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For those who are a bit weary of the whole idea of corporate pavilions, Media magazine has a witty review of the pavilions of all of the Olympic TOP sponsors. Each is helpfully compared to the Olympic athlete or icon that it most resembles. Two examples:China MobileSMS a vote on your favourite Olympic photograph and receive a set of stickers and ...

This probably counts as an abuse of blogging, but for posterity, here is the stream of 40-odd tweets I posted during last Friday's opening ceremony for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. I've flipped them back into chronological order and removed the extraneous material (and some typos):Well, here we go. Good luck, Beijing! 7:52pm Alright. Gotta ...

From the Sydney Morning Herald:Organisers had repeatedly claimed that internet would not be censored during the Games but at the press conference a Wall Street Journal journalist produced his laptop and showed that sites such as the BBC in China and Hong Kong's Apple Daily were being restricted. BOCOG media director Sun Weijia initially ...

Cliff Coonan has a story in showbiz trade Variety that examines the broadcasting problems I posted about last week. The article is something of an omnibus piece on current Olympic issues. Among other things, it gets into the organizers' efforts to develop and promote an official cheer. This part is worth highlighting: While Beijing is on the ...

Since last night, most likely due to the posting of video of the Tibet demonstrations, some of which is reposting of material from major news organizations (such as this, from CNN). Via Danwei and Shanghaiist. CNN and BBC have been regularly blacked out and overseas news websites have been  crawling (although not blocked). Stand by for the ...

Dave at Mutant Palm has been scanning and translating Chinese tweets (Blogspot -- proxy needed in China) on the Tibet situation from local Twitter clones and comparing them with International ones. It's worth having a look at some of the sentiment zipping around this newest corner of the Chinese Internet (yet one more channel of discourse for the ...

The IOC has bowed to the inevitable and said that athletes can blog --within limits-- from the Games this summer:Athletes have long demanded they be allowed to write their blogs -- online journals of personal opinion or reflection -- during the Games. But the IOC was concerned those blogs could potentially infringe on copyright agreements and ...

A few articles worth a look today: Olympic risks in ChinaEvan Osnos of the Chincago Tribune has written an article reviewing the many risks that China faces in hosting the Olympics:Chinese leaders warn that the Games should not be politicized. But they have done so themselves, as in 2001, when Liu Jingmin, a vice president of Beijing's Olympic ...

I am ringing in 2008 by being officially too lazy to write anything original. But here are a few interesting stories from the past few days that are worth a read: And I thought Aussies were relaxedControversy in Australia, which has announced the implementation of a previously announced measure to censor pornography on the Internet at a ...

The Economist, for it's ''The World in 2008'' supplement, has got round to examining the politically charged nature of the upcoming Beijing Olympics:In the build-up to the games on August 8th [China's critics] will step up their attacks on issues ranging from China’s human-rights record to the status of Tibet and Taiwan. It will be the most ...