Vancouver 2010 Olympics: A geeks' guide

The NFL doesn't look kindly on its players tweeting from the sidelines or locker room. But Olympic athletes have no such restrictions. Twitter has compiled a list of 100 tweeting Olympians, including US alpine skier Lindsey Vonn, who earlier this week used the microblogging service to keep her followers up to date on how her shin is healing after a training crash threatened her chances of participating in the Olympics. Follow @Lindseyvonn and the rest of the verified Olympian accounts here.

That's a lot of power strips

For you infrastructure geeks (come on, we know you're out there), CIO has a cool slideshow walkthrough of the tech backbone of the Vancouver Olympic Games. What's it take to keep things running smoothly? Try 800 servers, 6,000 computers, and 4,000 printers, and miles of cabling to start.

Goggles from the future

Skiing and snowboarding have long been at the vanguard of high-tech sports. We've seen carbon fiber snowboards, piezoelectric ski inserts, and the more pedestrian bluetooth-enabled helmet for wireless tunes and talk on the slopes. Apologies to all of those, (and this list of Olympics tech – these won't be in Vancouver) but the Transcend Goggle from Zeal, out next October, takes the cake for coolest tech-meets-snowsports gadget. Boasting a heads-up display (HUD) that gives the wearer stats about speed, altitude, GPS coordinates, and a host of "future features," the $350 peepers look like something out of a video game. HUDs are used most commonly by fighter pilots, but we're glad to see them trickling down to more normal pursuits. Bonus: they don't look that different from the specs we currently sport for our snow-sliding fun.

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Check out the Monitor's full coverage of these Olympic Games, including tweets from reporter Christa Case Bryant (@chrstacasebrynt), and while you're in a tweeting mood, follow us @CSMHorizonsBlog.

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