The 2008 Olympics has been a source of pride for the athletes, for China, and also for Live Search, who posted a very nice series of background images here in the United States, at a rate of about 2 per day.  Even though our friend and ultra Windows Live enthusiast Picturepan2 lives in China (in Shanghai), he still was enamored enough of the Olympics and Live Search to collect every Live Search Olympics background, including the Birds Nest one that ran in China, and gather them in a SkyDrive folder for your viewing enjoyment:

He took the time to save the jpg, and not just grab a screenshot, so these images, while they include the Live Search logo, do not include the search bar itself – although that was part of the fun of these pics, to see how well the search bar fit in with the image.

Now that the Olympics are over it will be most interesting to see where Live Search takes this whole background image concept.  Hopefully nobody on the Vista Ultimate Extras team is anywhere near this project ;).

Picturepan2 has all 32 US images, plus the Birds Nest, plus a convenient zip file of the whole set included in the SkyDrive.  Very diligent work by a dedicated enthusiast, deserving of his own Gold Medal.  Oh and let’s not forget the Live Search team who put this all together, we can’t wait to see what comes next!

The Set:

The Zip File: