The four-year wait for summer’s worldwide sports spectacular is over: The 2012 Summer Olympics are finally here. (Literally, with the women’s and men’s soccer tournaments kicking off in advance of the opening ceremonies from London on Friday.) And they’re online in the United States, in full – if you have the right hookups. Everyone else is going to need some illicit non-Comcast methods.

Going the Comcast/Xfinity/NBC way is pretty simple, and rewarding as well; that corporate synergy has been fully tuned to offer a full-breadth online Olympics experience. Comcast/Xfinity broadband subscribers couldn’t have it any better, really; the company’s XfinityTV brand has been pressed into service for a high-definition streaming option to watch every single event of this Olympiad.

Logging into your acount at the XfinityTV home page opens up access to live or replay streams that, if you’re at home, are delivered to your computer, your Xbox or a TiVo outside of Comcast’s standard Internet traffic and broadband caps – a somewhat controversial approach that critics claim falls outside the consent decree with the U.S. Government that allowed Comcast to buy NBC. (Comcast, for its part, has consistently denied this.)

Whatever. The practical result for the two weeks of the Olympics is a superior stream of the entire Olympics; you’ll practically be able to see the spin on the ping-pong balls. (Sorry – we meant “table tennis.”) You may not get quite the same results bandwidth-wise if you’re not at home or on a Comcast network, but you can still tap in wherever you are just by logging into XfinityTV. And, inevitably, you don’t have to do this via a computer at all; NBC is perfectly happy to feed streams to your tablet or phone via the NBC Olympics Live Extra app for iOS or Android.

Those who aren’t part of the Comcast juggernaut still have a pretty good online alternative at NBCOlympics.com. As with XfinityTV, the NBC site will offer every event as “Live Extra” live streaming or replay. But there’s a critical kicker to this method: You must have a cable, telecom or satellite subscription that includes CNBC and MSNBC already, and you also have to set up a log-in with your provider before you can access NBCOlympics’s streams – you’ll be polled for that information.

There’s also an open question about how well NBCOlympics.com, as well as other key worldwide Olympics sites, will perform under the loads they are likely to see during the Games. Analytics firm Yottaa has already predicted that major sites will not be up to the challenge. Hey, NBC, time’s up – you’d better be ready for all those page and stream requests.

If you’re one of those folks who’ve decided to cut the cable cord or junk your dish, things get even more dicey; you have no legal pathway to streaming Olympics events. Comcast is clearly leveraging its heavy investment in the Olympics to promote its Xfinity brand and the pay TV business in general. If you’re willing to pay, the benefits for following the Olympics are more than ample; if you’re not, you are very out of luck.

Comcast, Shmomcast

Unless, that is, you turn to illegal streams. The usual passel of sites that specialize in pirating overseas satellite or cable streams of live sports are likely to have Olympics events as well, even given the famously litigious nature of the International Olympics Committee.

That could result in a pretty active game of Whack-a-Mole as sites try to stay ahead of the IOC, so you may need to keep checking for sites online with a Google search like “live olympics streaming”. But Stream2Watch is already posting an Olympics page, and other typical sites such as VIP Box, First Row Sports, and StreamTV.tv are likely to join in once the Games start in earnest.

As usual, you’re not going to get anything resembling the quality of the Comcast streams. You’re also going to have to whack your own moles in the form of incessant pop-ups. And you still need to follow ReadWriteWeb’s common-sense rules for picking up illegal streams, unless you want to increase the risk of hosing your computer with malware or unwanted software downloads. And the commentary may not always be in English.

On the other hand, if you do go this route, you’re also not going to get NBC’s soft, personality-driven approach to Olympics broadcasts, or the jingoism that can occasionally pop up when high-profile American athletes are competing, or the annoyingly picky gymnastics analysts.

It can be interesting and revealing to see the Games from a non-American perspective. Maybe Albanian announcers are also homers when they’re tracking their athletes, but how would you know unless you happen to speak Albanian?

