West, Donavon West

Republicans, mock it all you want, but Barack Obama provides a message of hope that nearly 40 million viewers can relate to. On Thursday, 38.4 viewers tuned in to see Barack Obama deliver his historic acceptance speech as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

Here is how Obama’s speech compared to a few other large audience television events:

If you’re any kind of computer geek at all then you know the names Paul Thurrott and Leo Laporte. Over on twit.tv they do a podcast together called Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott.

Last week’s show featured Microsoft at the Olympics and during the segment they also mentioned my Beijing 2008 medal count Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget.

Head on over and give it a listen. It’s at roughly the 50 minute mark. Thanks Paul!

My wife girlfriend fiancé mother of my child whatever-she-is was just watching synchronized swimming on our NBC Olympics powered Windows Media Center (a horrible application, but that is a story for another post) when I said “wouldn’t it be cool if they just started to make out?”. Not 15 minutes later, I was on the web Googling for “loose meat sandwich” (long story) when I came across this image and post from clusterflock.org. Synchronized swimming is hot!

At the time I released the Beijing 2008 gadget for Windows Vista, I had no idea that NBC had an official Windows Vista Sidebar version of their own (written for them by Clearspring).

Here they are side-by-side on the Windows Vista sidebar. I’m not kidding you folks, this is a full sized untouched screen shot. Notice how small the text is on the NBC version. In some cases you can’t even read it (i.e. does China has 33 or 35 medals)? Also notice how pixilated the “NBCOLYMPICS.COM” title is. And what’s with the white background surrounding the red border?

I don’t mean to knock them too much but please! In Clearspring’s defense, this is a wonderful gadget when running as a web widget where the gadget is displayed in a larger form. But how could NBC even think of releasing such a piece of @#*! for a Vista Sidebar gadget!

When will some people learn that you can’t always create one widget that works perfectly for the web and for the Sidebar. Hey, NBC. Next time you need a Vista Sidebar gadget, call me! :)

If you have a blog or website, I do recommend the various NBC Olympics widgets. Also check out NBCOlympics.com for complete Olympics coverage. You can also watch Olympic content directly within Windows Media Center on PCs running Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate.

In the “blow my own horn” department… With a little over a day after posting my Beijing 2008 medal count gadget, it has had over 1500 downloads. The gadget has also made an impression on Google as it’s #2 search result for the keywords 2008 olympics medal count (second only to the official Olympics website).

After an uproars about “sort order” (probably from the Germans and Italians) I’ve updated the gadget to allow you to choose to sort by “medal count” (as the old gadget did) or the new default method of “gold/silver/bronze”.

As you can see from the two gadgets above, the left one is sorted by gold/silver/bronze and has Germany in third place. The gadget on the right is sorted by total medal count and has Korea in third place. The redish/orange column represents the current sort order.

Click here to download the latest gadget (which also has support for the French Olympics website).

Either way you look at it, China is beating the Unites States.

Are you someone who follows the Olympics every hour of the day? Or maybe you just want to keep and eye on who’s leading in the medal count. Either way, the Beijing 2008 Medal Count Vista Sidebar gadget may be for you. It updates every 15 minutes throughout the day and shows the top 5 countries gold, silver and bronze medal counts. Click on the country name or flag to view detailed medal standing on Beijing2008.com.

1. Click here to download the gadget.
2. You will see this warning below. Click Save.
   
3. After the gadget downloads, open Windows Explorer to the location that you saved the gadget.
4. Double click on the file downloaded file Beijing2008.gadget to install the gadget onto the Windows Vista Sidebar.
5. You will see another warning. Just click Install.
   

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