Jeff Jarvis today blogs about a brilliant idea he has for the upcoming Summer Games in Beijing. Noting that US news organisations (you can add all of the Western world, I’d say) are in a bind about how to accurately and comprehensively report on this closed-off world that’s sitting outside the stadiums and sports venues, he suggests handing video-ready phones to locals to broadcast onto the net what they see and hear. He writes:

What’s the fix to this?

The N95.

With Qik, Flixwagon, Kyte, or other services, a journalist can use
the Nokia phone to broadcast live from anywhere to the world. No need
for conspicuous satellite trucks and huge honking cameras. Just hold up
your phone and broadcast. To hell with the Chinese and their
censorship. News will be broadcast before they’ll know where and how to
stop it.

This could also work incredibly well, I’d say, for brands looking to pull off some savvy guerrilla  marketing. Sponsors will have to tow the Party line during the Games, but edgy rivals could create quite a stir by equipping the locals with discrete mobile broadcasting devices to tell the world about what life is really like in the world’s fastest growing and one of its most repressive nations. The net and mobile technologies have completely transformed the past two Summer Games from a sports broadcasting perspective, allowing the fan for the first time to follow even the most obscure Olympic event as it happens, as opposed to when the network wants to show it to you. This year, the technology will go even further. It will give the world access to the human drama that is far more gripping, the one that occurs in the streets outside the stadium. Stay tuned.

- Bernhard