olympic

Google's not in its usual place ahead of the pack; you could almost compare the search giant to a runner who somehow got his feet stuck in the starting blocks.  But, following Yahoo and Microsoft, Google's finally unveiled some things related to the Summer Games.

A picture of an ice cave is currently displayed on the Live Search homepage, but Microsoft's users aren't being left in the cold when it comes to Olympic-related information.  Several special features have already launched, and even more are on the way.The most immediately noticeable thing may be the disappearance of said ice cave.  In an email to Murdok, a Microsoft spokesman wrote, "The Live.com Homepage will rotate Olympics images in the background for the duration of the games."

I just landed in Beijing and will be spending the next two weeks here as part of the promotional efforts for what I have previously called my dream project, helping Lenovo to promote its Voices of the Summer Games site that features 100 Olympic athletes blogging their journies to Beijing and experiences at the Olympics.

Thanks to the International Olympic Committee and YouTube, sports fans in Botswana, Cambodia, and Mongolia - along with 74 other territories - are set to have a better-than-expected August.  The two organizations have paired to air clips of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

People hoping to attend the Beijing Olympic Games have become victims of an international Internet ticket scam in which thousands of fake tickets were offered the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said today.The IOC and the United States Olympic Committee filed a lawsuit last week accusing at least half a dozen Web sites of selling bogus tickets. The action comes too late to help people find replacement seats at the Games.

Hackers hit the Web site of a French magazine in an effort to influence an opinion poll about the Beijing Olympics and change the site's content.The Web site of business magazine Capital was first attacked in March, when it featured a poll asking if France should boycott the opening ceremony of the Games in China, according to publisher Jean-Joel Gurviez.

To some people, the Summer Olympics are little more than a nuisance - their television viewing schedules get messed up, don'tcha know.  But those who really enjoy the Games may be glad for the chance to watch the 2008 Olympic Torch Relay in Google Maps and Google Earth.

 This past week in the string of posts about the book coming out, I've been stockpiling ideas for "real" blog posts and wanting to write about them more and more. Thankfully now that I launched the Personality Matters blog, I will post most of the updates about the book there and refocus on marketing strategy and insights here. I can't promise I won't share the occasional post about the book ...