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Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Getting Techie With New Gadgets In Wimbledon

In Wimbledon, they are getting more and more technically advanced by adopting gizmos to help umpires and players during matches.

In fact, tennis fans can experience the tournament, which reaches its 133rd year, on their phones.

The All England Club, which organizes the tournament's two decade long association with computing firm IBM's has taken the Wimbledon experience to new level as far as technology is concerned.

IBM's Wimbledon executive Alan Flack said that the partnership's focus is on managing and processing data.

"What we do here is an enormous data management exercise-collecting data, presenting it, visualising it in different ways for different audiences, and making it available across all sorts of media platforms," the BBC quoted Flack as saying.

Umpires update the score using PDAs, while a team of data collectors overlooking each court log every moment of the action.

They use a special keypad to log the type of shots in a rally and enter detailed information about exactly how each point is won.

This data is then sent down some 35 miles of cable to the Wimbledon Information Centre where it is processed further.

The players and their trainers have access to the stats which are also sent to other outlets such as the Wimbledon website and broadcasters.

Augmented reality applications use the handset's GPS and built-in compass to overlay a virtual layer over the real-world environment, reports The BBC.

"To make sure we're giving the best quality video that we can, we're using a combination of local wi-fi networks that are available and also boosting the 3G network using local pico masts," said Mark Sweatman, technology head at developer Ogilvy One.

"These are positioned around the ground so as people move around they can get the best bandwidth possible for their devices and see the highest quality video streams," he added.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

New ANDROID Tablet PC

What better way to kick off 2010 than with yet another new Android tablet PC? This one is (possibly) called the 'Home' tablet. Cloned In China reports that this device comes from a Chinese manufacturer, its development is ongoing, and that 'Home' might not be its final name. We know this gadget will have a 7" screen, but other then that its hardware is a mystery.

In terms of form, the Home seems to be a slick, minimalist tablet. It's just a big touchscreen and a thin black body with no discernible ornamentation. This isn't the first Android tablet we've seen in the last few days, and it won't be the last. A lot of manufacturers are betting on 7"-10" tablets being the ideal size to pull the mass of customers in. We'll see. All tablet PCs share the same problem; a difficult-to-define niche. A tablet PC isn't a smartphone; it is much more powerful but much less portable. You can't stick a 7" tablet in most pockets and take it with you wherever you go. So tablets are too big to be used like a smartphone, but too weak to fully replace your laptop or desktop computer. What exactly is their purpose then? Where do these gadgets belong? If the answer to that question exists anywhere, I've got a feeling we're going to learn it this year. 2010 is the year of the tablet, for better or for worse.