Cell Bytes

Those press covering the Olympics sure do have a plum life. They bundle off to Vancouver for 16 days of watching ice-skaters embarrassing themselves, and ruthless Russian bobsledders showing their dark sides. Oh, and they get lens-shaped thermoses.

The story goes that a Microsoft employee by the name of Josh Weisberg wandered into the Canon press tent at the Olympic Press Center, and got given a 70-200mm Canon L-series lens. Or so he thought, probably tucking it safely in his backpack before Canon realized they had gifted him a lens instead of a branded pen or hat.

I hope he wasn’t too disappointed when he realized it was a thermos. I’d happily take it off his hands. [PDN Pulse via CrunchGear]

Now that the Apple Vs Google war has eclipsed the Microsoft Vs Google war, Microsoft has felt it safe to quietly slip the Android platform a freebie. Tag is a high capacity color barcode reader also available for iPhone.

It’s been around for some time on other platforms (BlackBerry and Symbian as well as the iPhone), and certainly isn’t the first barcode reader for Android—but Tag is worth checking out as not only is it a free download, it’s also a more advanced way of reading barcodes. [MSDN via SlashGear]

Sports Illustrated photographer David Klutho is wielding two Nikon D700s bolted together like a double-neck guitar at the Olympics, except his rig is designed to take 3D photos, not bust out sweet guitar solos. [Russ Beinder/Flickr]

Over at Beyond Binary, Ina Fried’s got a fascinating profile of Omega Timing, the company that’s been managing event timing at the Olympics for over 70 years. Counting seconds now is somehow totally different than it was in 1936.

Take the methods for timing skiers:

Less than a century ago, the timing of downhill skiing required someone at the top and bottom of the run, each with a stopwatch synchronized to the time of day.

Every few skiers, the timer at the top would send down a piece of paper with the start times of the last few skiers and then some math would ensue, eventually resulting in the time of the run being calculated.

Or the replacement—pictured above—for the classic—and conceptually bizarre, because what the hell, a gun?—starter pistol:

Among the many Winter Olympics firsts at Vancouver is the use of a new all-electronic starter gun that emits a consistent sound and light. Plus, says Omega’s Christophe Berthaud, it’s a whole lot easier to get through airport security.

Or—and this is the most surprising bit—the raw manpower it takes to time the Olympics now, versus the good old days:

At its first Olympics, in Germany in 1936, Omega sent a single technician with 27 stopwatches to the Games. At the 2006 Turin, Italy, Winter Games, Omega sent 208 people—127 timekeepers and 81 data handlers—along with some 220 tons of equipment.

I’m partial to the classic classic method, by which competitors judged their own finishing times, got in fights about who finished first, and settled the dispute like real athletes: On the floor of the coliseum, with improvised weapons, while running from recently imported, still disoriented exotic animals. Athletes nowadays! [CNET]