Every Major League Baseball season has a whopping 2,430 regular-season games that are played from April through October - not counting spring training or the playoffs. That is a lot of baseball. And of course, you'd like to use your PC or tablet to watch some of those games, right?

No worries. MLB is happy, within restrictions and for a price, to make the entire schedule available to you, through its MLB.tv website and the MLB At Bat 12 app. And if you can't pony up for those, or simply want to go in another direction... well, you'll find plenty of options on the online gray market.

HD Quality - But Such Restrictions!

MLB.tv, for the money (which isn't as bad as it has been in prior seasons), is a very good deal – as far as it goes. At $84.99 per year or $19.99 per month, you will get the basic MLB.tv package; that gives you the Major League schedule in high defintion on your computer, with one feed per game, pause and rewind controls, and the ability to watch multiple games simultaneously with picture-in-picture, split screen or mosaic views.

But you don't really want this package. For a mere $15 more per year or $5 per month, the MLB.tv Premium package expands that universe substantially. For starters, it allows you to watch on any iOS or Android device. HD baseball on a current-generation iPad with the Retina display? Stunning. The extra $15 also covers the cost of the At Bat app for your devices, which also feeds you MLB news, radio broadcasts of any game from both markets (if you're feeling old-school on a summer night in your backyard) and in Spanish when available, video highlights, stats and more. It allows you to access both teams' broadcasts of any given game. Xbox Gold subscribers will find it available via their consoles – effectively substituting for the Extra Innings TV package that MLB sells to cable subscribers – and you can use a wide variety of other devices if you subscribe, including Apple TV, Sony's PlayStation 3, Roku, Boxee and some others.

Pretty perfect setup, right? Not so fast.

Unfortunately, you have to consider Major League Baseball's ridiculous blackout rules. If you're spending that $100 per year for the convenience of tracking your hometown team when you're away from your TV, you just wasted your C-note, because that's the one team you're never allowed to watch.

That's right: MLB blacks out every single game that your team plays, whether on the home or away feed, based on your geographic location as they very expansively define it. Live in Boston? No Red Sox on the iPad for you. How about, say, Kearney, Neb.? You're 325 miles of driving time away and in another state entirely, but you won't be watching any Kansas City Royals games on your Android phone. At least the blackouts don't affect you when you travel; they're based on where you are, not where you live.

Residents of the New York City tri-state area, Chicagoland, and the Bay Area get the double whammy: Two teams in each of those markets means a double blackout. (How amusing for San Jose residents: The Oakland A's would love to move there, but the San Francisco Giants have continually blocked the shift, claiming territorial rights. But for your viewing purposes? Both clubs own that market.)

MLB pulls this stunt in other places, too. For instance, Columbia, Mo., is smack between St. Louis and Kansas City. Which team gets blacked out? Both, of course.

But nobody beats the Toronto Blue Jays for territorial rights – they're blacked out everywhere in Canada.

The blackouts extend beyond local games, too: Any game being played at the same time as a national Fox broadcast on Saturday or ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball is blacked out on your MLB.tv subscriptions. And your subscription doesn't include postseason games, which fall under a separate package.

Still, MLB.tv is a fine deal for baseball fans who want to watch the rest of the major leagues online or on a mobile device. For many, that's a real draw; the ability to hear the legendary Vin Scully calling a home game for the Los Angeles Dodgers ought to be worth a hundred bucks all by itself for any true baseball fan. And it's a godsend for fans who don't live in the same town as their favorite teams. Fewer blackouts and not many other options to see the games.

But the blackouts unavoidably suggest that Major League Baseball, for as much service as it provides, is still more concerned about its broadcast deals and corporate partners than its viewing customers.

Skirting the Barriers

So, you may be stuck at work somewhere and unable to call up your hometown team on your computer. Or maybe your budget doesn't allow for the MLB.tv package. Or you just feel like sticking it to The Man (in this case, MLB Commissioner Allan “Bud” Selig). Can you still bring up your team's game on your computer?

