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That silver medal used to be a TV or keyboard.

(Credit: Vancouver2010.com)

Medalists at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will celebrate with circuit boards hanging from their necks.

That's right. Gold, silver, and bronze medals for the upcoming games will contain metal from recycled TVs, computers, and keyboards that might have otherwise ended up as e-waste. Vancouver metals giant Teck Resources is producing and supplying the medals along with the Royal Canadian Mint.

The 2010 medals are undulating rather than flat.

(Credit: Vancouver2010.com)

To acquire the metal for the medals (with great mettle, no doubt), Teck is recovering materials from cathode ray tube glass, computer parts, and circuit boards through smelting. The process involves shredding, separating, and heating electronic components, then combining the byproducts with metals from other sources.

More than 1,000 medals are currently being produced for the 2010 games. But geekiness isn't the only thing that makes them distinct.

They feature contemporary Aboriginal artwork by Corrine Hunt, a Canadian designer of Komoyue and Tlingit heritage. Also, the medals are wavy rather than flat, a form inspired by the ocean waves, drifting snow, and mountainous landscapes found in the Games region and throughout Canada.

The last time we spoke with Shaun White on The 404, he was promoting his multiplatform video game Shaun White Snowboarding. We got to sit down with the Olympic gold medal winner again this week at an Ubisoft event in lower Manhattan where he explained what's new in Shaun White Snowboarding: World Stage, an exclusive title for the Wii.

With the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver around the corner, World Stage focuses on taking snowboarding globally. The game will once again take advantage of the Wii Balance Board, allowing you to sway back and forth like you're actually carving down a mountain.

The title also improves on many fronts; you notice better board responsiveness in addition to more playable characters (including Shaun himself) and an overhauled graphical presentation. There are tons of new environments to ride through including one that blew us away: a surreal halfpipe stage smacked right in the center of Times Square.

Make sure to watch our full interview with Shaun where he tells us about lending his voice to the game, what we can expect from the soundtrack, and how he's preparing for the 2010 Winter Olympic games in Vancouver.

Jeff, Wilson, and Justin recover from their hangovers with ace reporter Caroline McCarthy. We chat about Wilson's drunken debauchery and Caroline's bacon tattoo.

(Credit: University of Wisconsin)

Some days on The 404, there isn't much news to report, so we do something we like to call "milking," and boy are we good at it! It's not for lacking of trying. We spend as much as 10 minutes every day looking for stuff on the Interwebs to riff on, and while we could talk about hackers taking apart Safari in seconds, it's really not that funny. And it's not 404-esque material. See how much text I've written, and really I haven't said anything!

In actual stories today, Caroline McCarthy tells us that there are bacon tattoos at SXSW. We think someone spammed our poll. President Obama makes a terrible, terrible 404-style joke about bowling and the Special Olympics. (We wish he would come on our show.) Google gives you an "Undo Send" feature in Gmail. We think it would be more effective if it had a five-hour, post-hangover undo-send feature. And we're really, really tired of Jason Seigel & Co. movies like "I Love You, Man." But it does bring up fond memories of Jennifer Love Hewitt in that teen classic "Can't Hardly Wait."

Geeph.com is diving into Olympics mania with a 2008 Beijing Olympic Stadium "Bird's Nest" MP3 player shaped like the now famous stadium.

MP3 player shaped like Beijing's 2008 Olympic Bird's Nest stadium.

(Credit: Geeph.com)

Priced at $19.30, I'm going to take a wild guess and say this isn't an officially licensed 2008 Beijing Olympic souvenir, despite the logo.

The MP3 player supports MP3, WMA, WMV, ASF, and WAV files, to name a few. It has an optional FM tuner, USB plug, seven equalizer settings, and a built-in mic for digital voice recording. Can it hold as many songs as the real Bird's Nest holds people?

Geeph takes the "One World, One Dream" message to heart, offering products for sale in British pounds, euros, and U.S., Canadian, Australian, or Hong Kong dollars.

Now if only they sold one in the shape of the Water Cube for that hard-to-buy-for record-breaking gold medalist in your life.

Of course, then it would have to be waterproof.

(Via Chip Chick)

This Olympic USB flash drive bears the same design as the Olympic torch.

(Credit: Lenovo)

Computer maker Lenovo threw down some dough to become a sponsor of the Beijing Olympics, not only designing the Olympic torch but sponsoring athletes and supplying computers for the games' data and media teams. But the Chinese company may make some money back by hawking items like Olympic-themed USB flash drives that sport hefty price tags.

While America got stuck with boring flash drives bearing only the Olympic rings, visitors to Lenovo's Chinese Web site fared better with five types of interestingly designed USB flash drives (site in Chinese).

Lenovo announced the Olympic torch design, also featured on a Lenovo laptop, in early 2008, though the design didn't impress first reviewers.The 4GB flash drive sells for the equivalent of around $142.

Other patterns from Lenovo feature the adorable cartoon mascots of the Beijing Olympics: Beibei, JingJing, HuanHuan, YingYing, and NiNi. A medallion style is currently sold out on Lenovo's Chinese site, while a $29 4GB stick, and a $58 256MB oval-shaped drive, are for sale, with inexplicable price differences. The last of Lenovo's designs is a $58, 1GB oval flash-drive sporting the Olympic rings.

The five cartoon mascots from the Beijing Olympics adorn several types of flash drives, including this style.

(Credit: Lenovo)

But perhaps the coolest, and most unnecessarily over-designed Olympics-related flash drives can be found on Everything USB.

