Gateway Sets Up "CyberSpots" at Winter Olympics

Gateway is branding the Winter Olympics -- and, it hopes, building traffic in its stores nationwide -- by creating a way to send text or video email to athletes.

The company's "CyberSpots," created with the assistance of AT&T, are email kiosks that have been placed inside the Olympic Village and around Salt Lake City. They're also in Gateway's stores, where representatives are available to lead customers through the process of recording a video and sending it to their favorite athlete.

According to a company announcement yesterday, the promotion is a success. More than one million messages have been sent to Olympians from Gateway CyberSpots in the first five days of operation alone, with millions more anticipated before the Games close on Feb. 24.

"From a technical standpoint the Gateway CyberSpot network is performing smoothly, even with 20 times more participation than we'd expected," says Greg Seremetis, senior manager of Gateway's Olympic sponsorship. "At any given time there are athletes from dozens of countries using our PCs to receive communications from around the globe. Most of them are far from home, and it means a lot to them."

Gateway, the "official computer hardware sponsor of the Olympic Winter Games," has donated more than 5,300 of its PCs, which will later be passed on to charities around the country. Meanwhile, the nationwide network of CyberSpots, free to the user, numbers more than 325. Gateway says that anyone who sends a video email will, "while supplies last," receive a free commemorative, limited-edition Olympic pin featuring the Gateway cow riding a bobsled.

According to the company, high-profile Americans who recorded messages and might presumably be sporting cow pins in the future include: President Bill Clinton, actor Michael J. Fox, comedian Chris Tucker, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, and WWF wrestler Kurt Angle, himself an Olympic gold medallist.