Sure, but as with our look at how to watch the 2012 UEFA Euro 2012 soccer tournament, you're going to have to hit some dodgy websites that host less-than-legal streams of the games you want. You'll get far lower quality and have to steer through a host of junk to see the game you want. And before you start, you really need to read our common-sense rules for how to navigate such sites without ending up with unwanted software, malware or other needless headaches.

If you're still not deterred, you'll find the usual passel of sites that will feed you streams of pretty much any game in return for enduring their pop-ups, overlay ads and other revenue clutter. A Google search for “streaming baseball online” does the trick nicely – and unlike the soccer-specific sites that proliferate worldwide, most of the websites in your search will also bring up host links to a wide variety of other sports. (Just in case you really wanted to see a cricket match instead.) There's also a catchall site, streamtvguide.com, that acts as a portal to a wide range of streaming sites for sports feeds, as well as movies and TV shows.

We dialed in a recent St. Louis Cardinals-Detroit Tigers game to check out a couple of the sites. VIPbox.tv promised a long list of sports events, and it linked to a Flash feed of the Cards-Tigers game that came in neatly enough once we'd cleared a host of junk ads and inadvertently downloaded two software installers. (The latter prompts a new common-sense rule for dealing with these sites – on PCs, don't enable Auto-Run for downloaded software.) This site also promised the whole day's schedule for Thursday and Friday. Stream2watch.me pulled in the game with a better quality feed, but doesn't seem to have nearly as many choices.

Be aware, too, that the unauthorized landscape is very fluid and many sites don't stick around for long. For the UEFA 2012 soccer championships, we pointed you to FirstRowSports among other choices. When we clicked on StreamTVguide's slightly different link to them, up popped a Department of Homeland Security takedown notice for the domain name. The Man wins sometimes! FirstRowSports still exists with the .eu link, though, and will happily serve you the baseball game of your choice, among other sports.

If you're seeking certainty, ease, quality and extras, though, $100 for a whole season of MLB.tv is more than worth it. As long as you can live with those annoying restrictions.

Lead image by Photo Works / Shutterstock.com

The mobile space will see a shakeout of sorts over the next 18 months. Nokia, the Finland-based maker of mobile phones, announced Wednesday that it will cut 10,000 jobs from its worldwide workforce through the end of 2013, as it attempts to regain its once-dominant place in a market increasingly defined by Apple's iPhone and a variety of mobile devices built on Google's Android operating system.

"These planned reductions are a difficult consequence of the intended actions we believe we must take to ensure Nokia's long-term competitive strength," Stephen Elop, Nokia's president and CEO, said in a statement. "We do not make plans that may impact our employees lightly, and as a company we will work tirelessly to ensure that those at risk are offered the support, options and advice necessary to find new opportunities."

The shakeout extends to Nokia's executive team as well, as chief marketing officer Jerri DeVard, executive vice president of mobile phones Mary McDowell, and EVP of markets Niklas Savander are all out effective June 30.

Nokia has made a bid to rejeuvenate its phone product lines by adopting Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system as its devices' base, making it the largest mobile device maker for that system. Microsoft paid Nokia $250 million in the fourth quarter of 2011 in a partnership deal that should net Nokia "billions" over the next few years in what the companies have termed "platform support" payments.

However, the company has lost significant market share during the past five years in particular to the iPhone and Android, dropping it to second place worldwide in mobile market share behind Samsung, and it faces a tough uphill battle to regain its momentum even as competitors press their advantages with those increasingly popular mobile operating systems.

The announced layoffs are another in a string of recent job cuts at significant industry companies, most recently Hewlett-Packard's decision to eliminate 30,000 workers. Yahoo chopped 2,000 jobs in April, amounting to 14% of its workforce, and Nokia isn't the only company in the mobile industry to be shedding positions - Research in Motion, the maker of the Blackberry, also expects to eliminate jobs as it similarly fights to regain market share lost to the iPhone and Android.

Image courtesy of Nokia.

