How to (really) watch the Winter Olympics

related items

Winter Olympics 2010 photo highlights

Capturing the biggest moments from Vancouver

Winter 2010 Olympic hotties

Fifteen athletes so hot they'll melt the ice in Vancouver

You've purchased an HDTV. You've called in sick from work. You've even hand-dipped some onions and recreated the Olympic seal entirely out of onion rings.

But no matter how passionate you are about the Olympic Games, keeping up with your favorite wintery competition is about as difficult as landing a triple Salchow (we've only mastered the double Salchow—it's that hard). Here are five ways technology can keep you fully Olympified in the following weeks:

5. Catch Only the "Golden" Bits
NBC's Vancouver Olympics site (nbcolympics.com) features comprehensive videos of every single Olympics events. Amazing, but for those of us with just a few minutes to spare while pretending to create the umpteenth productivity Excel spreadsheet at work, "Golden Moments" offers a much simpler, quicker way of catching up with the biggest moments of the Games. In addition, subscribers to certain cable plans can also stream events live on their desktop, which means that even west coasters can now bask in the glory of live Olympics coverage.

4. On Your Mark, Set Your DVRs, Go!
Most of the country—and the world—won't be watching the Olympic Games live (hear that, overly enthusiastic east coast Twiitterers!?). The annoying part is you can't watch the events as they unfold. The cool part is that you can reap the rewards of your DVR by skipping all the boring bits: the endless commercial interruptions, the never-ending segments detailing the history of the city of Vancouver, the sport of curling in its entirety...

3. Take the Olympics With You Wherever You Go
Vancouver 2010's official Olympics app features video, photos and TV programming info, all in a mobile-friendly format. The video can't be streamed live, of course, but it's still a handy way of catching up with the 2010 games while on the go. There's also a Team USA social media stream that lets you keep up with all the American athletes' tweets. Welcome to the future!

2. Become an Olympic Athlete Yourself
Watching the Olympics too passive? Actually participating in a winter sport too active? Now you can become a virtual Olympic athlete with the official "Vancouver 2010" video game. The graphics are impressive, the controls are pretty intuitive, and you can finally feel like a winner without, like, really doing anything.

1. Follow the Official Olympic Athlete Tweets
Twitter has collected all of the verified accounts of the Olympic athletes in Vancouver in one handy-dandy collection. Sure, they're mostly super positive bursts of patriotism, but you do get the occasional candid 140 character blurb, like this one from Canadian Olympian Marco Sullivan: "For those wondering, I blazed the top, had a big mistake in the middle then kinda lost focus and crashed on the bottom. All good though!" Follow them here.