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July 30, 2005
Replacing a Fax Line and Fax Machine with a Fax Service and a Scanner
As we progressed through the process of replacing our POTS lines with VoIP for the home office, we ran into a couple of issues that needed to be researched. One important one was the issue of how to send and receive faxes.
Several people who I've talked to about the trade-offs of using a single number for voice and fax versus a dedicated fax number have said that the key issue is that people using a single number are perceived to be hobbyists rather than serious business people. Also some businesses are more fax-centric than others. A good example of this is the medical field.
Kathleen needs to be able to send and receive faxes from insurance providers since most of them establish relationships with doctors on an individual rather than a per-practice basis. The effort she has undertaken to get listed as a health care provider with all of the major medical insurers that serve customers in the Pennsylvania suburbs of Philadelphia has required lots of faxing.
Many VoIP services include some fax capability. Speakeasy VoIP/Home provides the ability to receive faxes as email attachments. However, faxes must be sent to the same number that you use for voice calls, otherwise you have to buy another line at $23.95 per month. This is slightly different from how providers like Vonage handle fax, but the charges and performance of the VoIP service aren't entirely comparable either.
What I chose to do was to get a eFaxPlus account and use that as my fax solution. This gives me a separate, dedicated fax number in my area code for $12.95 per month plus $0.10 per outgoing page and provides many of the same email-integration features I would get from using my Speakeasy VoIP/Home number for both fax and voice. The big difference is that I'm saving $11.00 per month in service fees, which means I'd need to send more than 110 pages of faxes per month in order to lose money on the deal.
Once I made the fax service decision, I focused on the right device to use to scan papers for faxing. I don't want to use my Xerox WorkCentre 385 if it isn't connected to a phone line in the traditional manner. The scanning capability it has isn't very good and it also uses too much power when I use the laser printing engine in it to copy or print documents.
I'd prefer an inexpensive, compact scanner that is portable enough to use with my laptop if necessary. The one I chose is the Canon CanoScan LiDE 500F Color Image Scanner. I got the idea to purchase this from Googling around. Jeremy Zawodny's article I Like My Canon CanoScan LiDE 500F Scanner made a good case for it.
The price is definitely right. I like the fact that it gets its power entirely from the USB 2.0 connector. This means I can hook it up to my Blogging Workstation most of the time. The scanner itself is no bigger than a laptop when laid flat on the desk, so it won't take up as much room as typical flatbed scanners. I can also set it up so it sits on the desk in an upright position [ see photo on that page ], which makes it look like a partially-opened book.
At about $120, purchasing the CanoScan LiDE 500F eats into my expected savings, but I feel that its additional features make the expenditure worth it at this time. I can use it to scan documents for faxing, but it will also come in handy for scanning pages from magazines for digital storage or photos for which I can't find the negative.
Technorati Tags: VoIP
Replacing POTS with VoIP for the Home Office
When Kathleen and I decided to move to Newtown, Pennsylvania, we decided that we were going to move as aggressively into the new age of telecommunications as possible. At the most basic level, this meant that all telephone service for the house and the Home Office would use Voice over IP instead of standard telephone lines. Standard phone lines are sometimes known as POTS lines for Plain Old Telephone Service.
In our old place in East Windsor, NJ, we had five POTS lines: four lines that fed into our Panasonic Digital Super Hybrid Phone System which we bought four years ago from Ablecomm and one line that was an office fax line and carried the Verizon DSL service. This system was intended to allow us to:
- run a single phone system for the house and the Home Office,
- answer any phone line on the system via any phone set in the house, and
- operate our own programmable voice mail system.
This was a good idea when I got a lot of incoming calls when I was in the office. A lot more of my business is transacted over email and IM than the phone today, and I need good phone service more often when I'm out of the office than when I'm at my desk. This is a big reason why I bought myself a Treo 650.
The first step in making this switch actually took place before we decided to move. Back in March, Kathleen and I each bought Treo 650s with unlimited mobile data service. We did this because it allowed us to access our email from anywhere and reduce our overall telecom bills by shifting a lot of our calling to free Cingular Mobile to Mobile calling which is free under our billing plans.
The intent after we got our Treo 650s was to reduce the number of POTS lines we had installed in East Windsor to the minimum necessary to operate our phone system, but it never happened because we subsequently focused on Kathleen's job search and then a search for a new house.
During the new house search we came to depend upon our Treos. We were able to call, email, and look at the web from the front seat of our car. This is really helpful when you are house hunting. Eventually we realized that we don't need our home phone for too much anymore, other than as a place for people to leave messages for us. This pushed us even harder in the direction of VoIP.
When we committed to moving to Newtown, I began doing research to see if I could get "naked DSL" at the new house. I eventually settled on Speakeasy OneLink because it was a high speed DSL service that didn't require a regular phone line and I could combine OneLink with Speakeasy VoIP/Home under one bill.
I went with Speakeasy for all of my telecom needs for the Home Office because their VoIP service was a fairly unique offering. Since they have a nationwide broadband network, they are able to manage traffic on that network to prioritize VoIP traffic. This means they can guarantee Quality of Service all along their network, where VoIP carriers that don't own a broadband network have limited ability to manage QoS.
