During the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, China will be presenting itself to the world in part through the architecture of the Olympic venues. Many of the buildings are now nearing completion, and I’ve put together a small collection of my favorite publicly available photos from Flickr.

1. Beijing “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium

Photo by CATIC-TEDer

The most recognizable building to date is the Olympic Stadium itself. Also known as the “Bird’s Nest,” the stadium was designed by a Swiss architecture firm with guidance from Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist who was originally quite proud of the design: “In China, a bird’s nest is very expensive, something you eat on special occasions.” (Source) However, Ai has since, rather famously and publicly criticized the Chinese Olympic committee for putting together a ‘pretend smile’ to the world, in the YouTube clip below:

1. The “Water Cube” Aquatic Center:

Photo by angus_mac_123

The Olympic Committee has been criticized for awarding so many of the contracts to foreign rather than Chinese firms. For example, the above National Acquatic Center a.k.a. “the Water Cube” seems to have been designed and built entirely by European firms. However there are at least some characteristically Chinese aspects to its construction; the joints between each of the ETFE “bubbles” are not just bolted on but also welded together — a labor-intensive process that has surely kept a large number of Chinese employed during its construction.

3. The National Gymnasium (Basketball venue)

Photo by Wolfiewolf

The National Gymnasium has not received as much press as the stadium and the aquatic center, but its design appears to have some intriguing elements. In the above poster, the building looks like a giant circuit board (perhaps something the Borg would have built?). I cannot find much information on this design, so if you have some insight into it, please let me know in the comments!

Photo by Wolfiewolf

You can find more photos on the Beijing Olympics’ official site, here.

Some Chinese bloggers are questioning whether a lunar photo taken by a Chinese satellite is real. The doubters claim that the photo was copied from an old NASA shot. The Chinese government has been quick to rebut the claims, pointing out moon craters that appear only in the Chinese photo and arguing they must have been formed after the NASA shot was taken.

The incident is reminiscent of the U.S. experience with its space program. There have always been some Americans who doubted whether the Apollo space program was a reality or merely pro-American propaganda. It is interesting to note that the societal function of the space program in both cases tends to be closely tied to government’s desire to boost the national pride in each country. When I wrote about India’s space program, I argued that, despite a Wired magazine article’s claims to the contrary, the tone of the world’s new India/China/Russia space race is more congenial than the space race of the U.S./Russian Cold War era. However, at least with respect to the issue of national pride, the Chinese and American experiences clearly have some similarities.

The launch of a new U.S. satellite promises to add another piece of evidence. The camera on NASA’s new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is said to be good enough to be able to capture pictures of the leftover pieces from the Apollo mission (… assuming, of course, that the Martians haven’t already run off with them…). And it should also be able to take new pictures of the same area shot by the Chinese satellite, helping prove (or disprove) that China’s lunar photo is an original and not a hoax.

Just when it seemed I was getting tired of the same old daily grind, I came across this odd gadget that purports to distill the day’s news into your morning cup of coffee. News Brews “connects to internet news feeds and . . . brews a cup of coffee from freshly ground whole beans which contains relative proportions of beans grown in the regions in that day’s news.”

Definitely be sure to check out the video of the commercial for News Brews over on the web site of inventor/grad student Benjamin Brown. It’s a whole latte fun (sorry… couldn’t resist)…

India’s incumbent telecommunications company BSNL has just announced plans to deploy a mobile WiMax broadband network covering a region with a population of over 200 million people. Mobile WiMax (a.k.a. IEEE 802.16e-2005) is a technology for delivering very fast wireless data communications over long distances. Download speeds on BSNL’s network are expected to be approximately 1.5 Mbps, roughly equivalent to the speed most users on DSL connections get over copper wires.

WiMax promises cheap, ubiquitous Internet access that could add a new dimension to the experience of using the Internet. First, WiMax can theoretically be fine-tuned to deliver speeds much faster than the fastest cable modem connections. Second, it is relatively cheap to deploy (especially compared to the cost of running wires to distant rural
areas) and, because it only requires one base station every few miles, it should prove cheaper to deploy than current GSM mobile phone networks. Finally, because WiMax offers “always on” connectivity much like Wi-Fi (a.k.a. 802.11), there should be little or no lag for devices to connect to the network. As a result, WiMax heralds an era when Internet access will truly be pervasive.

It will be interesting to see how India’s people make use of a WiMax network. Because the network could be used by computers as well as mobile phones and all kinds of other devices, the potential for creative Internet-connected applications is enormous. BSNL’s decision to deploy WiMax was in part a response to a government-set goal to have 20 million broadband lines in service in India by 2010. Meeting that goal would be nearly impossible by relying on “traditional” wireline connections, but if BSNL’s network is a success, then India could surpass its target.

Meanwhile, WiMax network deployment in the U.S. has recently stalled. Sprint has been working on deploying a WiMax network and has test services available in some U.S. cities already. But financial troubles, and a failed partnership with Clearwire, appear likely to delay the project. Meanwhile, San Francisco-based Soma Networks is providing the hardware for BSNL’s India rollout.

Online social networks have their own cultures. Erica Naone of MIT Technology Review (TR) writes that social networking sites’ growth outside the U.S. has exploded recently, but different regions have adopted different sites as their favorites. I find it interesting how each site has developed and grown in its own way. The language (and language flexibility) of the sites seems to play a huge role in how wide their networks have spread.

• MySpace (#6), popular in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, began as an independent music exploration site.
• Facebook (#7), recently growing very quickly in the U.S., has accomplished this partially through allowing third parties to create new plug in applications. These add-ons effectively create new dimensions to the network, helping users find shared interests in travel, movies, music, etc.
• hi5 (#8), is popular in Peru, Thailand, and the Dominican Republic.
• Orkut (#10), owned by Google, is the most popular in Brazil, possibly because the creator had many Brazilian friends. For a long time the site did not allow new users without invitations, so perhaps that explains how it has stayed rather exclusive.
• Friendster (#15), one of the earliest sites to appear, has taken off most in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore, where, according to TR, the ability to see who has viewed your profile is one of its big selling points.
• Skyrock (#20), by maintaining a French-language focus, has reportedly managed to oust MySpace from the top spot in France.
• Netlog (#68), by sensing the user’s location and presenting a language-appropriate interface, has scored 31 million members so far, from around the world.

In case you were wondering just how popular these sites are, the numbers in parentheses() above are the latest site traffic rankings from Alexa. As you can see, social networking sites are really dominating the top 20 most visited sites on the Internet.