Fu Ying, the Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom and double Olympic champion Kelly Holmes will be among the 80 torchbearers carrying the Olympic Flame across London on its way to Beijing on April 6.

Broadcaster Sir Trevor McDonald and actress Amara Karan will also run the one-day leg, as part of the worldwide Beijing Olympic Torch Relay.

Fu Ying said that she was glad to be involved in the event, starting at Wembley Stadium, site of the 1948 Olympic Games, and finishing at the O2 Arena at North Greenwich, which is to be one of the venues for the 2012 Games.

Large crowds are expected as the Olympic torch is carried through ten London boroughs.

The Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, said, ‘Following the outstanding success of the Athens Olympic Torch Relay in London in 2004. It is a great honor for our city to participate in the Beijing 2008 Olympic Torch Relay and once again carry the Olympic spirit of friendship and cooperation between nations across the world.’

It also allows him to get some publicity for the 2012 games which will be held in London.

The Olympic Flame will go to 19 cities on five continents before returning to China and arriving in Beijing for the start of the 2008 Olympic Games on August 8.
Source: China Daily

Ran Chengqi, deputy director of China Satellite Navigation Engineering Center, has said the new satellite navigation system would be used in guiding traffic and monitoring sports venues during the Beijing Olympics in summer 2008.

The Compass Navigation Satellite System, which consists of five positioning satellites orbiting the Earth, will help ease traffic problems during the Olympics by providing detailed positioning information to individual drivers.
The home-grown navigation system, coded as Beidou in the Chinese pronunciation for the compass, can not only pinpoint precise locations of moving vehicles, but also tell drivers real-time traffic on routes to their destinations.

In working for the Olympics, Ran Chengqi said, the Beidou system would be compatible to the prevailing global positioning system (GPS), which was developed by the U.S. military and is now in wide civilian use worldwide.

China had primarily constructed the experimental satellite navigation web by May 2003, via launching three Beidou satellites into space. In February and April 2007, another two satellites were separately sent into orbit. The cluster of five Beidou satellites are now the main infrastructure of the Chinese satellite navigation network.
the Shanghai-based Wenhui Daily quoted Ran Chengqi as saying China is going to launch more navigation satellites in 2008.
Source: English.eastday.com

Rong Jun, the head of ticket sales for the Beijing Olympics was sacked after the computer system crashed after receiving 20 million hits in the first three hours of opening.

The sale of 1.85 million tickets, available first-come, first-served, had to be abandoned after less than 24 hours on October 30.

The system, which was designed to handle 150,000 ticket sales an hour, crashed under the weight of eight million hits in the first hour. Only 9,000 tickets were sold.

Rong Jun, in tears, made a public apology. Not enough. Now he is out.

Mark you that seems fair enough. Anyone who thought a system handling 150,000 tickets an hour would handle the rush — expecially in China where this is something of a ritual — is plainly a few fen short of a yuan.

Organizers will now use the lottery system that was used in April when the next phase of ticket sales begins on December 10. Seven million tickets for the Games, to be held on August 8-24, are available to the public. Nearly three quarters of the tickets are reserved for residents of mainland China.
Source: The Times

Atos Origin, the Worldwide IT Partner for the Olympic Games, has announced its PC Factory has become operational.

This marks the final stage of central planning and preparations of IT equipment for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

The PC Factory, managed by Atos Origin, will be the central facility for the configuration and distribution of the Olympic Games IT equipment to the Olympic venues.

Located inside the Olympic Logistics Center (OLC) in Shunyi District, Northeast Beijing, the PC Factory is responsible for configuration and distribution of all the Games’ IT equipment before they are dispatched to more than 70 Olympic Games venues. And this includes 10,000 PCs and servers, over 1,000 network devices, and over 2000 printers.

Jeremy Hore, seen in our illustration who is Chief Integrator at Beijing for Atos Origin, said, ‘The PC Factory is a critical processing center for all the IT equipment used at the Games. Every single device, and there are thousands, must be properly configured, tested and prepared for deployment at Olympic Games venues.’

Atos has a lot of experience in this area. Its contract with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is the largest sports-related IT contract covering: Salt Lake City in 2002 (operating as SchlumbergerSema); Athens in 2004; Torino in 2006; Beijing in 2008. Then it will be Vancouver in 2010; and London in 2012.
Source: WebWire