I've asked friends who know about VoIP if they can tell that I'm calling them using one of my Speakeasy VoIP lines. None of them could tell we were on a VoIP call until I told them.
The price we're paying for Speakeasy VoIP/Home is $23.95 per month per line for unlimited calling in the USA and Canada. That's where the real savings is for us compared to our Verizon service when we were in East Windsor. We paid about $31.22 per residential line with nothing but local calls, so local toll calls and long distance added to that. Speakeasy VoIP/Home is also price competitive with Vonage, which prices unlimited calling in the USA and Canada at $24.00 per month.
At some point I'm going to try to come up with a telecommunications cost comparison, illustrating all of the services we paid for in East Windsor and what we substituted them with Newtown. In the meantime, I recommend that you take a look at Glenn Fleishman's telecom package choices and itemized list of charges. He didn't make the same choices we made, but the magnitude of his savings was one of the things that influenced us to take a look at switching to VoIP in the first place.
Technorati Tags: VoIP
July 28, 2005
Jeff Tredup Profiled in Local New Jersey Newspaper
The Hopewell Valley News published a brief interview with Jeff Tredup, a researcher at Bristol-Myers Squibb who is a member of the 2005 Tour of Hope National Team.
Jeff is a cancer survivor who's been involved in cycling for 15 years. He's very committed to informing people about clinical trials that are used to test the efficacy of new drugs. He said, "I want to get the word out about the importance of clinical trials. People don't realize the quality of care they actually get. People are not treated like guinea pigs."
I met Jeff briefly at the Lawrence Hopewell Trail Dedication Ceremony in June. This was the first public appearance made by the Tour of Hope National Team.
I'm hoping that I'll be able to talk with Jeff and possibly meet him again soon. He and I live quite close to each other, in spite of the fact that we now live in different states. I'm hoping he can give me some idea for routes I can use to train for the Tour of Hope Washington DC Fundraising Ride.
Technorati Tags: Tour of Hope
July 27, 2005
Comcast Considers Building Up OLN to Compete with ESPN
Many financial news sites are reporting that Comcast is studying repositioning OLN as a competitor to ESPN. This was initially reported in a Page 1 article in the Wall Street Journal's "Media & Marketing" Section [ subscription required to read Wall Street Journal articles ]. According to the article:
People familiar with the company's plans say Comcast is interested in recasting its quirky and low-rated Outdoor Life Network. While best known for its coverage of Lance Armstrong's annual victory at the Tour de France, it is also the home of professional bull riding, bear hunting and competitive barbeque.
But transforming the network to an ESPN-style contender would require a major team sport, and people with knowledge of Comcast's plans say the company is in serious negotiations with the National Football League and National Hockey League, and also has its eye on Nascar auto racing.
In all likelihood, the name of OLN would change if such a plan were enacted.
I think there's room for a well-funded, widely distributed competitor to the ESPN networks. Fox has tried to create this with Fox Sports. I think their effort has been hindered by a focus on regional sports networks.
Comcast probably has a good opportunity simply because of its relationship with the National Hockey League. Comcast is the majority owner of the Philadelphia Flyers and owns the television network that broadcasts the Washington Capitals.
Beyond the ties to the NHL, Comcast has investments in a lot of other niche sports networks, including:
- The Golf Channel,
- a sports-oriented channel in Detroit,
- a channel dedicated to the New York Mets,
- Comcast SportsNet West in Northern California, and
- Comcast SportsNet Chicago
Several of these networks could either contribute content to a national sports channel operated by Comcast or make distribution of that channel easier in areas where Comcast does not own cable franchises.
Technorati Tags: OLN, ESPN, Fox Sports, NHL
1.7 Million Watch Lance on the Champs-Elysees
OLN recorded its highest ratings in history Sunday as the Tour de France finished up with Lance Armstrong's seventh consecutive victory on the Champs-Elysees. About 1.7 million viewers were tuned in at any given moment of the program.
Ratings were up 17 percent for the entire Tour versus 2004 (2.26 HH vs 1.93 HH) and gross total viewers increased 19 percent (1.76 million versus 1.48 million).
Congratulations to OLN. They deserve the success they've achieved. They consistantly made their staff and hosts available to the media before and during the Tour de France. You can see the amount of information that OLN gave Operation Gadget in the following articles:
- How the Outdoor Life Network Brings the Tour de France to Viewers in North America
- Liggett and Sherwen Think that Lance Will Not Have a Second Act as a Triathlete
- Liggett on the Saint-Etienne Time Trial Course
I think everyone I talked with at OLN realized that this was their network's once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to connect with its audience, and they did everything they could to deliver a great viewing experience.
Technorati Tags: Tour de France, OLN, Lance Armstrong
July 25, 2005
The Tour de France is Over, But the Race Goes On
Congratulations to Lance Armstrong, his teammates, sponsors, friends, and family on an unbelievable seventh consecutive victory in the Tour de France. I wonder if Lance knew how well this story could possibly have ended when he decided to make his retirement announcement back in April in Augusta, Georgia?
It's great that Lance has achieved so much in life that he can afford to leave the stage while still at the top of his game. Now he'll have the opportunity to spend a lot more time with his children.
