Avoiding Olympic Spoilers: A Guide

from the just-kill-the-internet dept

As the Olympic Games rage on and an entire world full of people watch on to remind themselves that they should have paid better attention in their high school geography classes (stop lying: you couldn't pick out Angola on a map either), the old-world thinking of the various Olypmic committees and new media has delivered a giant trauma to fans: spoilers. See, as Olympic broadcast partners have spent so much time dilligently ensuring that every fan's viewing experience sucks like a whorish Hoover vacuum, they appear to have missed out on the invention of the internet. So by the time weekday prime time broadcasts are airing Asian badminton players possibly throwing their match to get a better tournement seeding, we've already read all about it on the internet, Twitter, or else overheard friends/family/coworkers discussing the results. And since NBC and the IOC don't seem to want to... you know... live in today-land, you may be looking for a way to make your daily life spoiler-free.

Fortunately Justin Peters, editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, has penned an ignorance guide for CNN to help us all out. As you might expect, his satircal list of ten tips is dominated by various flavors of avoid-technology ice cream:

"Your smartphone is your enemy during these next two weeks. If you carry it around, you will be tempted to check the Internet, and you risk receiving spoiler-laden text messages from your gymnastics-loving friends. Switch to an older phone for the duration of the Olympics, preferably one that is decades old, is shaped like a brick and has a wan green display that can handle neither text messages nor the Internet."

Seems reasonable. But there's more along the same lines:

"You can probably divide your Facebook friends into "people who are likely to follow the Olympics" and "people who are not." Hide all status updates from the Olympics-following friends. This should leave you with a Facebook feed composed entirely of elderly relatives, local merchants and new mothers posting photographs of their children. Abandon Twitter entirely, or, at the very least, unfollow everyone except Jose Canseco."

You get the idea. Unfortunately, the internet isn't the only place where you can overhear heated discussions about whether the United States or China has asserted itself as a world power by winning doubles rowing competitions. But Peters can help there, too:

"Practice walking with your fingers in your ears while shouting "I can't hear you! I can't hear you!"

And:

"You know where nobody's talking about the Olympics? In the forest. Take these next two weeks as an opportunity to go back to nature. Pitch a tent in the woods, and commune with the stars and the seedlings. Bring a battery-powered television that gets only three channels, and fire it up every night around 7. You'll be able to watch the key moments of the Games in peace and quiet. And, despite what you've heard, it is quite unlikely that you'll be eaten by a bear."

Peters offers even more tips for insulating the rest of your life to guard against Olympic spoilers. On the other hand, NBC and the Olympic Committee could also realize that this internet thing might just not be a fad and take their cue from the NCAA's Basketball Tournement and show the damned games so people can watch whenever they want. 

Filed Under: olympics, spoilers

Olympics Shuts Down Non-Commercial Online Service That Helped People Get Tickets

from the olympic-failures dept

Another day, another story of Olympics insanity. Apparently the website for the London Olympics has a really awful interface that highlights tickets that are available. So, some enterprising coders quickly hacked together a better system, called 2012TicketAlert that would help alert people when new tickets were available. It was just a typical internet case study: some people saw a system that wasn't very good, and they built a better interface. Welcome to the internet.

Ah, but this is the Olympics, and the Olympics just doesn't do things like that. So, they shut the site down:

It seems someone at LOCOG has taken exception to our idea (or the publicity it is getting) and instead of reaching out to us or addressing the lack of a notification system, they have simply blocked our access to their server. This means we are unable to check or post any new ticket alerts.

Welcome to the Olympics, where if you don't pay the Olympics, you better not do anything to help make the Olympics a better experience.

And it's important to note that they weren't making money off of this. They were just helping to alert people to ticket availability and then driving them to the official Olympics site. They just hacked together a notification system.

Sometimes I wonder if the Olympics just wants to piss off everyone.

Filed Under: alerts, olympics, shut down, tickets

Google Doodles Obvious Nod To...Some Games...Or Something...

from the no-names-for-games dept

Google users have long noticed the search page's "doodles", where Google redesigns their logo as an homage to something having to do with that day's history (Yes! I managed to link to a Techdirt story from two-thousand-and-freaking-two! Beat that, other Techdirt writers!). Often times these are nods to the birthdays of famous or important artists, scientists, or other historical figures and holidays. And if you have spent the past week or so living on Earth and aren't a rock, you can probably guess what these past days' doodles have been about.