We're well into the post-Steve world, but then Steve Jobs was never the main focus of news from Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which will take place June 11-15 in San Francisco, California. Rather, product announcements - the things will that define the coming year for the "Apple Cores" who hang on every move the company makes - usually garner the main share of attention. That's definitely the case this year, and we're readying our up-to-the-minute coverage of WWDC's Monday kickoff with a video preview and a look at what to expect as WWDC shifts into high gear.

ReadWriteWeb's Dan Frommer will be filing reports throughout Monday's events. He has already tipped the major expected news to look for: version upgrades for both iOS and Mac OS (and more blurring of the lines between the two with the introduction of iOS 6 and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, respectively), new Mac models, tighter Facebook integration with iOS, and Apple TV-related product news. And iCloud remains a developing, major Apple-related topic that will continue to affect every move the company makes in the next few years.

Those are the main themes, but Apple's parade of likely announcements is likely to include a good deal more: A developers' kit for Apple TV-related apps may be in the offing. The Siri voice command technology that has thrilled and baffled iPhone 4S users should find its way to the iPad. And at least some of those new Macs will sport the amazing Retina display that was introduced on the newest iPad.

Nonetheless, the real fun of WWDC is in the surprises that CEO Tim Cook and his troops may have in store. Cupertino hasn't sprung any unintended leaks since Jobs' death last fall, so it's entirely possible that the conference will reveal something unexpected. Rest assured that we'll tell you about it the moment we find out. Meanwhile, check out our video coverage and stay tuned.

Friday, June 8, is one of those days that rolls around every two years on which productivity throughout much of the world is going to take a gigantic hit. That's because the Euro 2012 tournament gets under way, and it'll capture the attention of every serious soccer/football fan around the planet. And we do mean "planet" - this competition among 16 European nations is second in quality and importance only to the World Cup, and even non-European fans will be tracking it avidly. Many will be watching it online - and here's how.

Let's face it: You can't take the entire next month off to watch all these games. (If you can? We want your job.) So online viewing of some sort is going to be indispensable for seeing the action while somehow simultaneously fending off your boss and getting your work done. And not everyone will be able to rely on the most legal methods to pull it off. Whether you're patched into a legal network or looking for an illicit stream, it's not that hard to find the games you want online or on your mobile device.

All Aboveboard

If you're tapped into one of the broadcast networks in a major country that has the Euro 2012 rights, you should be in good shape for seeing these games on your computer, tablet or phone. In the United States, that means ESPN, which is the sole rights-holder for the tourney. And you couldn't be in better hands for getting online access, given ESPN's continuing push to become ubiquitous on every device you might own, short of an original Kindle. ESPN3.com is your computer's portal to all of the Euro 2012 games, and you won't need to be at home and patched into your cable box to get it, either.

If you're away from that, ESPN3 will simply ask you to log in with your cable provider account first; once you've done that, you should be good to watch. The navigation is easy enough: Links for all of these games are likely to be on the home page, but you can also click the "Soccer" drop-down tab and choose the appropriate tab (Live Now, Upcoming or Replay).

Your phone should be just as simple to use for watching the tournament, now that ESPN has gradually extended access to its WatchESPN app for iOS and Android, originally available only to Time Warner customers, to those on Verizon, BrightHouse and Comcast. Comcast users with Android devices haven't yet gotten the updated app for streaming, but Comcast iPhone users and everyone else can fire up WatchESPN and find a game in real time with relative ease. AT&T U-verse subscribers can access games by using their mobile U-verse app and choosing ESPN Mobile TV. For replays, using any of the methods to access ESPN3 (which is one of the WatchESPN channels) is your ticket to entire game rebroadcasts - and if you have an Xbox Gold subscription, you can do that on your TV, too.

