Olympics Observations...

1) Matt Furey is such an excellent writer and opportunity marketer. Whenever there's a momentous event, you can count on it, Matt will fire off a personal and well-written letter on the occasion and will not of course forget to plug in his products as well.

This afternoon I found in my mail box his take on Michael Phelp's second gold medal and the phenomenal 4x100 race with the French. Online marketers: take notice and emulate.

2) A failure in information design: isn't it annoying that NBC will not broadcast maximum scores in any given competition?

For example, NBC anchors will repeatedly tell us that an American athlete just scored 15.87 and that it's an "excellent score." But HOW excellent is that? I have no idea since I do not know what the PERFECT score is.

If perfect score is 16, then I can make that judgment for myself too and agree that it's an "excellent" score indeed. But what if the perfect score is 20, 50, or 100?

It's baffling that NBC continues not to provide the audience what the perfect score is in a competition. If I were them, I'd not only broadcast the perfect score but also include a tiny pie-chart right next to the individual score, visually displaying how close the individual competitor got to achieving that perfect score. That's a piece of must-have information graphics that is sorely missing from NBC broadcasts.

3) Image sacrificed to cuteness. Have you seen the GE commercial that shows an ancient Greek disc thrower bringing down the Parthenon when the wind changes its course? I thought that was a DISASTER of a commercial for GE's Wind Power projects because, although humorous, it plants in the mind of the audience the IMAGE that wind can be a DANGEROUS element leading to DESTRUCTION of PRICELESS TREASURES.

Wow! Whoever thought of that commercial really did an excellent job of planting the seeds of doubt in the minds of those who perhaps already had a question or two about wind power to start with. That was a textbook case of sacrificing function for form.

4) An odd comment in the year 2008. I was taken aback by a casual comment made by one of the NBC commentators, following the fall of an American gymnast during her performance (I am paraphrasing): "...that was like tearing her wedding dress in the aisle..."

I found it very peculiar that the male commentator chose such an image to describe the female gymnast's plight.

Would he describe the foul up as "...like tearing his tuxedo's pants in the aisle..." if the athlete in question were male?