But, as reader Jason writes in to note, the big Goog is apparently chilly on actually, you know, mentioning what the drawings are for when you roll over the image:

"The image url reference[d] the "opening ceremony" of something. But the tooltip for the image, which any seasoned Google user knows will tell you what's up with the logo that day, simply reads, "Hooray for sports!"

The two theories Jason came up with are that the search giant is afraid to even mention the sporting event in question for fear of reprisal by the committee that oversees said sporting event, or it's a sly poke in the eye at their overly aggressive sue-happy nature. Lord knows if the-games-that-shall-not-be-named are willing to go after gyro shops, a more prominent target like Google would seem to be a no-brainer. Now, it would seem to me that a prominent page like Google's home search page featuring the Olym...games-that-shall-not-be-named would be a great source of publicity for the sporting event, but thanks to the chilling effect created through lawsuit happy committees, that publicity is lost.

Filed Under: doodles, intellectual property, olympics
Companies: google

DailyDirt: Olympic Trivia

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Just in case you haven't gotten enough information on the Olympics, there are a ton of stories digging up random trivia about the games. (Or maybe you think everyone should be more interested in a robot on Mars.) But if you're looking for some bits of Olympic trivia, here are just a few examples.

• The oldest athlete at the 2012 Olympics is Hiroshi Hoketsu at age 71. He competes as an equestrian rider, but isn't the oldest Olympian ever. Oscar Swahn from Sweden won a medal in shooting at the 1920 games at the age of 72. [url]
• The shuttlecocks in Badminton can reach speeds of over 300 miles per hour. Strangely, the best shuttlecocks are made from goose feathers -- plucked only from the left wing of the bird, for no particular good reason. [url]
• Guor Marial competes in the Olympics ... as an independent (representing no country). Wouldn't it be interesting if all the athletes were given the option to compete without representing a nation? Marial's unique status comes from being a South Sudan native, but not wanting to represent the nation that killed his family. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: badminton, guor marial, hiroshi hoketsu, olympics, oscar swahn, shuttlecocks, trivia

Twitter Finally Reinstates Journalist's Twitter Account, But Questions Raised Over Its Actions

from the failures dept

Yesterday, we wrote about Twitter suspending the account of Guy Adams, an LA-based journalist for the UK-based Independent paper. Just a little while ago, the account was turned back on, and Twitter has now published a statement about the incident.

Adams had been highly critical of NBC Universal's coverage of the Olympics, and at one point tweeted out the corporate email address of NBC's Olympics boss, Gary Zenkel. As many people have noted, that information was hardly private, as NBC Universal follows a standard format for emails (firstname.lastname@nbcuni.com). Furthermore, Zenkel's email address was already easy to find online. Making this a lot more complicated is the fact that NBC Universal and Twitter have a business partnership over Olympics coverage.

After the initial story came out, in which it was confirmed that Twitter suspended the account over the publishing the email address, NBC Universal put out a statement, claiming that it had filed the complaint. Making things more complicated, however, is the news that Twitter apparently alerted NBC Universal to the tweets in the first place. Twitter's statement puts a lot of focus on the fact that it is not their policy to proactively monitor tweets, and then admits they violated that policy in this case:

The Trust and Safety team does not actively monitor users’ content. In all cases, whether the user is the head of a major corporation, a celebrity, or a regular user, we require a report to be filed at our abusive users webform. Not only do we need a report, but we need a report from the person whose private information has been posted, or someone who is able to legally act on their behalf. We do not proactively report or remove private information on behalf of other users, no matter who they are.

That said, we want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up. The team working closely with NBC around our Olympics partnership did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules and encouraged them to file a support ticket with our Trust and Safety team to report the violation, as has now been reported publicly. Our Trust and Safety team did not know that part of the story and acted on the report as they would any other.

While it's good to see Twitter taking responsibility here, a lot of damage has already been done in the aftermath of the incident. Before this statement, Twitter remained quiet for some time, refusing to respond to Guy Adams' attempts to talk. This sparked criticism of both Twitter and NBC Universal. The criticism against NBC isn't a huge surprise, but what grew more rapidly was the anger towards Twitter. Reports are highlighting the seeming hypocrisy of a company that has stood strong on free speech and access to communications grounds for years, including its famous "The Tweets Must Flow" post from a couple years ago.

