Useful Olympic links for July 25th through July 27th

Here are the Olympic-related links we’ve been looking at over the last week from July 25th through July 27th:

  • The Olympic Torch and how to game an eBay auction | The Albert Memorial is still there – Looking at the actual bidders in the actual auctions for each individual torch, the auctions are set to either private (so the usernames of the bidders are hidden), or from bidders apparently new to eBay with low feedback scores or histories of buying other items. There is also no indication of a behaviour of bidders bidding for one torch, being outbid, and then moving on to a torch with lower current bids – all the bidders seem to be clustered around just the one torch their bidding is attached to. What this indicates to me is that actually most of the bidding on London 2012 Olympic torches is not genuine – that most of it is being carried out by sock puppets, false eBay identities created in order to artificially up the bidding of items in order to create the impression of higher demand and a high value.
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Useful Olympic links for July 19th through July 23rd

Here are the Olympic-related links we’ve been looking at over the last week from July 19th through July 23rd:

  • Police rapped for wasting time on Olympic protest calls | This is Cornwall – "I can confirm that 18 people were visited or spoken to in relation to the policing
    of the Olympic torch relay through Devon and Cornwall, in order to ensure that
    the force could support its obligations in relation to the facilitation of peaceful
    protest as well as the safety and security of the Olympic torch and bearers."
    After a positive response from Devon and Cornwall, the campaign group
    followed up by asking other forces if they had done likewise.
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