The situations are fairly similar in other countries where rights holders have websites and apps available. In the United Kingdom, the BBC and ITV have split the broadcast rights, and each network will be streaming matches online and through phone apps. (ITV just upgraded its iOS app Wednesday to allow for live streaming on phones, just in time for Euro 2012.) Australians can see all of the matches via Setanta Sports's Setanta-i online stream, with SBS picking up selected games for free broadcast. English-speaking Canadians will have to pay to see the games on TSN.ca, but TSN Mobile TV is free for Bell Mobility or Virgin Mobile subscribers on iOS, Android and Blackberry; Francophones have options through RDS. Wikipedia's comprehensive list of international rights holders should help you figure out what your options are in other countries.

A Little Bit Sketchier

But let's say that you can't get to a legal source for the tournament; maybe you don't have the right package, or you're one of those people who's chosen to bag cable and go entirely wireless with your life. Can you see these games at all?

Answer: Of course you can. A host of websites tap illicitly into satellite streams of worldwide soccer matches, often with several different links to feeds, and bring them to your computer. Every hardcore soccer fan ends up dealing with these sooner or later; even if you're paying for a cable or satellite package that brings you Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV in the U.S., those channels don't carry every single game you'll ever want to see. How else were you going to watch New Caledonia clinch a stunning 2-0 upset of New Zealand in the Oceania region World Cup qualifiers?

So, people turn to one of the many streaming sites. Understand, though, that - pretty much as with any illegal music/movies download site or other below-the-lines website - you're entering a sketchy world that can include popup pages, overlay ads, NSFW images and, yes, even viruses or other malware. Go into this with your eyes open, and try to follow these rules:

• Have your antivirus software on at all times.
• Use a popup blocker; it'll improve the experience dramatically.
• Don't install any software; these sites mostly are running Flash video, so you don't need the iLivid Download Manager (a ubiquitous choice) or any of the other offerings with which you'll be confronted.
• Don't pay any money. These sites will be happy to grab your credit card number in exchange for "HD video" that may or may not exist. Don't go there; if you want an HD experience, you should be using one of the legal methods, anyway.
• If you get one of those helpful "Malware Detected!" warnings, close your window or tab immediately and try the next site.
• If things go really haywire, be ready to force-quit your browser (Force Quit under the Apple menu on a Mac after you Command-Tab out of the application; Ctrl-Alt-Delete on a PC to kill the process on a PC).
• Click carefully. You'll be getting ads overlaid on the embedded video, and accidentally clicking on one can have 40 tabs opened on your browser before you know what's hit you. Make sure you actually hit the X or Close tab.
• And when you actually make it to your game video, try to run as few applications or other browser pages as you can. Your stream is bouncing around the globe before it gets to you, so you want to smooth out the experience as much as possible.

That said, it's entirely possible to find a video stream of a Euro 2012 game without suffering any mishaps. A Google search of "streaming football online" will bring up a plethora of choices. (Yes, "football"; don't forget that your stream is coming from countries that couldn't care less about the NFL.) I tested a few of the top results, FreeFootball.org, First Row Sports and 12thPlayer.com, and was able to watch game video with fairly minimal effort or problems at all three sites. 12th Player has the advantage of a clean interface without ad or popup clutter, and although FreeFootball does have those issues, that site has always been reliable in the past. Take your pick.

One caveat: Don't expect a great experience trying this on your phone, if you can watch at all. The iPhone will yell at you about Flash video, and that's if you even make it to a video - popups were a huge problem in my tests of the iPhone. The iPad is also going to hit you with the Flash issue. Android phone and tablet users may have a slightly easier time of it, but for the most part, you're better off using these sites on a computer.

Unlike ESPN3, these sites aren't likely to offer you replays on games. But it's still possible to see those if you're willing to download torrented game captures. Open services such as The Pirate Bay or membership boards like Demonoid are good bets to have captured game videos, in formats ranging from AVI to full HD-quality .ts MPEG Transport Stream rips (playable with the cross-platform VLC video player). With the popularity of this tournament worldwide, finding well-seeded torrents shouldn't be too tough within a day of any given game. And Usenet users might have some luck with the alt.binaries.multimedia.sports group.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Sportscenter image courtesy of ESPN.