The Olympics and Mobile Coverage

The Olympics officially kicked off today and I’m sure we’ll all be drowning in coverage of them soon. If you’re interested in following the coverage on your mobile devices (or even on your desktop) there are some interesting options out there.

Silverlight, Microsoft and NBC

A lot of excitement has built up around Microsoft’s Silverlight and its video capabilities scheduled to roll out with the Olympics. If you head to the NBC Olympics site you might get a bit confused at first as everything on the homepage is in Flash. But if you sign up for the video, you’ll be seeing video coverage through Silverlight. (Note: it does ask you for your cable provider and local station when you’re setting up Silverlight. So, yes, you do have to install the Silverlight plug-in.) For Mac users you can also do the set up and view video through Silverlight.

There is also Video To Go options that allows Windows users to set up their devices to download highlights or full length Olympic Events. For full length coverage the Video To Go option integrates with Windows Media Center. This requires Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate. Intriguingly on one computer when I went to set up the highlight coverage the site reported it was only compatible with FireFox 2.0.

Google in on the Act As Well

Google is also offering some interesting options for following Olympic coverage. They’ve launched a new mobile search tool to bring you speedy results of the events you’re interested in. If you simply  as well as some other tools that you can find on the Official Google Blog.

If you go simply go to google.com and enter wrestling or swimming at the top of the results you’ll see a link for Olympic wrestling or Olympic Swimming which will give you info on schedules and results.

On your handheld you can also go to www.google.com/m/summergames to browse through all of the events.

I’m sure there are other ways to follow your favorite Olympic sport out there. Chime in and share if you have a method you’d like to tout.

Also, if you follow any of the coverage of the Olympics on your devices, let us know how it went and what your experiences were.