Apart from the rain on the last day of the Tour, the only thing that upset me about the Tour was the way Lance's victory was reported. The mainstream media placed so much focus on Lance's dominance of the Tour, it was as if Lance won because he focused on winning at the exclusion of everything else. If you take Lance's comments about missing his kids and wanting to spend more time with them out of context, the mainstream media's portrayal makes even more sense.
The idea that Lance needed total focus on the Tour de France in order to win doesn't ring true for me anymore. That would mean that all of the success that the Lance Armstrong Foundation has achieved has just magically happened. The truth is that Lance has been deeply involved in the LAF. You can see the intensity of his focus on developing the charity in its constantly improving fundraising programs, its outreach to cancer victims, and its funding of programs that are making a difference in the lives of cancer victims and their families.
I guess it was a year ago when I stopped thinking of Lance Armstrong as a great athlete and began thinking of him as the world's greatest advocate for the cancer cause who also happens to be a great athlete. I think that the LiveStrong wristband program probably was the turning point for me.
I began wearing a LiveStrong wristband on June 9, 2004 and I haven't taken mine off since. I did this initially to honor my friend Peter Andreas Frank who died of brain cancer in 2003 and to honor people who survived testicular, prostate, breast cancer, and leukemia who are close to my wife and me.
I bought and gave away several dozen LiveStrong wristbands to people who sponsored my ride in the Tour of Hope Washington DC Fundraising Ride in October 2004. Every time I did this, people told me stories of friends or family whose lives had been touched by cancer. This caused me to become more and more passionate about the cancer cause and committed to supporting people who have the disease. More than anything else, this is what has caused me to identify with Lance Armstrong.
A couple of hours after we celebrated watching Lance's seventh victory on the Champs-Elysees, I received an email from a fellow ice hockey official telling me of the death of another official. He had a brain tumor since sometime in 2003 and literally died at about the same time that the final stage of this year's Tour de France began.
When I heard this sad news I realized that the Tour de France is over, but the race goes on. For Lance Armstrong and all of us who truly support him, the race will continue for years to come. It won't end until everyone struck by cancer can be cured and helped to regain their quality-of-life.
Lance Armstrong can't personally know every cancer victim; That's up to people like us who support the Lance Armstrong Foundation at a grassroots level. We're part of a peloton that stretches out to the horizon.
Lance retired to spend more time with his kids and the rest of his family, but he's planning to spend more time with all of us as well. Ride on, Lance. I'll meet you at The Ellipse in October.
Thanks for reading Operation Gadget's coverage of the 2005 Tour de France. I hope you'll continue to stop by for our coverage of electronic gadgets, fitness gadgets, endurance athletic events, and the technology used in sports.
Technorati Tags: Tour de France, Lance Armstrong, Tour of Hope, LiveStrong
3rd Week of July 2005 Workouts
Here's a quick summary of the workouts that I did last week:
- Monday, July 18: Busy.
- Tuesday, July 19: Biked 10.8 miles in 50 minutes.
- Wednesday, July 20: Biked 8.1 miles in 50 minutes.
- Thursday, July 21: Busy.
- Friday, July 22: Mowed lawn for 1 hour 50 minutes. Biked 8.8 miles in 46 minutes.
- Saturday, July 23: Attended a cookout at a friend's house. Busy.
- Sunday, July 24: Watched the end of the Tour. Went to church. Baby sat my niece. Busy.
This week, Kathleen and I got more riding in this week, in spite of the fact that I spent major hours watching the last few days of the Tour de France.
For the week, I exercised for 4 hours 19 minutes burning 3,105 calories, and covering a total of 27.7 miles on my bike. This is the most exercise I've gotten in a single week since before we moved to Newtown.
Over the next week, I need to crank up the milage because hockey season begins about five weeks from now.
July 18 - 24, 2005 Weekly Summary
This is the Operation Gadget weekly summary for the third week of July 2005. I'm experimenting with a weekly summary so that readers who want to receive a periodic email with Operation Gadget headlines can receive the links to all of the articles published each week. I will post a mechanism for readers to sign up for this service when I work out the details.
The headlines:
July 24
July 23
- Lance Wins Stage 20 Assuring a Seventh Yellow Jersey, Others Have Equipment Problems
- Liggett on the Saint-Etienne Time Trial Course
July 22
July 21
- Leblanc Made the Tour de France a Top International Television Event
- Comparing Tour de France Coverage on OLN to European Television
July 20
- Salvodelli Wins Another Stage for Discovery
- Bike-Powered VoIP System Created for Use in Developing Countries
- Jersey Shore Pro Cycling Grand Prix to Debut in May 2006
- Japanese Beetle Traps Stop Unwanted Guests from Eating Your Plants and Trees
- Behind the Scenes at the Tour de France Podium
July 19
- Kashechkin Struck by Fan Waving Promotional Items from Publicity Caravan
- Armstrong Making Major Effort to Win Over French Fans
July 18
- Liggett and Sherwen Think that Lance Will Not Have a Second Act as a Triathlete
- 2nd Week of July 2005 Workouts
Does a weekly summary work for you? Is it a waste of time? Let me know by posting a comment. Thanks....
