NBC hits ratings gold, best ever – despite extensive online features, streaming events

NBC’s London Olympics ratings defy expectations NBC’s ratings are on track to outdistance numbers from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which many TV industry executives had figured would be a high-water mark. The last Summer Olympics to consistently attract such large crowds were the Montreal Games in 1976 — long before cable TV networks began splintering the audience. Wow, …

A brochure from the Olympics – the map from the London Tube

  I’ve got two maps for you. The first is the slippy map above from London Town: I like the…hand-drawn feel of the map. Venues are shown in indicative locations rather than being geographically correct, as the details of London between the venues are missed out. This makes it a very poor map for navigating …

Ai WeiWei reviews London’s opening ceremony for 2012 Olympics – criticizes Beijing’s

Brilliant. It was very, very well done. This was about Great Britain; it didn’t pretend it was trying to have global appeal. Because Great Britain has self-confidence, it doesn’t need a monumental Olympics. But for China that was the only imaginable kind of international event. Beijing’s Olympics were very grand – they were trying to throw a party …

YouTube a major platform for news – says new Pew report

According to a new report from the Pew Research Center, “YouTube is becoming a major platform for viewing news.” By far, the incident that sparked the most interest was the Japan earthquake and tsunami. Pew looked at the most popular videos in the “news & politics” section of YouTube over those 15 months and found …

NBC releases iPhone/Android apps for the Olympics – live-stream events on the go

NBC Sports and Adobe Systems have teamed up to give fans two apps that stream the Olympics live on mobile devices, record footage for playback, and share the experience through social media. The apps — a live-streaming app for the more than 3,500 hours of content, and a companion app loaded with additional content launched today. The …

Yellowstone – new government petascale supercomputer – to attack chaos theory in climate change

This month, on a barren Wyoming landscape dotted with gopher holes and hay bales, the federal government is assembling a supercomputer 10 years in the making, one of the fastest computers ever built and the largest ever devoted to the study of atmospheric science. The National Center for Atmospheric Research’s supercomputer has been dubbed Yellowstone, …

May the 4th be with you – #HappyStarWarsDay

May 4 is considered a holiday by Star Wars fans to celebrate Star Wars culture and honor the films. May 4 is called Star Wars Day because of the popularity of a common pun spoken on this day. Since the phrase “May the Force be with you” is a famous quote often spoken in the …

Is live streaming going to take over?

Famed author and technology journalist, Steven Levy, posed a question/bet on his Google+ stream: My bet (literally) is that most of the video we watch in 10 years will be live — whether a persistent connection with friends or co-workers, streams from the cameras of friends and strangers, or the increasing amount of pro entertainment …

What I Learned From A Fashion Show…For The Dogs

Ok, I’ll admit it. Of all the charitable causes I could give money to, supporting a philanthropy that involves dogs walking a catwalk first seemed a little silly. There’s poverty and homelessness, domestic violence, educational gaps, hunger problems, all under our noses just here in Washington, DC alone. I haven’t even mentioned hard-hitting catastrophes like …

DC Tech Parties for the Holidays

It’s that time of year again and Happy Holidays! These next few weeks in DC are jam packed with parties and events, the final rush before we all settle down for quiet family nights. Here are my mandatory events: Think Impact’s 3rd Annual Gala Celebrating Social Innovation – Thursday at 6:30pm Brightest Young Things and …