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.

The first ever Youth Olympic Games starts today. I have not posted about it a lot lately because I wasn’t sure how people were going to watch it. You can watch about any sport that you want on television today… you can even watch the Visa Gymnastics Championships… but you can’t watch the Youth Olympics on television. I’m not sure why NBC isn’t playing even the opening ceremonies on any of its stations, but evidently infomercials are going to attract more interest.

If you live in the US, it doesn’t look like you’ll be able to Tivo the Youth Olympics. Or watch it on your television. Which is a shame; I like to use my exercise bike while watching sports. However, you can watch it on the Internet. You don’t even have to catch it live (which is good, because the opening ceremonies were on at 2 AM Arizona time/5 AM Eastern time). Head on over to the Youth Olympics Broadcasting page and you can watch them on demand. The opening ceremonies are already on.

Now, it’s nice that you can watch these on your computer… maybe by the 2012 Innsbruck games, we can get some of the events on the television too.

Recently, the 2000 Chinese Olympic team lost their bronze medal after Dong Fangxiao was discovered to be underage. The age discrepancy was discovered when Dong filed paperwork to be an official at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The US Olympic team will receive medals next month. Questions were also asked of the 2008 team; more than one of the athletes were suspected to be underage, although the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) has cleared them (my opinion is that they might mess up and be discovered to be underage in the future).

The Chinese government will make the athletes produce six different forms of ID to prove the athletes’ ages.

This would be good if the Chinese are actually sincere about their hopes to clear age-falsification; however, if this announcement is just for show, and the Chinese government is behind the age deception, then we might not see any changes soon. With the Youth Olympics, perhaps the Chinese won’t be in such a hurry to push their athletes into the wider stage at an earlier age than they are allowed.

The Youth Olympics will be streamed live over the Internet. I like to watch my television via Tivo, so that’s not going to work well for me. If they podcasted the YOG, that would work well too. Then I could just download the events to my iPod. That’s doubtful, as the Olympic organizers (at least in the past) haven’t been hot on letting their stuff be electronically distributed like that.

I know that Universal Sports is going to be streaming it. There should be some television coverage according to recent reports, but how much, I don’t know yet.

The flame will travel to Mexico City, Berlin, Dakar, and Seoul before it heads to Singapore for the game’s beginning on the 14th of August.

What I’m wondering is why do the Olympic organizers only think there are five continents? Has there been a change in international agreement on what a continent is, in the same way that Pluto was demoted to a “dwarf planet”? I’ve always been taught that there were seven continents. Obviously, there aren’t too many people interested in the Youth Olympic Games in Antarctica, but why aren’t they visiting both North and South America? Instead, the organizers lump North and South America into the “Americas”. if we’re going to go by that mindset, we should lump Europe and Asia together into one big supercontinent called Eurasia.

The flame is making it’s way around the world though. If you live near one of the cities that it will travel to, hope you get a chance to see it.

She’s 15 years old, and one of the top athletes in the world at the Junior Level. The Singapore Games will give her the chance to enjoy competition at the highest levels.

I wish her good luck (though I want the US to beat her, personally). Making the UK team in 2012 may be more difficult than making the Youth Olympic Team, but she’ll have the opportunity. You can find out more about McKinna on BBC Sport.

One person on a message board I visited questioned why there were only 28 states represented, and not 50. With only 82 athletes represented, it is only likely that less populous states like Alaska and Wyoming would have less of a chance to be represented. Furthermore, the Olympics are not a democracy. While the Youth Olympic Games are not intended to be as competitive as the main Olympics, we should be sending the most talented. It is likely that many of these athletes will compete in London in 2012; it’s better to send people that could use the experience in international competition.

There are two people from Arizona, although none of them are in gymnastics. We are only sending four gymnastics delegates; they represent both the artistic and rhythmic sides of the sport.

The Youth Olympic Games are only 26 days away. Some details, like the mascots and such, have been revealed, but there’s still a lot that remains to be seen. The above preview of the Youth Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies may provide a few clues about what awaits.

The opening ceremonies look like they will be a little edgier and younger than the traditional Opening Ceremonies. It does look like they will be injecting some local culture, but at the same time, they are including the unique aspects of youth culture (which I suppose varies around the world, but in many places has a lot of similarities, especially in this networked world).

I have mentioned before that the Olympics need to take advantage of technologies like the Internet and YouTube. Perhaps the Youth Olympics will act as a wedge to kick that door open and bring it about.

So the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Singapore are only 30 days away. Although I like the idea, I still have no clue of what to expect.

The Youth Olympics are billed as a less-stressful version of the Olympics for younger players. The Summer Youth Olympics this August will be the first ones. I do know that they will be broadcast on 2010 Singapore Youth Olympics on Squidoo. There’s not too much to talk about yet, but we’ll see what happens in 30 days.

The very first Youth Olympics in Singapore is just around the corner. I know that the Olympic news has been sparse recently; I’m sure that it will pick up soon. In the meantime, if you are creative, and are good at coming up with slogans, you can win your very own Youth Olympic Games T-Shirt!

The Youth Olympic Games on Facebook is holding a slogan contest. They will be choosing one winner weekly. If you win, you will get a t-shirt with the YOG logo on the front, and your slogan on the back!

If you’re not good at slogans, you can still get a Singapore t-shirt on Zazzle, like the one on this post. It’s not the Olympics logo (that would be a violation of copyright; they take those off Zazzle), but you can customize it the way you like before you print it.