Weekend Reading List (8.4.2012): Olympic Recap – Social Media, MTB Course Goes Public, BMW Brings Tech, Athletes Tank
Anti-Social Media at Olympics
From SportsTechie: Social Media Ban During the ‘Socialympics’?
Social media is a large part of London 2012, but if you’re a spectator make sure you don’t post your pictures or videos on any social media sites. The organizers of the XXX Olympiad have seen fit to ban visitors from posting pictures and video that are taken at events and “exploited” on social media sites. These draconian measures are a bit confusing considering most of the technological measures enacted have been to grant more access, not to restrict it.
Public Course
From BikeRadar: Olympic mountain bike venue will open to public after Games
Hadleigh Farm, the venue for the Olympic mountain biking cross-country events, will be opened to the public after the Games after a planning application was approved.
Motor Tech
From Forbes: BMW’s Technology Helps U.S. Athletes In 2012 Olympics
BMW has a massive marketing effort underway at the 2012 Olympics. As the Official Automotive Partner to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, BMW is doing a lot of predictable things to promote itself, including running TV commercials that tout the sponsorship, setting up an impressive pavilion at Olympic Park to showcase vehicles, and lending more than 4,000 diesel, hybrid and electric vehicles to support the games.
But it is also doing something unexpected and intriguing. As part of its sponsorship, BMW tasked engineers in its technology office in Mountain View, Calif., with helping U.S. athletes improve their training and performance.
Tanked
From The Wall Street Journal: The Olympics Get a Taste of Tanking
For some, the competitive Olympic ideal can be best analogized to a million diehard athletes streaking through a million cascading waterfalls: epic effort, epic beauty, epic competition, the triumph of the spirit, etc. It’s wonderfully tailor-made for some unimagined Visa commercial, but it’s an ideal that doesn’t always play out in the actual Olympic Games.