July 24, 2005
Vinokourov Wins on the Champs-Elysees
Alexander Vinokourov powered away from the field in the last 500 meters to win Stage 21 of the 2005 Tour de France on the Champs-Elysees. Vinokourov brilliantly countered an attack by Francaise de Jeux's rider Bradley McGee and held off McGee, Fassa Bortolo rider Fabian Cancellara, and the rest of the field.
I think most people were expecting a mass field sprint. So was I. When the weather turned ugly in Paris in the middle of the afternoon, I expected the stage to be shortened. It turned out that the judges had decided to take the finishing times for the General Classification before the finishing circuits began.
On OLN, Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen reported that there would be no time bonuses awarded at the end of the stage today, and that the only thing at stake at the finish would be points for the Sprint competition. We were told that this decision was taken because of the dangerous nature of the finish due to a combination of the weather conditions and the road surface on the Champs-Elysees.
It wasn't clear what happened after that announcement was made, but at some point the jury of race commissars decided to award time bonuses on the finish line after all. As a result Vinokourov was able to vault over Levi Leipheimer in the General Classification standings into fifth place.
I hope that Team Gerolsteiner was told that the time bonuses would be in effect at the stage finish today, so that they had an opportunity to defend Leipheimer's G.C. position. I suspect, however, that they either did not get the message from the race commissars, or the decision not to award the time bonuses was reversed after the race ended.
Technorati Tags: Tour de France, OLN, Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen, Alexander Vinokouov, Levi Leipheimer, Fabian Cancellara, Bradley McGee
July 23, 2005
Lance Wins Stage 20 Assuring a Seventh Yellow Jersey, Others Have Equipment Problems
Lance Armstrong clinched a seventh victory in the Tour de France today by decisively winning the Stage 20 Time Trial. I was not surprised that Lance won or that Jan Ullrich finished a close second. What did surprise me, however, was the relatively poor performance of Ivan Basso and the incredibly bad luck and nervousness of Mickael Rasmussen.
When I talked with Phil Liggett a few days ago, he confirmed that Stage 20 was very hilly and technical. This is how it appeared when I looked at the course using Google Earth. If this was clear to me, you'd think it would be clear to the Director Sportifs and other personnel of the leading teams.
One of the things I noticed was that the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team chose spoked wheels during Stage 20. Most of the other leading teams opted for rear disk wheels. Rear disk wheels are better suited to less technical courses. They tend to reduce the maneuverability of a time trial bike rather significantly.
The race was pretty significantly affected by these choices. Mickael Rasmussen fell while trying to get around a traffic circle near the beginning of the stage. He had equipment problems, was unsteady on his bike for the rest of the race, and lost 7 minutes 47 seconds overall. Ivan Basso rode strongly at the very beginning of his time trial, but looked very tentative in the middle. OLN analysts later suggested he had gone out too quickly at the beginning of his ride, but that doesn't explain the way he handled his bike in the middle third of the course.
Santiago Botero of Phonak, who also rode a rear disk missed a turn and rode into the crowd early on in the OLN broadcast. The worst handling problem that befell Discovery was Paolo Salvodelli at the first traffic circle, but he was not riding a rear disk. He was able to keep the bike under control and didn't crash.
In spite of these issues, I thought that this was one of the most exciting time trials I'd seen in a long time. The course was really challenging. The television crews from OLN and France Television did a fantastic job in terms of getting the right pictures on the screen at the right times. About the only thing to complain about from a TV-watching standpoint was the chyron graphics that OLN made itself. In some cases, they were poorly timed or not up to date. This is not the only time this has happened to OLN during the 2005 Tour, but Liggett and Sherwen did a good job of correcting information that was put on-screen that wasn't correct.
Technorati Tags: Tour de France, OLN, Phil Liggett, Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Mickael Rasmussen, Santiago Botero, Paolo Salvodelli
Liggett on the Saint-Etienne Time Trial Course
Before the last rest day, I spent a long time researching potential questions for Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen. I was offered the opportunity to participate in a OLN-sponsored rest day conference call that day.
It wasn't clear back then if Lance Armstrong was going to be able to maintain the time advantage that he had over his rivals because the Pyrenees weren't over. So, I looked at the Saint-Etienne Time Trial Course and saw how difficult it was. This is why I asked:
Which is the more challenging aspect of the Stage 20 time trial, the elevation change or the number of turns?
Phil Liggett's response was:
Both are challenges. The area around St Etienne is very hilly and technical. It will a test of skill and the one with the best technical skills will win among the top riders.
Phil's response leaves me to choose the riders among the leaders who have the best technical skills.
I believe that Lance Armstrong will win today. Tomorrow's stage from Corbeil-Essonnes to the Champs-Elysees will be the greatest of all parade laps right up to the Eiffel Tower. I think he's got the best mix of time trial technique, climbing power, and bike-handling skill of the four riders I'm comparing here. This is the moment for him to leave it all on the road, if he wants to do so.
Jan Ullrich has a lot on the line today. If he puts in a great performance, he can replace Mickael Rasmussen on the podium. The question in my mind is: will the technical nature of the course work to his disadvantage? He's not the greatest bike handler on twisting courses and he doesn't have the explosive acceleration on climbs that would be most beneficial.
