The real news is horrible enough without the added layer of internet deception. During what police described as a domestic dispute with his wife fiancée, Henry tried to jump into the bed of a pickup truck in which his wife was driving away. He fell and was later found lying on the road and rushed to the hospital. He died at 6:36 am ET this morning.

But Henry was reported dead approximately 12 hours earlier on Twitter. Real and fake deaths were bound to bump up against one another on the microblogging service sooner or later, by sheer chance. Twitter supplies a steady stream of misinformation, including most prominently the prematurely reported death of actor Patrick Swayze, outrage over an Amazon gay book ban that never existed, and the false news that California courts had overturned a gay marriage ban.

The Henry death scam was, as these things go, relatively sophisticated, perpetrated by a scammer who went to the trouble of changing his screen name to "Gerry," calling himself a "Sports Reporter for Dallas Morning News," and attaching a picture of real-life Morning News columnist Gerry Fraley, plus a link to Fraley's page on the newspaper's website. With Cincinnati Bengals receiver Henry known to be in the hospital following a car accident, it would be easier to pass off fake news:

These reports were flatly denied by one of the supposed "sources," and the fakester was even outed by the real Gerry Fraley as fake. An enraged Twitter turned ferociously against the scammer (except for a few people who later insisted he'd been proven his correct, despite the 12 hour gap between his false tweets and the actual death):

The Dallas Morning News must be thrilled with all the people who still think the scammer worked for the paper. Welcome to microblogging, printies!

Will Leitch - "rose to fame as the editor of Deadspin, the world's biggest independent sports blog"

Owen Thomas - "best known as the editor of Valleywag...infamous [!]"

Brian Lam - "man behind the curtain at one of the biggest blogs in the world—gadget site Gizmodo"

Our writers appear with other Internet notables and fameseekers: Matt Drudge, Seth Godin, Perez Hilton, Kevin Rose, etc.

Online schedules: NBC's Olympics listings takes a bit of work (you have to enter your ZIP code and select a television provider, even if you just want online listings). However, once you've done the work, it'll send you notifications when events you've selected will be broadcast. Jason Kottke has found Google and iCal calendars, which will allow you a bit more flexibility in setting up alerts, and the New York Times has a schedule as well. And of course, there's an official schedule from the organizers in China, with times listed for Beijing's time zone (16 hours ahead of San Francisco, 13 hours ahead of New York) — probably the best place to go for daily updates, as smog and weather may upset the schedule.

Sling Media's Slingbox: For those with more money than time, the best solution might be a Slingbox. Then you can beam your home satellite or cable signal over the Internet to your laptop, desktop, or iPhone, and remotely switch between NBC and MSNBC.
Pros: You can get great quality, even HD, if your home Internet connection is fast. There is SlingPlayer software available for a range of not just operating systems but handheld devices as well.
Cons: Prices start at $129.99 and your selection of Olympics coverage is limited to what's available from your satellite or cable provider, which means missing early heats and niche events and having to put up with tape delays by the networks.

International proxies: It is possible to watch live streams from other countries, such as BBC Sports from the UK or CBC Sports from Canada, by configuring your browser to run through an anonymous proxy. I recommend using Mozilla's Firefox browser with the FoxyProxy add-on installed. Xroxy has a handy list of proxies which you can sort by country to find proxies in the UK or Canada — which must be anonymous, and preferrably running the SOCKS protocol. Your best bet is to get a geeky British or Canadian friend to install a proxy on their machine for you and your Yankee friends. The latency can be frustrating, but once you get a stream started it will work fine.
Pros: Quality streams from legitimate providers, and if you're accustomed to jingoistic U.S. coverage, the charming accents from the Beeb's announcers and the humble mien of the Canadians can be quite refreshing.
Cons: Takes some technical know-how to set up, and proxies come and go. You might miss an event because you're too busy fiddling with your settings or a proxy fails when too many people sign on.

Video on demand: If you're running Windows Vista, you can download events using TVTonic for "Olympics on the Go." Torrent client Azureus works on any system to help download events after the fact, especially the most popular ones like tennis, football, boxing and basketball — Torrentz cross-site search of multiple BitTorrent indexes should make it easy to find the Spain versus China women's basketball game you might miss tomorrow. YouTube's official channel is blocked — even using international proxies — though a reader came up with a crack that works for now. Other less thoroughly policed online video sites like Veoh, Metacafe, Dailymotion and Megavideo will also have videos.
Pros: Torrents will be high quality and work for anyone, while video-sharing sites will be easiest to use.
Cons: Nothing will be live, obviously, and no one knows how long video clips will remain on sharing sites.

