Note and Galaxy Y, and now we're seeing fruits of the relationship with David Beckham, the company's official representative of the Games. Samsung has released a new commercial featuring the LA Galaxy (see what they did there?) star talking on the Note before kicking out a rendition of Ode to Joy with some drums and a soccer ball. The video was leaked a few days...
Mobile
O2 announces Samsung Galaxy Note and Galaxy Y Olympic Games editions
O2 has announced new Olympic Games editions of its Galaxy Note and Galaxy Y smartphones, which feature either the Union Jack or Team GB logo emblazoned across their back covers. The Olympic editions also include a £1 (around $1.55) contribution to Team GB athletes of the future, and the chance to win an "exclusive Team Samsung experience." The prize consists of a pair of tickets to the games, the Team GB training camp, and a "Team GB celebration event taking place in London." The handsets...
BBC's live Olympics video stream will include pause, rewind, alerts, and Twitter integration
The BBC unveiled its new online video platform in London yesterday, giving us a first glimpse at how it plans to live stream every event from the Summer Olympics. The new browser-based player will offer pause and rewind options, along with live participant information (such as leaderboards and results) and clickable alerts that can take you to other streams when key moments are happening elsewhere. There'll also be integrated data-driven profiles of the competing athletes that will pull in...
London traffic lights rigged to win International Olympic Committee's favor
A Vanity Fair article profiling the political journey that Britain took to secure the 2012 Olympics reports that the bid committee went as far as messing with traffic signals to ensure that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visitors were impressed with the city's infrastructure. In a story that sounds worthy of a political thriller (or a Bourne film), CEO of the London bid committee Sir Keith Mills says that the team planted GPS trackers in each of the IOC evaluator's vehicles,...
HD & Home
NBC's Olympic portal goes live, ready to stream all 32 sports
NBC is launching its Olympic website today, ready to stream all 32 sports at the London 2012 Olympics live, before the time-delayed television broadcast. The site will not only live stream content, but also provide users with access to a vast catalogue of archived material. Rick Cordella, vice president and general manager of NBC Sports Digital Media, told the New York Times that "the vast majority of events will be archived immediately," and the only restriction will be on events that will...
Fearing Olympic traffic jams, London data center staff will sleep with servers
During the upcoming Olympic Games, Dutch data center management company Interxion has revealed plans to bunk employees in its London facilities right next to the servers they maintain, fearing that the influx of visitors and event staff could create traffic jams and mass transit overloads that would prevent them from getting into the office in a reasonable amount of time. As with most hosting services, Interxion has service-level agreements with many (if not all) of its customers that...
Mobile
The Cloud to offer 60 minutes of free Wi-Fi at London Overground stations
Commuters using London's Overground stations will soon be able to take advantage of 60 minutes free Wi-Fi access each day, thanks to a partnership between London Overground Rail Operations Limited and The Cloud. The Wi-Fi rollout, which kicks off in the summer, will see all 56 London Overground train stations fitted with hotspots by the end of the year.
Major stations including Willesden Junction, New Cross Gate, Hackney Central, and Shepherd's Bush will all let commuters sign on to the free...
Culture
The Olympics may cause a 'massive hit' on London's internet infrastructure
The Olympics can be a major boon for the hosting city, bringing global attention and tourists to the economy... but it can also make things rather difficult from an infrastructure perspective. This year, there's a particular concern for how London's internet and mobile phone networks will hold up under the deluge of people streaming the games and tweeting up a storm throughout — there's even the possibility of data rationing, though it sounds like that option is unlikely to be used. James...
Web & Social
Virgin Media to provide free Wi-Fi on London Underground during Olympics
The Mayor of London's office has announced that Virgin Media is to provide free Wi-Fi on the London Underground during the Olympics and Paralympics this summer. We knew before that a plan was in place with an undisclosed service provider, but this is the first time we've heard solid details. Virgin will have hotspots in around 80 of the Tube's 270 stations (down from the 120 initially planned), and the service will only work on platforms, ticket offices, and escalators — no access while the...