The media says that Ivan Basso is hoping to do a great ride in this stage in order to show that he's Lance's heir apparent. He's really improved his time trialing over last year, as he demonstrated in this year's Giro d'Italia. Nobody's really in a position to challenge him, because he's one minute ahead of Mickael Rasmussen overall. Rasmussen's likely to lose time to Basso today.
Mickael Rasmussen has overachieved in General Classification terms. He's expended a lot of effort defending his third-place position. Rasmussen finished 174th in the Stage 1 Time Trial, losing 2 minutes and 6 seconds to Ullrich over 19 kilometers. Can he put together a fantastic ride today and stay on the podium?
The big question in my mind is whether Basso, who is riding mainly for pride, will out ride Ullrich who needs a very good performance to finish on the podium? I'll be surprised if Lance does not win the stage today, unless he has some kind of problem on the road.
TDFblog is live blogging Stage 20.
Technorati Tags: Tour de France, OLN, Phil Liggett, Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Mickael Rasmussen
July 22, 2005
Discovery Channel Sponsorship Strategy Hinges on Growing International Interest in Cycling
The Science of
Lance Armstrong DVD
is available from the
Discovery Channel
On-line Store.
[ Photo: Discovery Channel ]
Martin O'Donnell watches TV Cinq from France Television on Comcast in order to practice his French and keep up with what's going on there. The other day he asked:
Discovery Channel is getting massive publicity on French TV thanks to Lance Armstrong's team. How many Discovery networks are available to people in Europe? How important is Europe to Discovery Channel's cycling sponsorship strategy?
I looked into this and talked to a few friends in the pro cycling community and here's what I found:
- Discovery Channel networks are available in at least 14 countries in Europe and the Middle East including:
- Belgium
- Czech Republic
- Germany
- France
- Italy
- Hungary
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- Sweden
- United Kingdom
- The Science of Lance Armstrong was recently aired as a "Watch with the World" event. It was broadcast to 160 countries in 35 languages.
- The Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team is the "most international" team on the Pro Tour circuit. They have riders from 15 different countries including the USA and Canada, several countries in western and eastern Europe, Russia, and the Ukraine.
- Discovery Communications was reportedly heavily involved in the signing of Fumi Beppu, a Team Discovery member from Japan. They probably feel that having a Japanese rider will be good for building public relations in Japan.
One of the points I made in Leblanc Made the Tour de France a Top International Television Event was that Discovery Communications wouldn't have chosen to sponsor a professional cycling team if the massive growth in international interest in the Tour de France hadn't happened over the past seven to 10 years. I think that Discovery and its co-sponsor AMD have benefitted a lot more from the media exposure that the team has generated this year than the team's previous sponsor, the U.S. Postal Service did during its sponsorship.
Technorati Tags: Tour de France, Lance Armstrong, Fumi Beppu, Discovery Channel, AMD
July 21, 2005
Leblanc Made the Tour de France a Top International Television Event
In the article called Liggett and Sherwen Think that Lance Will Not Have a Second Act as a Triathlete, I mentioned that I had passed on a number of follow up questions for Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen to my contacts at OLN and hoped to get at least a few of them answered. Earlier today I got answers to some of my questions from Phil and Paul.
Phil's overarching response to my questions was, "I'm in the car. We can’t answer all these questions as they would take us ages. We are giving short replies. We're getting tired...."
One question I asked was in regard to Jean-Marie Leblanc, the Director of the Tour de France. Leblanc is retiring this year after 16 years as Tour Director.
Do you have any comment on the legacy of Jean-Marie Leblanc as he retires?
Phil and Paul's response was:
JML {Jean-Marie Leblanc} has been largely responsible for opening the Tour worldwide. The string of AMERICAN wins (Armstrong and Lemond) was what he wanted to see. This way he was able to sell the race to bigger sponsors and get the race to grow in stature. The Tour is now one of the World's major sporting events with TV in over 150 countries. This is his legacy.
The magnitude of worldwide coverage is underscored by the amazing growth of the audience in the United States. In 1989 U.S. fans of professional cycling had to tune into one hour of television coverage on Sunday afternoon and viewership was far below that of other mid-Summer weekend sports events. Today, OLN has 1.6 million viewers who watch some of the 14 to 16 hours of daily coverage.
The Tour is one of the biggest events on French television each year, but it's audience is estimated to be only 4 million daily TV viewers. That's a 46-percent share of the French TV audience, but it's still a fairly small group of people from a broadcast perspective.
The only way to find millions of new fans for the Tour de France was to make the event more attractive to international audiences. It was a goal before Lance Armstrong made his comeback, but Lance's repeated victories and the engagement of the general public in America made it easy for the Tour to shatter its growth targets.
Lance Armstrong is a marketing phenomenon, but without the massive international television audience growth sponsors like the Discovery Channel and AMD would never have made the financial commitment that they've made to sponsor the leading professional cycling team in the world. Jean-Marie Leblanc played a key role in driving this growth, and we should say thanks to him for the part he played in creating a boom in cycling interest here in the United States.
Technorati Tags: Tour de France, OLN, Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen, Jean-Marie Leblanc, Lance Armstrong
Comparing Tour de France Coverage on OLN to European Television
John Robson published a good article comparing OLN's coverage of the Tour de France to that of the major European television networks.