P2P Streams: The way I'll be watching online will is through MyP2P, a site that catalogs live sports and television streams from around the Web, listed by event. It helps to run Windows, though not necessarily Vista, because many streams require software downloads — check out MyP2P's beginners guide for tips, including where to find software downloads and optimization settings. I ended up finding live BBC coverage of the opening ceremonies via Justin.tv, which ran just fine in my browser. If you can't find the channel you want in the media format you prefer, check wwiTV, TV For Us, TV Channels Free, Channel Chooser or BeelineTV among others.
Pros: Free and fairly easy once you've installed most of the media players listed by MyP2P. And it's fun to watch coverage from other countries — I'll be watching all my football with spanish-speaking announcers whenever possible.
Cons: Quality is hit-or-miss, stream links come and go, and you have to think ahead in terms of scheduling to make sure you've got all the necessary programs installed. Also, Mac users will want to install Windows XP through Parallels or Fusion for the widest selection of channels.

Shaquille O'Neal, Mike Piazza and DeLisha Milton's Dunk.net
Launched in 1999, Santa Monica startup Dunk.net was supposed to promote Shaq's shoes and sports apparel with marketing help from a pre-Mets Mike Piazza and WNBA great DeLisha Milton. But within months of founding, Dunk.net laid off its entire staff and replaced the CEO with a marketer tasked with resuscitating the company. Didn't happen. Now Dunk.net is owned by a domain squatter.

John Elway, Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky's MVP.com
Back in 2000, chairman John Elway and board members Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzy piled their cash together to launch MVP.com, an online store. They pledged to spend $50 million marketing the site over the next year. A couple of years later and several rounds of layoffs later, MVP.com, owing some $120 million folded as a failure into CBSsportsline.com.

Mets reliever Billy Wagner and sports author Burton Rock's ChatWithAStar.com
After writing a bestselling book about Yankees outfielder Paul O'Neill and his father, author Burton Rocks convinced Wagner, another New York baseball star to help fund ChatWithAStar.com, a celebrity blog portal, featuring such well known voices as Miss USA 2006, Tara Conner. The site, launched with a party at one of Jay-Z's bar in 2006, no longer exists. We're still holding out for the company's "blogmobile," though.

The state assembly refused to consider the matter by Ballmer's April 10 deadline, and now Seattle mayor Greg Nickles has turned out the city's pockets and come up with nothing but lint. Meanwhile, Ballmer's moved on, issuing ultimatums to Yahoo instead — at least he isn't asking taxpayers to help him cover that deal.(Photo by Andrew Hitchcock)

I'll bet Davis has more luck making it to a second round of investment than he will making it to the second round of the playoffs.

Adding insult to injury, the TV ads did an excellent job of driving traffic online — the usual reason why one buys Web ads. MySpace's Super Bowl ads page has received 14.5 million views as of this afternoon, and GoDaddy.com received 1.5 million views during the game by viewers looking for the ad that didn't make it past Fox's censors.

As for my Patriots? There's always next year — and pitchers and catchers report February 14.

• Apple's "1984" ad
• Monster.com from 1999
• CareerBuilder.com from 2005
• GoDaddy from 2005
• Xerox from 1977
• E*Trade from 1999
• Pets.com from 2000
• Computer.com from 2000
• SalesGenie.com from 2007
• OurBeginnings in 2000

Responding to rumors we broke earlier today that College Hoops 2K9 has been canceled due to a breakdown in negotiations with the license holders for collegiate basketball, 2K Sports parent company Take-Two had this to say to Kotaku:

2K Sports has decided not to continue negotiations with the CLC for the license for its top-rated College Hoops franchise, which would have been released next in November 2008. We are committed to providing fans with high-quality, critically-acclaimed sports games, but given our disciplined approach to the business, we do not believe the current discussions would result in an acceptable outcome.

I followed up with Take-Two to try and get more details and while the declined to talk about any roll EA might have had in the break-down, they did confirm that College Hoops 2K9 has indeed been canceled.

No word still from The Collegiate Licensing Company or Electronic Arts, but we'll keep you posted.

Rumor: 2K9 College Hoops Canned, EA Seeks NCAA Deal [Kotaku]

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