Hello Everyone,
As I am sure you are well aware, the 2008 Beijing Olympics will commence on
Friday, August 8, 2008.
I don’t know about you but I, for one, am eager to use my wireless mobile maven
as a global magic mirror through which I can smartly spy world-class
scientifically engineered sports.
Explore the following sites on your mobile phone and feel the flame inside you.
Several of the following listings will not be functional until Friday, August 8, 2008.
The official site of the 2008 games, http://beijing2008.cn, has a mobile edition in English at http://wap.beijing2008.cn/pams/s.do?p=507&lo=en. It's a "one size fits all" wml site but is quite comprehensive with news, schedules and free wallpaper downloads for each sport. The 96x128 wallpapers feature the 2008 Olympic mascots, five good luck dolls representing the five Olympic rings and the five elements of traditional Chinese philosophy; water, metal, fire, wood, and earth. The official site should be particularly useful if you are lucky enough to actually be in China for the Olympics as it has maps of the Olympic cities and venues, visitor guides, hotel information and a downloadable GPS enabled Olympics Navigation application (Windows Mobile only).
NBC has the exclusive television broadcast rights for the Beijing Olympics in the US. The network has launched dedicated web and mobile, http://mobile.nbcolympics.com, sites with extensive coverage of the US Olympic Trials. NBC's site also has TV schedules and background information on Beijing, descriptions of some of the events and photos and biographies of top US competitors. The well designed site uses browser detection to adapt the content by varying image, page and font sizes to the capabilities of various phones.
A mainstream news site with lots of pre-Olympics coverage is The NY Times' at http://mobile.nytimes.com/section?s=84 which features dozens of full length stories and photos from the US's top daily.
MSNBC's Olympics mobile page at http://msnbc.msn.com/id/24110220 has a dozen in depth news items and some nice photos.
Sports Illustrated's Olympics coverage is in full swing with over 60 Olympics news items at http://m.si.com/news/item/to_oly_sports. In spite of its name SI Mobile is text only, no illustrations!
Yahoo's Olympics site http://us.m.yahoo.com/2008games features a large countdown clock showing how many days, hours and minutes until the start of the games. Yahoo seems to be focusing more on news and results rather than color features, which is how I like it. The site is currently showing results from the in-progress US Olympic Trials updated every few minutes. Yahoo's site was created by German mobile development shop NetBiscuits which also did Y!'s March Madness site. The Olympics site has a look and color scheme similar to Yahoo's new mobile portal Beta.
USA Today has a single page Olympics sub site http://m.usatoday.com/item.jsp?key=olympics_sp with links to 15 stories. The site adapts to deliver wml to older phones that don't support html. There's an iPhone version at http://iphone.usatoday.com/#_/item.jsp?key=olympics_sp.
British independent TV network Sky's page http://pda.sky.com/sports/pda_olympics_menu.asp is currently rather sparse on content but I'm sure that will change once the games start.
The BBC's mobile Olympics page http://news.bbc.co.uk/mobile/bbc_sport/olympicsport has dozens of articles with a sub-section for each Olympic Sport. The BBC's sports and Olympics coverage has traditionally been top-notch so this is should be a good choice, especially for in depth coverage of niche sports.
Enjoy,
Mark