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July 24, 1996 Today's web pick is a critique of what has become the first Olympics of the Information Age. The Centennial Games, currently being held in Atlanta, are the first to get "wired," so to speak. For all those lucky sports fans around the world who happen to have a decent computer and an Internet account, you too can follow the Olympics online. Unfortunately, for the majority of countries competing in the Olympics, these new technologies exclude them. The Olympics, however grand and egalitarian they purport to be, still cater to the privileged. Eagerly towing the line of post-industrial capitalism, the 1996 Olympics are flourishing on corporate sponsorship and multi-million dollar budgets. Bearing this in mind, we have the Official 1996 Olympic web site. Banking on the fact that those who are able to access the site already can watch the Olympics on TV, the Olympic web site is supposed to enhance your experience and enjoyment of the Games. The site is divided into several sections: top news stories, results, sights and sounds, sneek peek cams, participants online, and, of course, commemorative merchandise. The site is updated constantly throughout the day, so chances are you'll be ahead of the game if you check the web site before checking your local TV coverage. The main page is attractively designed, and not too graphics-heavy. All the sections are self-explanatory, so it is difficult to lose sight of where you want to. The results sections is very comprehensive, and includes up-to-the-minute winners and scores from every sport. You can view the results chronologically, or by individual sport if you prefer. The most recent medal standings are always available, either by numbers of golds or by total medals awarded. The sights and sounds sections I found quite disappointing, however. You need to download tools in order to view their huge movie files, and I really don't see the point of waiting 20 minutes to download a 20-second sports clip when you can just see it on TV anyway. Their real-time sound clips are a good idea, but they use a tool called Bamba, which can only be used if you're running Windows. Quite an alienating choice if you're a Mac user. Why they couldn't use RealAudio and made everyone happy, I still don't know. The sneek-peek cams are kinda fun in that they're setup in several venues each day and offer constantly-updated images of the events. For those of you stuck at work and dying to get a glimmer of the day's events, the sneek-peek cams are pretty fun. Participants online is perhaps the most poorly constructed section of the site. Supposedly offering info and bios on all the competing athletes, this section is found throughout the site as all the athletes have links. When I tried to find info on some of my favourite athletes, however, I was disappointed to find that no data was available. And I was checking out some of the most popular American athletes of the Games. I found Silken Laumann, however, Canada's most famous rower, and that was fairly decent. But overall an empty source of non-information. Where would the Online Olympics be without a shopping section? In commemorative merchandise, you can order Olympic souvenirs online and get them delivered to your home within 30 days. Like all major sporting events, however, the T-shirts, pins, and caps are quite expensive (and in US $ dollars to boot) and you really can't tell the quality of the products you're ordering when all you can see is a small picture. Like I mentioned off the top, the Atlanta Olympics are suffused with corporate sponsorship. IBM is the official Olympic Information Systems Technology sponsor and its ads appear on practically every page of the site. Whether or not this is a mockery of the Olympic spirit is another story, but if you can manage to deal with IBM's omnipresence on this site then you'll most likely get something out of it... |
JOYA'S WEB PIX