benmurray / washington d.c.

Olympics on the Interwebz

I have been obsessing over the Olympics, which is pretty standard for me.  I have all the races planned as best I can (they’re not very good at telling us precisely when races are going to air), and record my favorites in HD for archiving.  I don’t have a TV, but this all works out fine. Thanks EyeTV and HD Antenna.

The 2004 Olympics had no Internet coverage, except for one game, from what I can remember.  The quality was poor, it wasn’t live and few cared knew about it.  This year is entirely different.

NBC has truly scored broadcast points for making such an accessible and expansive website dedicated to broadcasting the Olympics over the Internet.  NBC really seems to get it now, first Hulu and now their Olympics coverage.

The best part about the online library of videos is the unique angles they’re now offering.  For example, you can watch the Men’s 4×100 Relay entirely underwater.  Exactly what I was thinking while watching the original!

Wolf’s New TeeVee

Wolf Blitzer has some new gadgets in the CNN news room this election season, chief among them a brand new multi-touch display.

The “Magic Wall” was unveiled during the Iowa Caucuses and is powered by Jeff Han‘s incredible software. Han first showed his technology to the world during the 2006 TED Conference and received widespread acclaim and soiled pants from obsessed fans. As he used both hands to manipulate a globe, fly over mountains, edit images and delicately move flickering orbs around the screen, the audience giggled with joy.

Blitzer’s implementation of the technology seems to be improving with each primary election broadcast and tonight’s was a clear improvement, not only in technology but in their use of it. Previously befuddled by the new teevee, the CCN anchors did little more than throw images around the screen. Later, they used virtual bingo balls to dump them into candidate buckets, representing votes. Flashy, but still pretty useless.

Tonight, they had a map of South Carolina and were able to watch data from each county load in simultaneously, zooming in to each region, watching exit polls and final results, annotating with markers and using the pinch maneuver with increased skill. The potential for this technology is ming-boggling and I can only hope that they continue to perfect it for the general election in November.

Remember Tim Russert’s white board from the 2000 election? They upgraded to a tablet PC in 2004. We’ve come a long way.

“24″ in 1994

Another reason why I can’t imagine how anything got done prior to broadband Internet and cell phones.

Lines are for Losers

Wish I could say I’ve never used a line sitter.  But, seriously.  Who wants to wait in line for a committee hearing when you can get some smelly guy to do it for you?

Letterman’s Nails

HD TV is an amazing thing.  The quality of the picture, the clarity of the sound, the wider screen and field of view…all of it is certainly worth the extra pain of buying equipment or paying for service.  I rethought recently when confronted with David Letterman’s nasty excuse for finger nails on his return to live TV on Wednesday.