Comments on West, Donavon West: Beijing 2008 Olympics Medal Count Gadget

Hi Donavon, Thanks for a brilliant widget.I found ...

2008-08-20T08:32:00.000-04:00

Hi Donavon,

Thanks for a brilliant widget.

I found this widget on youcalc.com that shows total medals per country (total medals, gold, silver and bronze)

In addition, the widget can show medals, per million inhabitants in a given country.
Check this out :)
http://www.youcalc.com/pubapps/1219221778285/?cswid=48abc6bc903b61d0

This will give you a quite different perspective :)

Keep up the good work!

James

thanks for the fantastic widget its working pretty...

2008-08-19T02:54:00.000-04:00

thanks for the fantastic widget its working pretty well on my Vista Desktop, BTw i have also written a post about your widget on my blog with ur backlink
check it out :-
"http://thehightechdaily.info/home/2008/08/19/olympic-medal-widget-for-vista-mac/

please reply if we can do a link exchange :D

@Ian - Thanks! I had thought about making a countr...

2008-08-18T16:47:00.000-04:00

@Ian - Thanks! I had thought about making a country "pinnable" in the #5 position (regardless of actual position), but I wanted to make the gadget available in a timely manner. Adding features like this would have delayed getting it into "production". After all, the Olympics have a finite period (17 days) and it's not like I'm getting paid to write the gadget. :)

Maybe if I write one for Vancouver in 2010 or London 2012?

I'm not promising anything, but I may change my mind if I can find the time so check back in a few days.

Hey I like this gadget of yours quite a bit. I hav...

2008-08-18T13:49:00.000-04:00

Hey I like this gadget of yours quite a bit. I have one request though, if you have the time. Could you let us specify a country to pin on the list so that countries not in the top 5 can still be tracked?

My country, Canada (which finally has some medals! Yay!) is far far from the top 5, but I'd still like to see its medal counts.

Anyhow, nice work man, keep it up.

@paperisdelicious -I would argue that by counting ...

2008-08-18T10:25:00.000-04:00

@paperisdelicious -

I would argue that by counting total medals that the US is more accepting of "anything less than perfection" (especially China). It says on the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" and not "Give us your perfect and only your gold medal winners because as are afraid of China".

Sure we have gotten quite a bit off course over the past 7 years (i.e. the US is likely to torture you for saying that we're "afraid"), but president Obama is going to try and correct that.

No other country counts the "overall medal count",...

2008-08-16T12:37:00.000-04:00

No other country counts the "overall medal count", only the US - because if they counted the correct way, they'd be in third (as shown on every country + official olympics site).

The US is afraid to show that it is losing to China (which it is) - so it counts gold/silver/bronze as all the same. Sorry, but in my book 6 bronze medals do not outweigh 5 gold ones.

China has 27 golds while the US has 16 (as of this post).

I've updated the gadget to sort by either "total m...

2008-08-14T12:47:00.000-04:00

I've updated the gadget to sort by either "total medals" or by "gold/silver/bronze". read more...

Just for curiousities sake, where does the data co...

2008-08-13T18:53:00.000-04:00

Just for curiousities sake, where does the data come from.? Are you scraping it from somewhere or is there a web service or database or something out there you connect to.?

The gadget updates every 15 minutes with the same ...

2008-08-13T09:54:00.000-04:00

The gadget updates every 15 minutes with the same data as NBC and I would hope that they have it right! :)

As for the sorting, there are two schools of thought here. One is by "ranking" which is some algorythm (that is unknown to me) of weighting gold, silver and bronze at different levels.

The method that this gadget uses (and the one used by NBC, Yahoo, Sports Illustrated and many others) uses the total medal count.

Again, the gadget is accurate but maybe the sort order is not to your liking.

The count is correct. Right now Italy ony has 10 ...

2008-08-13T08:17:00.000-04:00

The count is correct. Right now Italy ony has 10 medals overall whereas Russia has 12 so theya re ranked higher. You can look here.

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/medals

So the gadget is correct.

This is cool but... not accurate!!! I just install...

2008-08-13T05:55:00.000-04:00

This is cool but... not accurate!!! I just installed it and does not show Italy in 5th place with 4 golds and shows Russia 2 golds.

The proper sorting is # of golds then # of silver then # of bronze, not the total number of medals...