I thought about writing an article like this myself but I haven't done it because I would want to compare apples-to-apples: OLN's coverage in 2005 to France 2 and 3 in 2005. Most people that cover the Tour only see European TV or OLN during the Tour. For instance, when Kathleen and I went to Europe during our honeymoon in 2001, we saw the Tour on France 2 and Eurosport, but not OLN.
Regarding the differences in coverage, Robson says:
...though they share the same camera feeds, there are significant differences between the final coverage as seen in Europe versus OLN, and it's not just the "all Lance, all the time" viewpoint we see here in the states.
Depending on the stage, French television would sometimes carry the whole thing or wait until things got interesting before they went live. In the evenings, I caught some specialty tour programming, like a feature piece on one rider being allowed to get off on the bike in his hometown and be greeted by the locals before jumping back into the race....
...they create much more interesting graphics on Eurosport instead of showing talking heads. While you rarely see even a title identifying the speaker, you often see elaborate summations of who gained or lost the most time in the previous day’s stage and how that affected their overall standings in the general classification....
Eurosport also stays almost 100% on the action and rarely does any kind of feature cutaway of the sort we have grown so used to here.... It seems like American TV producers just can’t believe fans would actually want to watch athletes ride or run without learning their personal stories, where Euro producers fear for their lives if they were to cut away from the action for even one second.
Since Robson has been to see the Tour in Europe this year and returned to the U.S. before it ended, I think the insights he provided are pretty unique.
One thing I'd like to add after reading the comments attached to Robson's article: Eurosport has different feeds destined for different parts of Europe. When travelling in non-English speaking parts of Europe, I've noticed that hotels often carry the version of Eurosport that has no commentary at all. It's mostly the multi-destinational feed of the event they are covering, which includes sound from the playfield or the road but little or no other audio, except during commercials.
So when Chad Reid said, "A Eurosport commentary is seldom a necessary companion to the visuals," he's more than right. Eurosport commentary is not only unnecessary, it's not available in many places.
Technorati Tags: Tour de France, OLN, Eurosport
July 20, 2005
Salvodelli Wins Another Stage for Discovery
I was pleased to see Paolo Salvodelli won Stage 17 for Discovery earlier today in Revel. I had been concerned that Salvodelli wasn't doing well in the Tour since many riders who push themselves to the limit in the Giro d'Italia really suffer if they also do the Tour.
I had no basis for thinking that Salvodelli wasn't doing well in the Tour, apart from the fact that the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team hasn't used him the way I expected. No one should consider me a race tactitian.
I keep reading articles that say things like "riders are afraid of Lance" and "the Discovery team has not performed as well as in recent years". I don't think either of these ideas is entirely correct. Riders have attacked Armstrong whenever they felt they could. This isn't a tactic I'd associate with fear.
Similarly, the withering pace set by T-Mobile far from the finish line on some of the mountain stages has blown apart the peloton. This more than anything else is what's caused analysts to question the strength of Team Discovery. I think Johan Bruyneel has a point, however, when he says that weak teams don't hold the Yellow and White Jerseys as well as win multiple stages. Today's result makes that argument even more emphatic.
Technorati Tags: Tour de France, Lance Armstrong, Paolo Salvodelli, Johan Bruyneel
Bike-Powered VoIP System Created for Use in Developing Countries
Jonathan Maus told us that Inveneo has developed a bicycle-powered, Linux-based VoIP phone system for use in developing countries. No kidding.
I found an explanation of a Pedal and Solar Powered PC and Communications System on the Inveneo web site. This article does not discuss the inclusion of the Asterisk open source PBX system, so this may be an elaboration on the design.
This reminds me a bit of the ad for ESPN SportsCenter that starred Lance Armstrong that was aired in 2001 and 2002. I wonder if the folks at Inveneo were in some small way inspired by it? [ via Engadget ]
Technorati Tags: Lance Armstrong
Jersey Shore Pro Cycling Grand Prix to Debut in May 2006
Threshold Sports and JSR Associates announced that The Pro Cycling Tour Will Add a New Jersey Race Series to be called the Jersey Shore Pro Cycling Grand Prix and will take place during the week of May 15 to 21, 2006. According to the article:
... a week long series of criterium races to be held in four selected New Jersey Shore towns, culminating with a final race in Atlantic City on Saturday, May 20 and a 130-mile “cyclo-sportif” ride from Sandy Hook to Cape May on Sunday, May 21. The Grand Prix Series will be invitational to professional teams and the Cyclo-Sportif ride will be open to recreational cyclists led by selected pros who have competed in the Grand Prix races.
This is a great idea and will draw a lot of cycling fans from the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. I'd personally love to ride in a cyclo-sportif event that runs from Sandy Hook to Cape May. What a challenge! [ via CyclingNews.com ]
Japanese Beetle Traps Stop Unwanted Guests from Eating Your Plants and Trees
Japanese Beetle Traps are available
from Amazon.com and its affiliates.
