Building on the Success of Olympics: TV Everywhere from Any Device

TV used to be bulky and immobile. Now, it has become mobile and can be accessed from any device with an Internet connection. “Synacor successfully provided authentication for NBC Universal’s TV Everywhere 2012 Summer Olympics on behalf of nearly 40 pay-TV customers, spanning all 50 states, reaching 25 million subscribers.”

Whether Synacor is successful in freeing up TV will depend on its ability to scale up to authenticate millions of customers, provide a bridge for hundreds of identity systems, allow social log-in from platforms such as Facebook and Google +, allow login from multiple platforms and devices and monitor suspicious account activity across multiple devices seamlessly.



Reference: Synacor Enhances Cloud Identity Management Platform, PR, Synacor, September 6, 2012

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Social Media Winners at the Olympics

Life after the Olympics

The Olympics Aquatics Center by Zaha Hadid

Beijing's National Aquatics Center

Social Media Winners at the Olympics

London 2012 Olympics was the first social-media Olympics. The social media activity showed how popular some champions, performers or events were. For example, the Jamaican gold-medals winner Usain Bolt received 80,000 tweets per minute for his 200m sprint final, while Spice Girls received more than 116,000 tweets per minute during the closing ceremony.

Social media activities display the brand potential of various athletes. But does brand potential translate into revenues? The organizers think so. They created an Olympics Hub that managed all social media activities. “At the center of the strategy was the Olympic hub, a curated site where all social media interactions of the athletes were collated and was searchable by games, by sport, by team or by individual.”


Reference: Rooney, Ben, Social Media Proves Gold for Promoting Athletes, The Wall Street Journal, August 16, 2012
 

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Life after the Olympics

The Olympics Aquatics Center by Zaha Hadid

Beijing's National Aquatics Center

The National Center for the Performing Arts, Beijing

Life after the Olympics

From the beginning, the organizers of the London Olympic Games have focused on the long view, and have used the games as a way to transform an area of London that is in need of development. The master plan is designed to “bolster connections both within the neighborhood and between the Lower Lea Valley and the rest of London, lacing the site with new east–west streets and adding pedestrian walkways from the Olympic park to the Stratford station.”

The master plan for the Olympic Village includes underground power lines, creation of 50,000 jobs and addition of 35,000 housing units to the area. A large part of the site will become the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park after the Olympics, which will make it the largest urban park built in Europe in 150 years.



Reference: Hawthorne, Christopher, Seventeen Days Later, Architect Magazine, June 2012

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Olympic Size Nightmares

London will be hosting the Summer Olympic Games in a few days. That is where the good news ends. Londoners are unhappy about many things: the persistent rainy season that refuses to go away, subway traffic (“absolute shambles”), road closings (“complete nightmare”), unsold tickets, the cost of the Olympics, poor community outreach, poor security arrangements and so on.

“Asked “What do you feel about the Olympics?” the other day, a random sampling of people here gave answers that included bitter laughter; the words “fiasco,” “disaster” and “police state”; and detailed explanations of how they usually get to work, how that is no longer possible and how very unhappy that makes them.”



Reference: Lyall, Sarah, The Olympic Spirit, British Style: When Will This Nightmare End?, The New York Times, July 19, 2012

Resources:

Online Job Bank

Online Directory of Products and Services

Upcoming Events

Noteworthy Educational Programs

Noteworthy Publications

Recent Posts

Other Recent Posts

Fundraising Through Advertisements on City Assets
Can Architects Design for the 99 %?
Sharing Power with Citizens Through Participatory Budgeting

Game Theory World Congress in Istanbul
Istanbul’s Conference Centers
Istanbul Design Biennial to be held in October
2012 City talks - Sydney
Design Competition for a Library of the Future - Sydney
Global Identity through Competition Winning Architectural Projects - Sydney
Using Landforms to Create a Playground - Sydney

Virtual Tourism - New York City
Design Competition for Tiny but Affordable Apartments
New York City’s Digital Road Map
Low Emission Zones
Frankfurt for Everyone
Using Chaos Theory for Urban Design
Digital Marketing Campaign Rewrites History – Puerto Rico
The Future of Digital City
A Brief History of Digital Cities initiatives
Measuring Livability of World Cities

The Lightest Olympic Stadium in History

London is trying to revive the run down East London area by hosting Olympic games there. The main Olympic Stadium will morph into a smaller community stadium after the games are over. The seating capacity will reduce from 80,000 to 25,000. This shrinkable stadium will be cost effective, energy efficient and use only 11,000 tons of steel as against 42,000 tons of steel used by the 2008 Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing.

“That the core concept of creating a large-scale arena that could easily become smaller led to money-saving construction and operational solutions illustrates how one inventive, focused design goal can often lead to others. While the Olympic Stadium designed by Populous won’t be a permanent landmark in its full form, the creative ideas behind it will likely resonate and live on.”



Reference: Jana, Reena, London’s Olympic Stadium: larger than life but built to shrink, smartplanet.com, June 19, 2012
 

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The Olympics Aquatics Center by Zaha Hadid

Beijing's National Aquatics Center

The National Center for the Performing Arts, Beijing

London Festival of Architecture

The London festival of architecture is a citywide event to bring architects and communities together to examine how to make London a better place. This year’s theme is “The Playful City”, which is appropriate because of the collective focus on upcoming Olympic Games.

The festival runs from June 23rd to July 8th.



Reference: London Festival of Architecture, thintank.org, June 3, 2012
 

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London Property Market Skyrockets with Turmoil in Greece

The Container Cities

The Olympics Aquatics Center by Zaha Hadid

London Property Market Skyrockets with Turmoil in Greece

Threatened by the turmoil in Greece, old Greek money is moving to London to invest in upscale properties. Almost nine billion euros have left Greece since the election alone. It appears that the best London homes are attracting a growing interest from buyers from countries such as Greece and Spain, as a way to protect their assets. The value of prime London real estate has gone up 44% in the past three years, which is more than twice the increase in London as a whole. According to the web site of property agent Savills, number of Greeks looking for homes worth 1.5 million pounds or more, has jumped 39 % in April 2012 compared to the average rate of prior six months.

Please click here for a video on "Wealthy Greeks Spur Demand for London's Luxury Homes"

Reference: Bill, Tom, Euro zone turmoil boosts London property stampede, Reuters, May 13, 2012
 

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