The cyborg, or cybernetic organism–part human, part machine–is a staple of science fiction, from “Star Trek” to “The Six Million Dollar Man” to “RoboCop” to “The Terminator.” These pop culture cyborgs usually involve robotic machinery to enhance physical capabilities rather than mental ones because that’s more visual, more entertaining and easier for the general public to understand.
Basketball fans, beware.
Hackers are taking advantage of bracket-related Web surfing and initiating some madness of their own, with tactics as sneaky as spreading malicious software through March Madness blog posts.
Online security company Websense discovered two March Madness-related malware scams earlier this week, one in the form of URLs posted in blog comments that took users to a phony antivirus scanning site, and another as a search-engine-optimization scam that infected basketball-related terms and pushed them to the top in Google.
Having spent eight days in India in August, I found the recent tragic events in Mumbai of particular interest, as I have both business colleagues as well as friends in three of the largest cities in India. While the world watched the events play out to their terrible conclusion, I was reminded of one of the most seminal events in television history, that of watching Jim McKay’s harrowing updates during the 1972 Olympic games in Munich.
Chinese Internet portal Sina could be more exposed to the softening of China’s ad market than others in its league. Far from immune to the far-flung economic slowdown, Chinese business interests have been hit hard–notably the automotive, real estate and financial markets, which are the three biggest advertising categories for the online media company.
NBC seems to be having a change of heart this week. The network recently wrapped up its streaming of the Olympics using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. However, if you tuned in for this week’s NFL season opener, NBC was using Adobe’s Flash technology instead of Silverlight
For the last few weeks, I’ve been staying up late glued to my screen. No, not watching the Olympics or the nonstop political gabfest on 24/7 news channels. I have been obsessively logging in to iTunes. It’s not about the songs, audio books, TV shows or movies. It’s all about the apps.
If you haven’t read, ESPN has said that they will be aggressively bidding for the retransmission rights for the 2016 Olympics. Notice that I didn’t say TV rights. The battle for the Olympics rights will be in spreadsheet projections done by ESPN, NBC and probably DirecTV that will take into account what revenues can be [...]
Michael Phelps who? In what is probably the greatest moment in this Olympics, Usain Bolt of Jamaica won gold in the 100m dash in 9.69 seconds, a new world record–and he didn’t even have to try after the first half of the race.
There seems to be some grassroots support for the idea of an emergency broadcast system on the micro-messaging service Twitter, at least from people who have emergencies to broadcast. The latest cry for help: A Chinese journalist nabbed by security forces during the Olympics and forced to go to a village far from the event.
For Internet television, the Beijing Olympics represent a milestone. NBC has created a site with an unprecedented 2,200 hours of live Webcasts of Olympic events. But the Olympics are also a powerful illustration of the current battle line between the big business of network television and the emerging medium of Web video. NBC’s broadcast and [...]
How is your Olympics-watching experience going?
You may have caught some of the Olympic Games over the weekend, most likely in front of your television set and not online.
NBC actually showed Michael Phelps live on the East Coast last night as he shattered his own world record in the 400 individual medley. We watched–and, suddenly, the Olympics were as awesome as, well, the Olympics.
Internet censorship is practically synonymous with China these days. The Chinese government is often used as the poster child for restrictive governments that restrict the free flow of information to its residents. That could be why the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is getting antsy, as Beijing is bound by contract as this year’s Olympic host city to allow the press to report as usual during the games. And reporting as usual means unrestricted Internet access.
Many foreigners who come to China for the Olympics will use the Internet to tell people back home what they have seen and to check what else has happened in the world. The first thing they’ll probably notice is that China’s Internet seems slow. Partly this is because of congestion in China’s internal networks, which affects domestic and international transmissions alike. Partly it is because even electrons take a detectable period of time to travel beneath the Pacific Ocean to servers in America and back again; the trip to and from Europe is even longer, because that goes through America, too. And partly it is because of the delaying cycles imposed by China’s system that monitors what people are looking for on the Internet, especially when they’re looking overseas. That’s what foreigners have heard about.
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