According to that site, Lenovo also makes a set of titanium Olympic flash drives engraved with the Olympic mascots and sold in a mahogany box. However, we could not find those drives on Lenovo's Chinese site, nor could we locate the price. But if one Olympic flash drive is $142, imagine the cost of five metal ones with wooden box.

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

(Credit: Crave Asia)

The world watched in awe as China put on what some say was the best-ever Olympics opening ceremony ever. The proceedings culminated with the lighting of the Olympic torch by one of China's sporting greats, Li Ning, who was hanging from a wire high above the crowd. Who would have thought that at the same time, one of the stadium's projectors was displaying the famous Microsoft Blue Screen of Death?

Some eagle-eyed spectators caught it on camera, clearly showing the error message usually associated with serious software issues or hardware problems in a computer running Windows. Thankfully, this didn't mar the otherwise excellent show. Most people would have missed it with the explosion of sight and sound around them anyway.

Still, it acts as a reminder to future organizers of high-profile shows like this: writing your software in Linux or OS X could be a good option instead.

(Source: Crave Asia via Gizmodo)

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

I consider myself a fairly patient person. In June, I sold my 34-inch Sony KV-XBR910 CRT HDTV. I was moving to a new apartment that month and the thought of moving this 250-pound behemoth--that I'd already moved twice before in the last three years--was just too daunting.

I paid more than $2,000 for the TV in 2003 and in June 2008, I put it up on eBay and Craigslist for $500. I got $150. Unfortunately, because I had an extremely small window of time before having to vacate my old apartment--and because I was afraid of being stuck with this huge piece of hardware I could not move on my own--I ended up selling it for a price much lower than what I had originally desired.

Now this is state of the art!

(Credit: Eric Franklin/CNET Networks)

It's hard for me to even write that, honestly, as I'm sure there were things I could have done differently to get a much better return on my investment. But what's done is now done. I truly wish the soulless excuse for a human being who bought it from me the best of luck with it and I mean that in the best way.

I guess I can't blame all the eBayers and Craigslisters who passed up my TV at $500. I mean why buy a 5-year old, 250-pound TV which, although in great condition, does not have as many connection options or as big of a screen as a 50-pound, 40-inch LCD they can get for $1,000 or so.

Yes, I see how this could have been a hard sell. However, it really depressed me to realize that I was having trouble selling a 5-year-old TV for just a quarter of its original price. Is this even normal depreciation? Actually, I don't really want to know, now that what's done is done. Perhaps I should just move on and look toward bigger and better things.

Unfortunately, I've yet to actually do that. Since selling it, I've been forced to slum it with my girlfriend's 15-year old, 13-inch Philips/Magnavox TV/VCR combo while I determine which LCD HDTV I want to invest in. A few weeks back I watched the season finale of Battle Star Galactica. I won't spoil it here, but the final shot of that episode has a reveal that let's just say I had trouble fully appreciating while watching it on this thing. I remember having to get off the couch and get within a foot of the TV to see anything and even then I was like, "Um, WTF am I even looking at?"

Thanks to high-definition pics I've found on forums, I've since learned what I was missing. Friday I watched the opening ceremony to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and like most people I was greatly impressed by the incredible show China put on.

On Saturday, I went over to my friend Dan's house to hang out and to finally meet his 9-month-old daughter. The visit contained both the highlight and the low point of my weekend. While his daughter was one of the coolest babies I've ever met, watching the Olympics in HD on his HDTV was so visually impressive that it depressed me that I'd just watched the opening on such a clunker. This was an opening of such ambition that nothing like it will probably ever be attempted again in my lifetime and I got to waste its full impact on the gadget you see above.

Spectators at the Olympics will get a chance to touch the flame-bearing torch--a replica of it, that is. Instead of fire, the torches have a microelectromechanical system (MEMS), an accelerometer, and lines of LEDS embedded within.

(Credit: Crave Asia)

By waving the torch, an internal sensor will determine the left and right points, while the MEMS measures the degree of movement and transmits the information to a microchip that activates the LEDs to display "in the air" preprogrammed words or images relevant to the Olympics.

This idea is not novel, and you've probably seen similar products in gift shops. But what's impressive is that each visitor to the Games will probably get one in his or her goodie bag. This roughly translates to hundreds of thousands of torches being manufactured, and that doesn't include those for sale in the souvenir shops.

So what kept the production cost low? It's reported that a former MEMS engineer came up with technology that enabled the devices to be produced along any CMOS chip manufacturing line, thus driving the cost down and giving spectators a little something to bring home and remember the Olympics by.

(Via Crave Asia)

Click here for CNET News' package of stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

More related stories:
RFID goes prime time in Beijing Olympics

Olympic committee bans 'professional' cameras for visitors

De Vere's Olympic iPhone has more bling than a medal

Ancient astronomical calculator had Olympic run

(Credit: Beijing2008.cn)

Radio frequency identification technology will be facing one of its first major tests during the Beijing Olympics, taking care of ticketing for the estimated 3 million athletes, journalists, and spectators. Despite the Chinese government's current uptight security measures, the RFID chips embedded in Olympics tickets will be not carrying personal information. Instead, they'll be linked to a remote database, designed primarily to combat counterfeits, facilitate check-in, and so on.

Following the recent food scare originating from China, local authorities will also be using an RFID-based food management system to maintain close tabs on food production, processing, and deliveries. The arrangement may be a lot more significant than the one mentioned above, considering the well-being of close to 10,700 international athletes and the daunting logistics of pulling off events across 31 competition venues throughout the country.

(Via Crave Asia)

Related stories:
At Beijing Games, Haier washing-machine spin

Olympic committee bans 'professional' cameras for visitors

De Vere's Olympic iPhone has more bling than a medal

Ancient astronomical calculator had Olympic run