The Wall Street Journal published an article today called The Return of a Great Game which celebrates the coming of age of stars Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin. One of the key indicators of hockey's renewed popularity is the elevation of hockey in the mix of highlights and analysis that is ESPN's SportsCenter.

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Continuing our theme of honoring The Tour de Georgia pro cycling race that took place last week, our fourth free iPhone wallpaper is "Mavic Helmet":

I took this photo of a Mavic neutral support motorcyclists' helmet at the 2005 Tour de Georgia.

This image is part of the Operation Gadget iPhone Wallpapers Collection. I'm planning to release one iPhone wallpaper per week for a while during this Spring and Summer.

I've only ridden in one event where Mavic provided support. It was the 2004 Tour of Hope Fundraising Ride in Washington, DC. I needed support that day. I broke a pedal on my old Marin Bear Valley SE mountain bike, the only bike I owned at the time. The Mavic guys offered me a bike, but I didn't have real biking shoes at that point (to fit into clipless pedals), so I had to find someone to help me.

The incredible story of how I met Dr. Steven Sharpe at a rest area along the course, and how he took me to his home nearby and repaired my bike is one that you should read if you ever want to know what constitutes a Good Samaritan in this day and age. Dr. Sharpe and his friend Greg Millet turned an unlucky break into a miraculous finish to truly special event that did a lot of good for cancer research.

The entire story of my involvement in the 2004 Tour of Hope DC Fundraising Ride can be found at:

http://www.operationgadget.com/2004_tour_of_hope/

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Continuing our theme of honoring The Tour de Georgia pro cycling race that started yesterday, our third free iPhone wallpaper is "Brasstown":

I took this photo of the observation tower at the top of Brasstown Bald in April 2005 at The Tour de Georgia with a Canon Powershot A95 point-and-shoot camera.

If you are interested in what the conditions were like that day, read this article: Living on Clif Bars and 100 Calorie Snack Packs and check out a few of the photos from the Operation Gadget Photo Gallery, particularly:

• Tower in the Distance
• Finish Line at Brasstown Bald
• View from the Observation Tower Porch

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One of the biggest annual stage races in the United States begins Monday: The 2008 Tour de Georgia, this year presented by AT&T.

I won't be attending the TdG this year, but I have attended it in the past and I have some friends who do an excellent job covering this race each year.

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I was chosen to officiate at the 2008 USA Hockey Girls' Nationals last week in West Chester, PA. This was a marathon tournament that ran from April 2 to 6 and covered four different age groups:

• 12 and Under
• 14 and Under
• 16 and Under
• 19 and Under

The tournament was structured so that 12 teams could participate in each age group, and they were divided into two six-team pools for round robin play on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The quarterfinals of each age group were Saturday morning. The semifinals were Saturday evening. The final game in each age group took place on Sunday.

Amazingly, a total of 15 overtime periods were needed in the four age group finals on Sunday. This included a remarkable 8 overtimes in the 12 and Under game where Assabet Valley, Massachusetts beat the Pittsburgh Aviators.

I was impressed with all of the teams I officiated in this tournament. I was selected to work the Girls' and Women's Nationals five years ago in 2003. I must say that it's clear that the number of players and the overall skill level of each player has dramatically improved since then.

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Beginning Wednesday, April 2, I am officiating the USA Hockey Girls' National Ice Hockey Tournament in West Chester, PA. I may not have time to post very much on Operation Gadget until the tournament is over on Sunday.

