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The 2008 Beijing Olympics start on Friday, but how can you watch them if they're half a world away? Most of us in the "western world" will be asleep while the athletes are doing their thing. Fortunately, the geeks over at Wired have compiled a list of sites and techs you can use to find and watch your favorite events: Watch the Olympics Online.

In this over-saturated information age, there's just too much to remember. Too many bits and bytes flying past our senses. They enter our brain, but the brain can't keep up. So, no wonder these scientists at IBM are working on a way to inventory and retrieve all that stuff with the use of a magical device. Or a cellphone.
"Today, we're flooded with information. It's an information overload and we're not capable of handling it," said Eran Belinsky, an IBM project leader. "This would relieve us from the anxiousness or need to try to remember everything. And there's the issue of trouble with recollection. [It's like] your index is broken. You know you know something, but you can't get there. This could help people having trouble with their memory reconstruct their memories."

Google Street View got me.

Google sent cars with 3D cameras mounted on the roof to select cities to drive every street and take pictures of everything so they can be composited into their "Street View" service. They did a good job here, and if you take a walk out our street you'll see me!

OK I know it's dorky but I couldn't resist attending the Apple Store while here in London. They've got every flavor of Apple device available for hands-on experience (95% of the people in there were checking their personal email with the computers). I managed to escape having only bought a "world traveler's" power-adapter kit. Here's some footage of the innards.

I wasn't able to attend my 10-year highschool reunion, but recently I joined Facebook, and then MySpace and low and behold it's like a virtual reunion! I've been able to link up with a few gems from the past.

A lot of people make a big deal out of all the hype surrounding social networking. My experience so far is that it's a nice way to maintain a web presence while at the same time browsing content other people find noteworthy.

If you're not sure what this social networking stuff is, here's a handy vid from the swell folks over at Common Craft:

If you haven't heard of http://del.icio.us by now, then you're in for a treat. This is *the best* way for you to get an introduction to social networking while at the same time solving that pesky "OMG I have too many bookmarks" problem.

Below is a video that explains it all (thanks again to the folks at Common Craft), and for more detail checkout my "Web 2.0 for Beginners" online class.