That same article notes other prominent cases of Twitter users tweeting out much more "private" info, such as Spike Lee tweeting out someone's home address, incorrectly believing it was the address of George Zimmerman (the guy who shot Trayvon Martin). Similarly, Justin Bieber tweeted out some teenager's phone number to all of his followers. Others have pointed out how MIA tweeted out a journalist's phone number. None of these involved accounts being shut down.

On top of all of this, the situation has made people much more aware that they're at the whims of Twitter as a platform provider. And unlike systems where you have full control over your data and what you do with it, online services can simply cut you off.

Filed Under: gary zenkel, guy adams, olympics
Companies: independent, nbc universal, twitter

DailyDirt: Analyzing The Olympics

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Despite the ridiculous restrictions on watching the Olympics, there are still plenty of statistics about various events for data nerds to collect and crunch that might provide some useful insights. By studying athletic performance over time, we can tell when technologies like fancy swimsuits are giving too much of an advantage or when a change in training and technique have made vast improvements. Here are just a few projects that are diving deep into Olympic data.

• Various economic figures can be used to try to predict how many medals each country will earn in 2012. The USA is expected to get somewhere between 99 and 113 medals, and China is predicted to come in second place with 67-98 medals. [url]
• The London Eye will be lit up like a mood ring during the Olympics, based on Tweets and a bit of sentimental analysis to gauge positive and negative commentary of the Games. The analysis is sponsored by an energy company, so it'll be watching for words like "Olympics", "London 2012" and the hashtag #energy2012. [url]
• Researchers from the Center for Sports Engineering Research at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK will be studying the 2012 games to look for significant changes in athletic performance. They've developed a "performance improvement index" to quantify things like: how sprinters are running faster than ever before or that javelin throwers are in a performance plateau. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: data, economic data, games, medals, olympics, performance, predictions, sentimental analysis, statistics
Companies: twitter

NBC: We Have No Clue Who Tim Berners-Lee Is, But Without Our Commentary, You Wouldn't Understand The Olympics

from the brought-to-you-in-full-color-tape-delay! dept

Oh, NBC. You've locked down the Olympics and made some serious half-assed efforts towards providing extensive coverage that takes advantage of the always-connected world and yet... you just can't help stepping in it on opening night.

First of all, seriously? Tape delay to the West Coast? You lock down coverage in order to take advantage of prime time and try to pass it off as some sort of "value added" service. Pay no mind to all the twittering and live blogging willing to fill in the gaps, while you do some sort of production magic behind the scenes. Live events don't need windows and real life shouldn't need **spoiler** warnings.

Even worse is the fact that the opening ceremonies weren't even streamed live on the internet, where time and distance aren't factors. And you know it, too, because your official Twitter accounts were posting updates live, giving Americans the dusty old feeling that they're listening to a local broadcaster read off the ticker feed from a title match. So close, but so far.

But us poor internet denizens. If we weren't so damn stupid, we could be trusted with a live feed. NBC's official statement:

"They [the opening ceremonies] are complex entertainment spectacles that do not translate well online because they require context, which our award-winning production team will provide for the large primetime audiences that gather together to watch them."

Translation: our advertisers have paid us a literal shit-tonne of money to have a large primetime audience delivered to them, so fold your hands in your lap and stare blankly at your television until the broadcast begins.

I'm no social media maven but I'm pretty sure the internet does just fine adding "context" and is perfectly capable of "watching stuff" as it happens. For example, they seem perfectly find adding context to the fact that your hosts suck, as aptly pointed out via this collection of tweets asking Matt Lauer to shut up.

And what the hell is this about "expertise?" Did you even hear your own anchors?

As the London Olympic games honored World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee, NBC hosts Meredith Viera and Matt Lauer admitted — almost bragged — that they didn’t know who he was.

It’s a shame, because it took attention away from a pretty cool tribute to the history of tech and the way it has transformed modern life and communications. Text messages, status updates, photo sharing and smartphones all played a part.

Indeed, every seat had an LED panel to create a stadium-wide megadisplay.

“One more thing I don’t understand,” Viera added.

Evidently someone handed them a memo, because Viera was able to correctly identify Berners-Lee several minutes later, as he typed out a message (on a NeXT cube) that was shown on that oh-so-confusing LED screen.

