2008 Olympics Beijing - Olympics Closing Ceremony

The opening ceremony of Beijing Olympic watched by 32.2 million people in United States alone that was bigger than the American Idol this year’s season. The Beijing Olympics Closing Ceremony on Sunday will have more or less 7,000 participants and none of the 15,000 people who were in the opening ceremony will be in the finale.

Chinese Students will be involved during the Olympics Closing Ceremony and this finale deserves to be praised B/c the show will be Directed by Zhang Yimou who also directed the opening ceremony. Celebrities are expected, like Michael Phelps, David Beckham and a performance by singer Leona Lewis with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. Well, we hope there will be no bogus this time!

Olympic closing ceremony to feature 7,000 people

Olympic closing ceremonies usually offer less of a spectacle than opening nights, and the Beijing finale will have less than half the participants — but that's still about 7,000 people.

NBC Sports executive David Neal said Thursday he traveled 90 minutes west of Beijing to see a rehearsal of the ceremony conducted in secret on a college campus. Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou, who directed the opening ceremony, does the same for the Sunday's finale, set to air via tape delay at 7 p.m. EDT on NBC.

"It's just unlike any other closing ceremony I've ever seen," said Neal, executive vice president of NBC Olympics. Usually a simple vehicle for extinguishing the Olympic flame and setting the stage for the next games, this year's ceremony will have a great deal of entertainment, he said.

The opening ceremony was seen by 34.2 million people in the United States, a bigger audience than this year's "American Idol" finale. NBC will air the ceremony taped rather than live (Beijing's time zone is 12 hours ahead of the eastern U.S.). The same thing happened with the opening ceremony and NBC was concerned when some highlights got out over the Internet before they were broadcast on the network. But, if anything, it whetted the appetite of people who later watched on TV.

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2008 Olympics Beijing Closing Ceremony

2008 Olympics Beijing - Beijing enhanced Olympics show with faked 'fireworks'

Beijing Olympic organizers say their opening-ceremony fireworks
were enhanced by prerecorded footage.

Not all was what it seemed during the spectacular opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Beijing organizers confirmed Tuesday that some of the fireworks display featured prerecorded footage.

Fireworks that burst into the shape of 29 gigantic footprints were shown trudging above the Beijing skyline to the National Stadium near the start of the ceremony.

Though the footprint-shaped fireworks were real, some of the footage shown to television viewers around the world and on giant screens inside the "Bird's Nest" stadium featured a computer-generated three-dimensional image.

"It was confirmed that previously recorded footage was provided to the broadcasters for convenience and theatrical effects -- as in many other big events," Beijing organizing committee spokesman Wang Wei said. "On the day of the ceremony there were actual footprints of fireworks from the south to the north of the city.

"However, because of the poor visibility of the night, some previously recorded footage may have been used."

The computerized images were produced by Crystal Digital Technology Co. of Beijing.

"We did our best to create a rendering that would look like the shot was taken live," company spokesman Lei Ming told the Beijing Times. "Most people could not tell the difference."

NBC said broadcasters Bob Costas and Matt Lauer told viewers the display was cinematic.

"This is actually almost animation," Lauer said on the air.

The ceremony won rave reviews around the world and was watched by more than 1 billion people.

In the United States on NBC, the ceremony averaged 34.2 million U.S. viewers, making it the biggest American television event since the Super Bowl.

Olympic Results

Olympic Results Tracking by iDashboard

if you haven’t heard of iDashboard, you’ve probably seen their dashboards at many other applications.

I discussed the importance of reporting and live data analysis for Call Centers and Service Desks.

Now iDashboard has another Olympic gift for you:

Beijing Olympic Real Time Updates



iDashboards is a leader and innovator in the field of enterprise dashboard software as well as one of the fastest growing companies in business intelligence. In addition, iDashboards has been awarded several patents in the space of data visualization for dashboards.

Why I like iDashboard:

1) Flash based (not Microsoft Silverlight) and browser independent (i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.)
2) Platform independence (i.e. Windows or Linux servers)
3) Data retrieval from multiple databases - which is important since it’s pulling data from several venues
4) Seamless reporting features with Microsoft Excel. After all, the decision maker CFO signs the check, right?

With the results aggregated and displayed in dashboards each day, you can track their favorite athletes, countries and events.

The dashboard’s unique hover-and-click capabilities enable fans to select each country’s individual results by sporting event and individual athlete performance.

Additionally, Olympic sports icons direct users to the official Beijing Games Website providing live updates on the respective events.

To get a sample of what if feels like, you can capture and analyze the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

Olympic Results

The summer olympic games are here!

From it’s origins with the Greeks, The Olympics have evolved into a unifying global collaboration. It is such a great time to learn about other countries, watch hardened athletes give it their all and have a sense of national pride.

You can bookmark this page to keep updated on the results as they are reported by NBC…

Here is the current medal count. It is interesting that so many athletes compete, knowing that most will not place. Typically, the home country has an advantage, we will see how China fares.

Here are some additional results and medals count pages:

2008 Olympic Competition Schedule
Olympic Medal Count