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• For the Phinney Family, a Dream and a Challenge on NYTimes.com: This story came out last week, right before Taylor Phinney raced in the Individual Pursuits at the Track Cycling World Championships. Taylor finished eighth. His father, Davis, is a legendary U.S. cycling champ who has struggled with Parkinson's Disease in recent years. This article summarizes their recent struggles and successes.
• ScreenFlow: The Killer Screencasting App on MacTips: "ScreenFlow is the application I've been waiting for on the Mac. I've been using it recently for the MacTips Videos and I love it! It's saves me so much time because I'm able to focus on creating valuable content rather than editing videos."
• Dash’s Car Navigator Gives Smart Directions, if Others Participate, Walt Mossberg on AllThingsD: "As smart as in-car navigation devices are, they could be smarter. They could talk to each other via the Internet and share information on how fast traffic is moving on the roads they have just traveled.... Starting this week, just such a smarter navigation box is hitting the market. Called the Dash Express, this $400 product looks a lot like units from better-known firms... But, unlike any other in-car navigation device I’ve seen, each Dash Express... becomes part of a network, connected to the company via the Internet. "
• Windows XP: Going, going ... gone? on Computerworld: "The approaching death of Windows XP may upset you, but it shouldn't come as a surprise. Microsoft Corp.'s product life-cycle guidelines have foretold the fate of XP since 2001. In fact, Microsoft has been killing off one version of a product as it is replaced with another for years now. But this time around, the approaching demise of XP is getting more attention than, say, the final passing of Windows 2000."
• Coming Soon to a Phone Near You on WSJ.com: This article summarizes forthcoming developments in mobile phone voice control, improved web browsers, enhanced storage, and video sharing. [ Subscription may be required to read this article. ]
• How To Use Nokia’s Sports Tracker as a Photo Tracker on The Gadgets Page: "Ms. Jen was part of Nokia’s Urbanista Diaries Relay, which means they sent her to India to promote the Nokia N82 in all its glory. While on the trip, she realized how well the Sports Tracker (a typically exercise related feature) could be used to track the geo-locations of your photos"
• Note to readers: Today would be my grandfather James M. Lynch, Jr.'s 95th birthday. He died in 1982. He is one of the inspirations for this site, since he bought and tried every important electronic gadget that existed in the 1970s. He owned the first digital watch, desktop calculator, and personal computers I ever saw.

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• Big hockey weekend: This weekend the USA Hockey Women's Nationals are taking place in West Chester, PA, the USA Hockey Tier III Junior Nationals are in Marlboro, MA, and the NCAA D-I Men's Hockey Regional Tournaments are on in four cities around the country. More hockey tournament info on rinkatlas.com/blog.
• Yes, Running Can Make You High - New York Times in The New York Times: "Researchers in Germany, using advances in neuroscience, report in the current issue of the journal Cerebral Cortex that the folk belief is true: Running does elicit a flood of endorphins in the brain. The endorphins are associated with mood changes, and the more endorphins a runner’s body pumps out, the greater the effect." [ via Lifehacker ]
• New Jersey Apple Store ready to open on TUAW: "Doesn't 'Cherry Hill' sound lovely? It will sound even sweeter for Cherry Hill, New Jersey-based Apple fans this weekend when a new Apple Store opens {at Cherry Hill Mall}, next to A|X Armani Exchange and M•A•C Cosmetics (that's right, a Mac store next to a MAC store). The doors will open at 10:00 AM on Saturday, March 29th." Cherry Hill will probably be lovely again, as soon as they finish building the Nordstrom's.
• Wi-Fi Networking News: Sebastopol, Calif., Looks Gift Wi-Fi in Mouth, Declares Harm on Wi-Fi Net News: "The northern peninsula town of Sebastopol gave up free Wi-Fi in favor of fear mongering...."
• Are CIOs Losing Influence? on The Wall Street Journal Biz Tech Blog: "...And in a sign that CIOs may know that fighting the influx of consumer technology into the workplace is futile, only 36% of CIOs say the computing environment they offer employees at work is better than the ones workers have at home." [ Thanks Martin O'Donnell ]

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One of the most interesting posts I've read this week came from Awful Announcing, a blog that I discovered as a result of using Alltop Sports for the first time. The blog post says that the NCAA restricts the number of blog posts that any credentialed journalist can make during their tournaments. According to the article, someone with a press credential can only update their blog three times per period and once during each intermission during an ice hockey game, and five times per half and once at half time for a basketball game.

See the article or a similar article on Eye on Sports Media for the complete NCAA Blogging Policy.