[There's video here of the ignorance if you're so inclined. Obviously, NBC would rather you not relive this moment over and over so it's tucked away in someone's Tumblr and not embeddable.]

The inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, without whom a lot of this stuff you're botching wouldn't even be possible, makes an appearance and your talking heads act almost triumphant they've never heard of him. What the hell? Was Aaron Sorkin writing the cue cards?

There's "seizing the moment" and then there's "closing your eyes and sticking one arm out," hoping the moment trips over you on its way to the goal line. You're the placekickers of "complex entertainment spectacles."

On the bright side, I would imagine there's nowhere to go but up from the Opening Ceremonies. But I'm sure you've still got a few gaffes up your sleeve, especially if you stick with your "adding context with ignorant commentary" plan. 

[Oh, never mind. It's happened already.]

+1 @jonathanwald the medal for most Olympic whining goes to everyone complaining about what happens every 4 yrs, tape delay @brianstelter

— Vivian Schiller (@VivianSchiller) July 29, 2012

Wow. It's a shame that NBC has the financial ability to outbid anyone who could actually handle an Olympics broadcast competently. 

Filed Under: matt lauer, meredith viera, olympics, tim berners-lee
Companies: nbc universal

It's An Olympics Tradition: How Difficult Can NBC Universal Make It To Enjoy The Olympics?

from the yet-again dept

Is it really that time again? When NBC screws up its coverage of the Olympics by showing people what it thinks they want to see, rather than what they actually want to see? Every two years, the Olympics does two appallingly annoying things: makes it difficult to watch the Olympics online... and refuses to show it live on TV. In the 20th century view of NBC execs like Rick Cotton, the only thing that matters is prime time television. So they hold off and focus everything around that prime time slot... effectively pissing off everyone else. As Erick Schoenfeld noted: "The only Olympics tweets I've seen all day are from people pissed that NBC is not broadcasting the opening ceremony live."

Hell, even when they go on Twitter the Olympics can't do things right. There was a lot of buzz around the fact that NBC and Twitter teamed up to create an "Olympics" hub. Great (though some people are pointing out that NBC's own Twitter feed is now tweeting stories that it refuses to broadcast live). However, as Canada-based reporter Mathew Ingram discovered in trying to look up the Olympics Twitter hub, thanks to NBC Universal restrictions, Twitter is geoblocking access. To check it out, I visited the Olympics hub site from the US and saw this: And, then, through the magic of the internet, "transported" myself (or, at least my connection) to Toronto, where I reloaded the page... and saw this: In the end, I'm not really sure it makes a huge difference. To be honest, I'm not sure I quite understand the point of the Olympics "hub" on Twitter, but it's yet another way in which NBC Universal seems focused on restricting access, rather than enabling access. It's 20th century thinking for a company that is in desperate need of 21st century leadership.

Filed Under: geoblocks, internet, olympics, prime time, streaming, tv, tweeting
Companies: nbc universal, twitter

Obama And Romney Each Have An Ad Disappear As The Olympics Gets Snippy About Anyone Referencing The Olympics

from the non-political-because-politics-don't-pay dept

While we've had plenty of stories about the Olympics being overly aggressive in over protecting its (loosely defined) intellectual property rights, it appears that it's now also targeting both major parties' presidential campaigns. Both Obama and Romney apparently launched commercials recently with "Olympic Themes." The Olympics then called out the Obama Super PAC campaign for supposedly infringing on its copyright. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) claims that it does not allow footage to be used for political purposes, though I do wonder how it deals with cases of fair use (which this may or may not be). Either way, soon after that a Romney ad that also had an Olympics theme (both ads used footage of Romney in his role as CEO of the Olympic Organizing Committee for the Salt Lake City Olympics a decade ago) went offline as well.

One would hope that -- yet again -- these stories get the campaigns interested in the ways in which copyright law can restrict certain forms of speech. No matter who you support for President, the idea that neither major candidate can reference the Olympics seems absurd. Yes, the Olympics doesn't want to be associated with politics (for obvious reasons), but that's a moral rights issue, and in the US, such moral rights don't apply to (most) forms of copyright (and definitely don't apply in this case). What's left, then, is that the two campaigns are limited in their ability to express themselves freely. That seems like a serious issue, but one which it's likely the two campaigns will mostly (unfortunately) ignore.

Filed Under: barack obama, copyright, mitt romney, olympics, politics