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about Asia Buzz
Asia Buzz: Gold, Gold, Gold!
Sydney gets ready to throw another (golden) shrimp on the barbie
By ERIC ELLIS
JUNE
8, 2000
Web posted at 2:00 p.m. Hong Kong time, 2:00 a.m. EDT
So the Olympic flame has finally arrived in Australia, Ayer's Rock to be
precise. Let the (Internet) Games begin. The 27th Olympiad will be the world's
first true online Olympics. Granted, the Net was around in Atlanta, but in 1996
it was hardly a feature of the mainstream landscape.
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 ASIA BUZZ
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Asia Buzz:
Independence Day
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Asia Buzz: Doomed-To-
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Straight from the horse's mouth
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Asia Buzz: Unfinished Business
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Subcontinental Drift: The Tax Test
Musharraf must show he is tougher than Bhutto and Sharif
- Thursday, June 1, 2000
Asia Buzz: You've Got Mail Hong Kong has a new tabloid--let the sparks fly
- Wednesday, May 31, 2000
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Clear thinking on the Tiananmen Massacre
- Monday, May 29, 2000
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 ASIAWEEK
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The technology then was slow and primitive--hey it's still slow and primitive
here in Asia--but the Atlanta Games site got 20 million hits for the two weeks
of competition. That was respectable enough at the time--this was just after
Yahoo and Netscape had gone public and when Asian cronies still thought the best
way to make a buck in an emerging market was to hand some to Suharto first. But
that figure is nothing on the 800 million hits expected for the Sydney Games in
September.
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Now we've got bells and whistles like streaming video, Flash, Media
Player, Real Video and websites dedicated solely to updating Games
gossip and covering the events from every conceivable angle. For example,
log
onto and click on the groovy torch-tracker. A pop-up window features
a lone, animated 'ocker' (slang for the true Aussie bloke) with flame
traversing the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Further in, you can track where
the flame is, where it's going, and who's carrying it there and why.
We learn--because its Australia and therefore admirably open and transparent--
that the flame that is never supposed to die keeps going out in the desert wind
and that it actually got to Oz a few days earlier via Canberra's South Pacific
dependency of Norfolk Island--a little factoid the International Olympic
Committee conveniently left out of their official p.r notes. And if the names of
torchbearers--Ernie Dingo for example--seem ornate, we learn that Ayer's Rock is
the "red center" of Australia, where the mortality rate of the locals might
shock even the fiercest supporters of the Old South Africa and its all being
done in an atmosphere of reconciliation between black and white.
We also learn that cronyism is alive and well Down Under. You don't necessarily
have to be a towering figure of the athletic and sporting community to carry the
Olympic flame in Oz. Being the daughter of an Olympic official is enough, as is
being a well-groomed presenter for the sponsoring TV network.
The most impartial sites to get news on the Games is that of the state
broadcaster www.abc.net.au
and www.aroundtherings.com
, which though badly designed, has lots of great tidbits. Also try
sydney2000fans.com
, clumsily named but with a great set of Olympic
links for the medals-obsessed, such as the per capita Olympic Medal
table that lists which nationalities are the world's best performers.
The results are surprising.
The official site is www.olympics.com
and, by contrast, its over-designed. It took
forever to load on my fast box, maybe because it was being visited
so much. But this site is informative enough and will also fill you
in on the peripheral events to the Games, the arts festivals and the
massive organizational undertaking that will go into the biggest sporting
event ever undertaken by man.
There are still 100 days to go and already it's beginning to look a little like
Xmas. You could easily waste a day trolling through all the sites and still not
cover everything. The good and bad news is that it's only just begun.
Eric Ellis is the Southeast Asia and technology editor of web-based finance
portal AsiaWise.com
Ticked off at Asia Buzz? Turned on? Talk back to TIME
Write to TIME at mail@web.timeasia.com
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