Web & Social
NBC to use YouTube streaming technology for 2012 Olympics
It looks like Silverlight is out as NBC's video technology of choice, as the broadcaster has announced a new deal with YouTube to provide its online streaming backend for the London 2012 summer games. Details on the agreement haven't been made public, but it appears to be a good deal for both sides: YouTube gets to associate its brand with the Olympics, and NBC gets to take advantage of YouTube's massive network and audience. Infrastructure seems key, as NBC has stated they plan to stream...
Acer announces Iconia Tab A700 and A510 Olympic Games Edition
Back at CES we got our first glimpse of the Acer Iconia Tab A700 and A510, and in the true spirit of shameless cash-ins Acer has announced that it's releasing Olympic Games special editions to tie in with London 2012. Hardware-wise nothing has changed, and the only difference between the tablets is the display resolution — the A700 has a 10-inch 1920 x 1200 display while the A510 has a 1280x800 panel. Both run Android 4.0 powered by a quad-core 1.3GHz Tegra 3 processor, with 15-hour 9800mAh...
London Underground stations to get Wi-Fi in time for Olympics
Transport for London, which manages the London Underground, plans to have Wi-Fi in many of its stations in time for the 2012 Olympics. TfL is apparently in the final stages of contracting with a service provider to put Wi-Fi hotspots in 120 of the roughly 270 stations. According to a tender document, customers will be able to access "real-time travel information, news, sports and entertainment" for free, and would pay extra for full internet access. The service provider is expected to be...
Gaming
'London 2012' official Olympic game coming in June with motion control
Every even numbered year, the world participates in the Olympic games, and gamers see the release of another official Olympic video game. Sega says this June, London 2012 will be the first such game with motion controls (Kinect and Move) — Mario and Sonic games were only on the Wii and DS. Stadium Events was a lot of fun on Nintendo's Power Pad; maybe this year's Olympic game can be as entertaining as that 1986 classic, but with a bit better graphics.
London 2012 Olympics volunteers won't be tweeting freely
Volunteers at this year's Summer Olympic Games in London are going to be subject to some pretty stringent restrictions on their use of social media, reports the BBC. London 2012 "Games Makers" won't be allowed to reveal their location, post backstage photos or give any information about the whereabouts of VIPs. They are also restricted from speaking to the press without permission, or engaging in "detailed discussion" about the Games online. UK sports stars are used to such restrictions...
London to get Europe's largest free Wi-Fi zone this year
Certain central areas of London are to make up Europe's largest free Wi-Fi zone this year, with the rollout due for completion before this summer's Olympic Games. British carrier O2 is working with the councils of Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster to provide the service, and will begin installation on street furniture this month. London currently has numerous premium access points operated by O2, BT Openzone, and The Cloud among others, but it still lags behind cities such as Paris and...
Starbucks UK embraces Olympics, freeloaders: offers free one-click Wi-Fi to all
British coffee drinkers: prepare for the fight over seats at your local Starbucks to be even more intense. The Seattle-based coffee giant changed their Wi-Fi policy in the UK to allow membership-free one-click access to the internet via BT Openzone, mimicking a move made in the US last summer. The company previously gave access only to members of its free Starbucks Rewards program. The move comes as part of a broader initiative to revamp some of the company's stores for the upcoming 2012...
Photography & Video
3D Olympics broadcasting live in 2012, courtesy of Panasonic
The London 2012 Olympic Games are destined to be the first broadcast in live HD 3D. The announcement comes via partnership with Panasonic, the International Olympic Committee, and the Olympic Broadcasting Service. The OBS expects to produce over 200 hours of 3D footage covering all of the major events like the opening and closing ceremonies, gymnastics, diving, swimming, and athletics. Panasonic's twin-lens AG-3DP1 (pictured), a shoulder-mounted P2HD professional Full HD 3D camera, has the...