[ Photo: Amazon.com ]
The most unpleasant surprise of relocating to Newtown, PA was finding out that the area of town where we live is infested with Japanese Beetles. According to the Japanese Beetle information from the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, these beetles:
- are not native to the United States,
- were first found in a nursery in southern New Jersey 80 years ago,
- have spread into at least 22 states, and
- are "a serious plant pest and a threat to American agriculture".
The beetles started swarming about 10 days ago. I wanted to buy some Japanese Beetle Traps at one of the local home and garden stores, but most places in our area were sold out by the time I got there.
The design of these traps is ingenious. It uses two different attractants: an artificial floral lure that attracts female beetles and a pheromone lure that attracts males. The males and females fly up to their respective attractants and most are unable to avoid falling into the collection bag. The result is that the beetles are caught and typically die trying to escape.
When I finally got some Japanese Beetle traps and they were amazingly effective. Each trap collected hundreds of male and female beetles and held them in the plastic bag underneath the bait.
The next problem was how to dispose of the dead and dying beetles snared by the trap. The easiest thing to do is to put the collection bag into a larger plastic bag, tie the top of the larger plastic bag, place the larger plastic bag in the garbage can, and replace the collection bag. This is easier said than done if you try to do it during periods of strong sunlight. Japanese Beetles seem to swarm most intensely when it's hot and sunny outside.
So far, we've filled six collection bags with two traps in our backyard. That's a lot of beetles to capture in 10 days. I hope that the number of adult beetles flying around our neighborhood begins to fall as we reach the end of July. June and July are supposedly the peak period for adult Japanese Beetle activity, assuming that weather conditions are favorable.
In any case, the Japanese Beetle traps we are using have limited the amount of damage that is being done to our trees and bushes. The traps work without employing any pesticide. I recommend them highly if you have a Japanese Beetle infestation like we do.
Behind the Scenes at the Tour de France Podium
Alex Trautwig continues to find and photograph things that Operation Gadget readers want to see at the Tour de France. This time he's documented the Tour de France Podium and the media area that is immediately behind it. This article is worth reading if you want to see where Craig Hummer from OLN and other TV journalists interview Lance Armstrong and the daily stage winners. It also shows where that area is in relation to the podium.
Technorati Tags: Tour de France, OLN, Craig Hummer, Lance Armstrong
July 19, 2005
Kashechkin Struck by Fan Waving Promotional Items from Publicity Caravan
A video clip showing a spectator striking rider Andrey Kashechkin on the nose was shown on OLN about 22 minutes into the live broadcast of Stage 16. I watched this video clip about 15 times, taking full advantage of my TiVo.
The group of spectators who were involved in the incident were three young women and a man who were standing on the left shoulder of the road. At least two of the young women were waving inflated noise makers that were distributed by the Caravane Publicitaire, a group of vehicles representing the sponsors of the Tour de France. The women appeared to be waving the noisemakers at the riders who were passing a foot or two in front of them at the time.
One of the young women clearly struck Kashechkin in the face. She may have made contact with him with the noisemaker, her hand, or both. In any case, she dropped the noisemaker immediately after making contact with Kashechkin's face.
It wasn't clear whether the young man who was with the women was waving his noisemakers at the riders or clapping them together, because he wasn't visible to the camera until after the incident. When he was seen on camera, he was clapping the noisemakers together.
I couldn't tell whether the spectators intended to strike Kashechkin or not, but it was clear to me that the situation was quite different from the moment in 2003 when Lance Armstrong fell off of his bike after his handle bars became tangled in the loops of a spectator's bag. In that case, the spectator holding the bag was a young child who was not paying attention to the passing race. In this case, the spectators were intensely focused on the passing riders.
Technorati Tags: Tour de France, OLN, Lance Armstrong
Armstrong Making Major Effort to Win Over French Fans
Jerome Pugmire of The Associated Press reports that Lance Armstrong is going out of his way to connect with French fans during his last Tour de France. This effort has included:
- giving his cap to a couple with whom he spoke at a recent stage start,
- chatting with motorcycle camera men in the middle of stages,
- starting interviews with French media people in French,
Sammarye Lewis of Velogal confirms this in her blog article published today:
Lance spent an extraordinary amount of time signing autographs this morning. One adolescent girl was so thrilled that she was literally shaking. She was immediately on the phone telling someone about it… Just totally stoked. Everybody here wears their cell phones on lanyards around their necks. Me, too…
I had wondered why Lance has been shown talking to the camera so frequently during the less intense parts of recent stages. I've been watching the Tour since 1989 or 1990 and I've never seen any rider, let alone the leader of the G.C., talk to the camera in this manner.
The times that I've seen him talking to the camera on OLN he's been speaking English. It's possible that he's speaking French to the camera at times as well, or he may know which moto cameras belong to OLN and which ones belong to France Television and the ASO.
Technorati Tags: Tour de France, OLN, Lance Armstrong
July 18, 2005
Liggett and Sherwen Think that Lance Will Not Have a Second Act as a Triathlete
It was apparent to me as Lance Armstrong fended off attack after attack in the Alps that he was the prohibitive favorite to wear the Yellow Jersey of the Tour de France all the way through to Paris. I began to think about the next move in Armstrong's athletic career, specifically about whether he could return to competing in triathlons at an elite level.
