With an opening ceremony celebrating social media and a guest appearance by the father of the world wide web, you would think the games are pretty Twitter-friendly. Well, not so much, as the hordes of London have been told to keep non-urgent texts and tweets to themselves to avoid disrupting TV coverage for those who weren't lucky enough to score beach volleyball tickets. The recommendation comes after broadcasters bumbled through the men's cycling road race due to a lack of available data from the cyclists' GPS. The information bottleneck appears to be related to one specific network and sharing the data burden has been discussed, although probably not via Twitter. The IOC knows that telling the masses not to log on likely won't have any impact -- so, what's next for the data haters.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless
Data-hungry crowds spoil Olympic TV coverage, archers alerted originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jul 2012 03:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Remember those robotic camera rigs Reuters cooked up for the Olympic games? They won't be alone -- the AFP have lined the games with their own remote mounts. Traditionally, aerial shots are captured by brave, well harnessed photographers -- but the AFP's acrobatic photojournalists have been grounded by the powers that be. "The Olympics Committee has warned us that, for security reasons, no photographer will be allowed on the stadium roof," stated the AFP's chief editor of technical issues, Francois-Xavier Marit. "We had to come up with a system of remote-controlled photography." Marit worked with Nikon and Mark Roberts Motion Control to build a dozen rigs to pepper throughout Olympic facilities. It's not Marit's first time kitting out the games either -- he's been using remote camera rigs to snap underwater Olympians since 2004. Each mount is equipped with a Nikon D4 and 16 to 400mm zooms, ten will be mounted in the main Olympic stadium with an additional two covering the swimming complex. Worried you won't be able to see the hardware from the bleachers? Mosey on past the break for a quick preview.
Continue reading Remote camera mounts replace AFP photographers at Olympic Games
Filed under: Digital Cameras, Robots
Remote camera mounts replace AFP photographers at Olympic Games originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 28 Jul 2012 09:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Taking a bus is an every day ordinary experience, unless you live in London. Then some crazy stuff might happen, like, the bus might star doing push-ups.
This, for a lack of a better expression, crazy bus is the creation of Czech artist David Cerny. It’s an actual working bus that ...
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The 2012 London Olympics Games are nearly upon us and the BBC just can't hold back its excitement any longer. The Queen's favorite broadcaster has released its Olympics app for both iOS (5.0 and above) and Android (2.2 and newer) devices, apps that for the most part look like wrappers for the company's mobile Olympics pages. But, that's not to say they don't offer some excellent features, like guides to every competition, the ability to save stories to read offline later and, most importantly, up to 24 simultaneous live streams of video -- once the Games actually get started in two weeks.
Update: We got a note from the Beeb indicating that there's an international version as well -- because those two dozen streams mentioned above certainly won't work when you're outside of the United Kingdom.
Filed under: Software
BBC releases Olympics app, streams the glorious Games straight to your iOS or Android device originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Jul 2012 06:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sure, the 2012 Olympics may be gearing up for HD, 3D and even Super Hi-Vision broadcasts, but that doesn't mean still photography has lost its appeal. In fact, Reuters photographers Fabrizio Bensch and Pawel Kopczynski are taking Olympic photography to the next level, perching remote-controlled camera rigs in stadium rafters. The system, which the duo has been developing since 2009, can turn, adjust focus and receive commands wirelessly. Once stills are snapped, they're sent to an editing system and then off to distribution. The team is spending more than 12 hours a day installing the cams at different Olympic venues before the games kick off on July 27th. In the meantime, you can sprint to the source for photos of the setup.
Reuters cooks up remote camera rigs for 2012 Olympics, mounts them where humans can't tread originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Jul 2012 05:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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