Posted at Global Notions

The unthinkable happened yesterday at the National Stadium and hundreds of millions of Chinese fans across the country were finally brought back to reality during what has been an Olympics marked by national celebration.  Not only has China clearly dominated the individual sports (minus swimming) which has provided them an insurmountable lead in the gold medal race, but the Games themselves have been an overwhelming success to both their national and international audiences.  Air quality is great, volunteers are perfect, no spitting, no pushing, taxis are clean, food is splendid, venues are spectacular, no protests, greatest Olympics ever, the last iconic Olympics; all comments one can read in the news or hear in the streets around Beijing and throughout the world.  Yet, in the midst of all the good, China’s sport’s god will not be performing miracles this Olympics.

Liu Xiang had the weight of a nation on his shoulders leading up to the Beijing Olympics.  I posted this advertisement that has been running in China all summer as a reminder of the heights one can rise to (or be thrust to) in the rapidly modernizing, individualizing China.  At the end, the viewer sees a Chinese athlete being lifted by the nation to the top pedestal of a medal stand.  The athlete remains faceless, yet there should be no doubt.  He is Liu Xiang, China’s famous hurdler, a national hero.  If you watch the advertisement again, you might notice that the first three athletes all play in team sports (basketball, soccer and volleyball) and that the nation is helping them only to perform various skills required by their sport.  However, the country is lifting Liu Xiang, an individual, to the gold medal pedestal.  This is a powerful image in a country where rapid social change is the norm.

During an interview after Liu Xiang failed to run his preliminary race, a journalist asked why the public had not been warned about the chances of Liu Xiang not being able to compete.  His coach replied that they never had doubts.  While I find this hard to believe, it is indicative of a society that is beginning to accept individual success as THE true measure of success.  Liu Xiang had been hurt most of the running season with a hamstring injury and it’s highly unlikely his Achilles problem suddenly appeared the day of his race.  Yet the general population was allowed to continue to place the hopes and dreams of a nation on an individual athlete, despite reality.  When his body failed, and thus him in relation to the Olympics, it is not surprising that one would see a national outpouring of sorrow and disappointment.

Not since Michael Vick’s dog Boom-Boom won back-to-back Atlanta dog fighting championships has one man or beast lived up to the hype of Michael Phelps. Winning eight Olympic gold medals is impressive, but to do it in one Olympics is simply amazing. Jason Zimdars, a local celebrity, said “Wow that is neat, did you hear Brett Favre got traded?” when asked about the feat.

Phelps had everyone watching the Olympics this year. They wanted to know if he could do it. Stephen Vandervort said, “I Brightkited right when he won so that I can look back in the future and remember where I was at that moment. See, here is a picture of the T.V. I was watching.”

During an interview after the race Phelps was asked his favorite memory and he was speechless. He said that the Olympics as a whole is what he would remember. Justin Boeckman said that he already had a Phelps website made that has in his own words, “Michael Phelps hidden in white text at the bottom of the page written 46 times so that I can get it ranked really high!”

It could be shear talent or talent and technology combined that has helped all of these world records to be broken by Phelps and company. The new Speedo Racer suits seem to be helping everyone. “Those suits are simple, black and real clean,” stated Dustin Evans, “I was yelling Git-R-Done at Phelps the whole time.”

This may be a feat we never see again in our lifetime. I am glad Michael Phelps lived up to the hype and won 8 Olympic gold medals in one Olympic games. Congrats, and thanks for making this a fun Olympics to watch.

A fan of Brett Favre just created a website to help show the Green Bay Packers it was a mistake to trade away Brett Favre.  The site says, “Let’s show Packers management that they made a mistake, trading away the best player in franchise history.”

The premise behind the site is to get people to buy a New York Jets Brett Favre jersey and wear it to the games.  There will still be green all around in the stadium, but it will be the wrong green.

As the http://www.favrefanprotest.com website says, “Together we can change the green in Green Bay!”

Many of you have heard of Shazam, the little iPhone app that will tell you the song that is playing on the radio after listening to it for ten to fifteen seconds, but little has been said about Midomi.  It offers more features the Shazam, but is it really the choice for you when you need a song guessed?

Midomi has added features such as saying an artist’s name or saying the name of a song, but the feature they really want to set it apart is the ability to sing or hum a song and let it find it for you.  They suggest singing or humming ten seconds or more for the best results.  I decided to do a little testing of this.  I sang Lodi Dodi by Slick Rick, and later covered by Snoop Dogg, for a good 24 seconds .  As you can see in the image below not one of my results have anything to do with Lodi Dodi.

The next feature I tested was Midomi’s search based on a saying a song title.  I had a little more success with this.  I simply said Lodi Dodi and it searched around for it.  You can see it found a live version of Lodi Dodi by Slick Rick, but it is misspelled, the second and third results are not correct, and there is no Snoop Dogg version in sight.  I could however listen to the song right here from the results.  I am impressed by that feature.

I decided to give Midomi a shot to go directly head to head with Shazam when listening to music playing from iTunes.  I played the first 20 seconds of the Lodi Dodi by Snoop Dogg.  I was surprised that it brought back no results.

I decided to test this same clip of the song using Shazam.  It has one simple feature and it does it well.  It listens to the music and then tells you what it is, simple as that.  I played the first 10 seconds of Lodi Dodi and Shazam, pun intended, it found it.

Midomi has a future, possibly a very bright future.  The best part about it is that if it does find the song you are looking for you can play it right there from the application.  With a little more time and updates I think Midomi will become a better app and could surpass Shazam in popularity simply because it offers more.  For now Shazam is still the program to get to guess your music from the radio or TV.