The Guardian has announced a number of digital projects that have been produced to add to the news outlet's coverage of the London Olympics, including a personalised "could you be a medallist?" interactive and a "second screen experience" dashboard for viewing the games.
In a release the Guardian outlines six of the "digital initiatives" it has been working on for the games, from its liveblogs and virtual stadium tour, to a new London 2012 "experts' network", which will see experts in the sporting world "tweet, blog and answer readers' questions during the games".
More than 100 experts are taking part, and the Guardian will also plot their contributions in real time on a world map "that users can filter according to which disciplines they are interested in", the release adds.
Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, editor of sport on the Guardian website, Sean Ingle highlighted the value in calling on expert opinion to help add "a whole extra layer of coverage".
"We've recruited people from every discipline, some of them are bloggers," he said, explaining that they have been "experts in their field for a long time".
"Others are actually either former Olympians, people that have just missed out on London 2012, or are hoping to compete in Rio in 2016."
For each Olympic event there will be a series of experts tweeting, he added, and readers can ask them questions as the event takes place.
Tweets from those taking part in the experts' network will also be brought into another of the Guardian's new Olympic digital projects, the "second screen experience".
Due to launch on Friday, the day of the Olympics opening ceremony, the Guardian's "Olympic second screen experience" will consist of a live dashboard, available to view on desktop and iPad, collecting real-time data on the games including "the latest from guardian.co.uk's Olympic live blogs in addition to results, pictures, tweets, the medal table and much more".
The dashboard will automatically refresh with every new piece of content or news, such as if a new photograph is filed.
The first digital project to launch is a "could you be a medallist?" interactive, which invites users, via a "retro" gaming interface, to enter in their own sporting abilities and compare them with the best in the game.
The interactive, which launched today, is "the first time we've done something that's such a detailed, rich interactive", Ingle told Journalism.co.uk.
"There are a few little touches we've got, so you can bash the keyboard and make yourself go a little bit faster, there are also some secret codes that if you're a really hardcore gamer you'll probably guess."
Ingle said the Guardian was looking to "make a statement" with its coverage of the Olympics.
"We will be judged at the end of the year on lots of things, all our coverage, but primarily on how we do in the Olympics."
He added: "We wanted to do things better than our rivals, that were different than our rivals, we wanted to break new ground."
- For more on what digital projects other news outlets have been working on for the London 2012 Olympics visit Journalism.co.uk's Olympics journalism topic page
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