QISE Review - Day 6 / by Mark

Running total hours recorded on my Tivo, starting with the Opening ceremony through midnight Thursday--182 hours so far.

  • Watching men's gymnastics from last night--the big difference between this and the women's event? For the girls, it's who can excel, but for the boys, it who screws up less.
  • I'm finding myself fast forwarding through the swimming heats--each skip, and they're going in the other direction
  • I look forward to Mary Carillo's late night coverage and reports--she is clearly having fun
  • Bad form, Today Show! When Gabrielle Douglas was shown in a taped package, rap music was suddenly added
  • In a story so remarkable that not even NBC could have scripted it, Kayla Harrison won Judo gold--she was sexually abused by her first coach, her new coaches got her into therapy and retrained her, she wins the gold, and now plans to be a firefighter.
  • What I'm sacrificing for the blog--I decided to watch prime time live tonight, instead of whipping through it via Tivo. I'm doing it to see how well the "online companion" app works. I'm running it on my Galaxy Nexus, using my home wifi, plugged into AC power.
    • Overall, it's not bad. Biographical info on athletes competing at the time, twitters, photos, polls, quizzes...
    • The synchronization to the broadcast is fairly close--I'm wondering how much of it was already written up beforehand (since the entire primetime coverage is on tape), and how much is done on the fly.
    • It did appear to lock up at one point, forcing me to close and restart the app
    • Based on the quiz results, there was a high mark of 4300 people actively using the app (they may be splitting up the logins into multiple instances)
    • In the first hour, there were 34 entries on the app--more than one every two minutes 
    • I wouldn't mind some real time detailed stats for each ongoing event
    • Videos and photos don't always come up, especially when showing multiple pics at once. The underlying app is using Adobe tech, so it may not work great on my Android Ice Cream Sandwich device.
    • Updates to the app have come in almost every day--I assume that's to fine tune the code base
  • We've made it to women's gymnastics--histrionics, HO!
    • "They could call that a step too--and if they do, she'll be punished"
    • "I know I sound like I am obnoxiously critical..."
    • "They work on...the micro-basics of the sport"
    • "Balance Beam is the great separator"
    • "They say a crowded room can be the most lonely place in the world"
  • I'm starting to wonder if NBC will stage a nationwide power blackout as a publicity stunt for their upcoming "Revolution" series
  • Another "instant ad" from AT&T, referencing the Rebecca Soni swimming win "just a few minutes" after the event (actually hours later--remember, it's all on tape)
  • Did we just see another spoiler on a Today show ad? It trumpeted that Douglas and Lochte would be on the show tomorrow, with no reference to their rivals--neither have won or lost (at least in terms of the prime time script) when it aired around 9:45p.  Let's see what happens. Shouldn't NBC have a VP in charge of spoilers?
    • Update--Douglas gets the gold, Lochte gets a bronze and a silver--so I'd say it was a spoiler

More to come.