The Opening Ceremonies have concluded for the first Youth Olympic Games, and the competition is about to start (within the hour, basketball and badminton will start; swimming will be shortly afterwards).
You can watch the broadcast of the Youth Olympic Games live by going to the schedule and clicking on the event you want to see. There will be on demand viewing as well (the Opening Ceremonies are currently up). If you want to watch the events live, you’ll need to know how to translate Singapore time to your time.
If you live in the Eastern United States, translating Singapore time to your time is really easy. All you have to do is change your time from AM to PM. If it is in the evening, it is the next day in Singapore. Those of us who live in other areas of the US will have to add the time difference between our time zone and Eastern time. In my case, since I live in Phoenix and everybody else is on Daylight Savings time, I add 3 hours. Then you switch AM to PM like the people on the East Coast.
If you live in England or many parts of Western Europe, you will have to add 7 hours to translate your time to Singapore time. Paris and Italy will have to add 6 hours. On the East Coast of Australia, you will need to subtract 2 hours. If I didn’t mention where you live, you can check the World Clock. Find a city in your time zone and translate it to your time. Singapore is listed on that page so you can make an easy comparison.
I have to make a commentary on the on demand service of the Youth Olympic Games. I appreciate the fact that this service is offered, especially since they are not on television, at least in the US, but the technology used to provide this On Demand Service really stinks. There is no pause button, and you cannot fast forward. While this may only be a minor annoyance if you’re watching a 90 second interview with Michael Phelps, when you are watching the Opening Ceremonies, which last more than 2 hours, it is a major pain. As I watched the Opening Ceremonies, there were several times that I would have liked to pause the show. After watching the Opening Ceremonies for 2 hours, right after Jacques Rogge announced that the Youth Olympic Games were open, my Internet had a hiccup and I had to start watching it all over again. I went to go read a book while the two hours that I had already seen replayed; it was really annoying to have to replay 2 hours of broadcasting in order to see the final 30 minutes or so to see the Olympic flame arrive in the studio. There are many other on Demand technologies that allow you to pause the show (Glenn Beck uses such a technology with his documentaries); perhaps for 2012 we could update the broadcast to 2010 technology standards.
