How I Became an NY Times Olympian

 Above: The "NY Times Olympian" Foursquare Badge

 

Above: The New York Times' Foursquare Page (http://foursquare.com/nytimes)

Last weekend, I took a long weekend trip to Vancouver, Canada to visit my friend, Dario. A week prior to the trip, I had no firm plans to go, but an interest in checking out the city during the 2010 Olympics. Not only that, I had just recently led The New York Times in creating a Foursquare page. Phase 1 of the NY Times presence on Foursquare was sharing a list of Vancouver tips during the Olympics. Vancouver Foursquare players following The New York Times had the opportunity to unlock the "NY Times Olympian" badge by checking into NY Times-recommended venues. As somewhat of a Foursquare fanatic, I was 95% sure that I NEEDED to go to Vancouver to get the first badge that I helped create. (Note: Kudos to Paul Lau, the incredible NYTimes designer who designed the Olympian badge!)

Dario and I were chatting and he asked if I'd be in Vancouver for the Olympics. That was the last straw - I had to say "yes". How could I miss out on such an opportunity? It was on like Donkey Kong. Within a few days, I booked my flight and had a place to stay (Dario and his biz partner, Ryan, were kind to let me stay with them!).

On my second day in Vancouver, I unlocked the official NY Times Olympian badge by checking into the Granville Island Public Market, where a few new friends and I ate lunch and waited in the Altantic Canada House line, before giving up and taking the AquaBus back to downtown Vancouver. Great times, though.

While in Vancouver, I had the opportunity to stop by a few NY Times-recommended venues including the Vancouver Art Gallery and Salt Tasting Room. I was hoping to make it around to Vij's Rangoli. That will have to wait for another time!

That, my friends, is the story of how I became an NY Times Olympian. See more photos of my time in Vancouver on Flickr now!

Great Firewall of China Strikes Again!

Above: My friends, Maria and Andrew, at Tiananmen in 2006

Anticipating the 20th Anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, the GFW (Great FireWall) of China has struck again! For those of you who have never heard of GFW, it's a method by which the Chinese government censors out anything that they don't approve of. For example, if you look up "Tiananmen Square" on Google in the U.S., you'd see a mix of photos, some of which include photos from the June 4, 1989 uprising. However, if you look up "Tiananmen Square" on Google in China, you see smiling pictures of tourists in front of Tiananmen and pictures of local restaurants. Big difference right?

This time, GFW is taking a ton of sites with it, including popular social networking sites, like Twitter, Xiaonei, Blogspot and Flickr.

To get a sense of just how many sites GFW is censoring, take a look at this Google Doc that includes an extensive list of sites that are currently being blocked in China. Check out the document here.

There have been a lot more stories that I wanted to aggregate here for you, as well:

Tiananmen Square, 20 Years Later (The New York Times)
China's Forgotten Revolution (The New York Times)
Behind the Scenes: Tank Man of Tiananmen (Lens Blog, NYTimes)
China Blocks Twitter (And Almost Everything Else) (Mashable)
To Shut off Tiananmen Talks, China Disrupts Sites (The New York Times)
In China, a New Breed of Dissidents (Wall Street Journal)
China Blocks, Twitter, Flickr, Others as Tiananmen Anniversary Looms (Fox News)
Tiananmen Square: Foreign Reporters Barred by China on Eve of Anniversary (Huffington Post)
1989 Tiananmen Square Protest (YouTube)
Tank Man Documentary (PBS)

I wish I could be in Tiananmen to check out what was going on right now. For anyone there, please comment below and tell us the latest news on what's going on in Beijing!