Lance refuted this notion in an interview he did Outside Magazine for their July 2005 issue:
Any idea of going back to triathlon?
No. Listen, I am going to do a triathlon, and it's called Luke, Grace, Isabelle. Those are the three; that's enough. My first priority is just to be there for my children as much as I can.
In spite of this seemingly definitive answer from Lance himself, I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I asked Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen what they thought of the idea. I had the good fortune of being invited to participate in a Rest Day conference call arranged by OLN and here was what I asked:
Dave Aiello / OperationGadget.com: First of all, thanks for for doing this. It's a terrific opportunity for all of us who didn't make it to the Tour.
Do either of you think that Lance Armstrong will ever compete in an endurance sporting event covered by the media again in the future? I think the potential interest in his participation in something like Ironman Hawaii, both from a sponsorship and a viewership perspective, would be significant.
Liggett: I can only repeat what Lance said to me in September and what he also said at the press conference {at the Tour de Georgia} in April.... One thing's for certain, come Monday he will never race a bike as a professional bike rider again.
He will never go back on that decision. He said that's it. He said that you may see him in a local bike race somewhere deep in Texas for the sheer fun of it.... He's the sort of athlete ... that cannot come to the event half ready, half fit, and with the thought of just riding for the heck of it.
Therefore although he would have great ability and of course he has proven ability in triathlons, even at the Ironman distance, because he would immediately think of the preparation involved, of the regime that has to be lived, and... he can't go through all that again. It would be stepping back into a professional sport. So, I don't think he will.
I think he will do his charity rides because he can do those on one leg just for the fun of it, but he will never go back to a professional status again.
Sherwen: I agree with Phil on that. The thing about Lance Armstrong over the last seven years that we've always thought that because of the way he approaches his preparation for an event like this, one day or another he'd get up and say, "I don't want to do this anymore."
Not because it's physically demanding because physically I think he could race for a couple of more years. But I think his training is a lot more mentally demanding than any of us could ever imagine. When he comes to the Tour de France, his physical performance is probably a lot easier than when he's actually training.
Compound that with the fact that I think he misses his kids an awful lot. I think that's one of the major parts of his decision to stop doing the sport.
Keep in mind that he's been a pro athlete since about age 14 on the triathlon circuit. He's been at the top of the professional cycling sport for a long time.
I think it's a magnificent decision that he's made to ride the Tour de France one more time and to retire on the final day. That is instead of going on to riding a couple of exhibition events in, for example, in Holland where he goes nearly every year or in the United States. I think if he can retire on the 24th of July at the Yellow Jersey at the Tour de France that would be the best retirement that I have ever seen in the sport of professional cycling.
I was one of many journalists who had the opportunity to participate in this press conference. I was really impressed with the consideration that Paul and Phil gave to each person's question, and their willingness to work through some technical difficulties that made the call a bit harder than it otherwise would have been.
It was a big thrill to be able to talk to them, and I sent several other questions to my contacts at OLN that I hope to get answered as well. If I hear anything further, I'll let you know.
Technorati Tags: Tour de France, OLN, Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen, Lance Armstrong
2nd Week of July 2005 Workouts
Here's a quick summary of the workouts that I did last week:
- Monday, July 11: Mowed lawn for 2 hours 7 minutes. Biked 10.1 miles in 55 minutes.
- Tuesday, July 12: Worked around the house.
- Wednesday, July 13: Worked around the house.
- Thursday, July 14: Worked around the house.
- Friday, July 15: Mowed lawn and worked around the yard for 2 hours 56 minutes.
- Saturday, July 16: Big get together of family and friends at our house. Busy.
- Sunday, July 17: Kathleen's birthday. Busy.
This week, Kathleen and I focused on getting our new house ready for a house warming party on Saturday. This meant a lot of work inside and outside the house. I continued to use my Polar S710 heart rate monitor to measure the amount of physical effort expended in mowing and pruning trees.
We found a challenging 10-mile out-and-back ride through the hills of Newtown Township, PA. We rode it on Monday and we looked for other opportunities to go, but just didn't have time.
For the week, I exercised for 5 hours 58 minutes burning 2,942 calories, and covering a total of 10.1 miles on my bike.
July 11 - 17, 2005 Weekly Summary
This is the Operation Gadget weekly summary for the second week of July 2005. I'm experimenting with a weekly summary so that readers who want to receive a periodic email with Operation Gadget headlines can receive the links to all of the articles published each week. I will post a mechanism for readers to sign up for this service when I work out the details.
The headlines:
July 17
July 15
July 14
- Stage 14 in HD at Theaters on Saturday to Benefit the Tyler Hamilton and Davis Phinney Foundations
- Crashes Taking Their Toll on the Tour de France
July 13
- Did Armstrong Want to Punish Riis with His Stage 10 Performance?
- SRM and Polar Using Auxiliary Transmitters to Boost Signals from Bike Computers
July 12
- Inside the OLN Production Truck at the Tour de France
- Getting a Better Picture of What's Happening at the Tour by Reading On-site and Off-site Weblogs
- Randall Butler Was Right About Stage 10 Blowing the Race Apart
July 11
Does a weekly summary work for you? Is it a waste of time? Let me know by posting a comment. Thanks....