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Guy Kawaski, Will Mayall, and the rest of the folks at Nononina have built a new topic-based RSS aggregator called Alltop. There idea is to display the latest five stories from thirty or more blogs in each topic area. You can drill down to the topic areas that you are most interested in by using the appropriate subdomain URL. My favorites are:

• Sports
• Gadgets
• Mac

I'm also pretty interested in the Linux topic. I think there could be a market for a Web Development or PHP topic. There's already a Politics topic that probably would be a quick way to catch up on what's going on in the latest news cycle.

I think Alltop is an excellent idea and could be a mobile competitor to Google Reader if they create an iPhone version.

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The Amgen Tour of California began on Sunday with a Prologue time trial in Palo Alto.

One of the more intriguing developments is the return of veteran sprinter Mario Cipollini to the ranks of active professional cyclists after a three year retirement. Cipollini retired on May 7, 2005 after a ceremonial 1.1km time trial at the Giro d'Italia. He has now joined the upstart U.S. team called Rock Racing.

BikeRadar.com reports that Cipo's bike is not standard team issue and speculates on its componentry. They have a number of good photos of the bike. When I have covered pro cycling races in the past for Operation Gadget, I've always gone looking for the most unusual bikes, and this one certainly is.

I think the return of athletes like Mario Cipollini bodes well for the sport of pro cycling. It certainly needs some good news and some developments that take the focus away from the controversies surrounding testing for performance-enhancing drugs.

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• RPI Plays Princeton tonight in the 31st Annual Big Red Freakout. RPI needs the win. In other news, the White beat the Red in the Alumni Game 9-8.
• Kipkay's Video Tips & Tricks on Instructables: "Here are 5 easy and cheap tricks for anyone who uses a camcorder. Total cost for all 5 is under $10!" [ via Lifehacker ]
• New Devices and Applications on the Wi-Fi Front on Web Worker Daily: "While many Mac-based users already have next-generation, draft 802.11n Wi-Fi technology in their homes (because they use Apple’s Airport Extreme routers) lots of other folks still use slower 802.11g Wi-Fi. This year is when official certification of 802.11n Wi-Fi is supposed to arrive, and the month of January brought some product announcements that point to what the widespread arrival of 802.11n technology might mean...."
• Review of the Nike Amp+ iPod Control Watch: "... the Amp+ isn't designed to be an all-around running or fitness watch. It's specifically designed for runners who already have the Nike + iPod kit. Similar to the Timex iControl we recently reviewed, the Nike Amp+ is a remote control for your iPod Nano, however unlike the Timex, the Nike Amp+ uses the existing Nike + iPod gadget that plugs into your iPod, so you're actually adding the iPod remote control to the Nike iPod system." [ via TUAW ]
• Crazy Apple Rumors on Hiatus on TUAW: CrazyAppleRumors.com is a site I just found out about recently. It's articles are what you might read in The Onion if they covered Apple more aggressively. Sorry to see it go dark.

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• Apple Releases a New "Get a Mac" Ad Co-starring a Football Referee on Apple.com: Pretty good attention to detail. The referee is wearing a white hat and a uniform that is very close to that worn in many college football leagues. What I would add to this is the referee turning on his microphone and speaking over the public address system. [ Seen on TV over the weekend. ]

• Andrea Jung Joins Apple Board of Directors on MacRumors.com: "Apple has announced that Andrea Jung has been elected to Apple's board. Andrea also serves as Chairman and CEO of Avon Products, board member of General Electric, and member of the New York Presbyterian Hospital board of trustees and the Catalyst board of directors."

  Why the CEO of Avon and why now? Speculation is that her board seat at GE will make her helpful in brokering an agreement with NBC Universal to bring them back into the iTunes fold.



• Break a Soda Habit with Better Water on Lifehacker: "Have a serious soda habit? Part of the lure of the stuff is the convenience and fizzy texture, not just the sugar content you can get from lots of other places. How-to blog TipNut details one writer's cheap, simple fix—giving water more appeal." My habit is Caffeine Free Diet Coke, so I don't have the caffeine or the sugar but I still have the soda fix. I just drink way too much of it.


• Chalet Doll House on BabyGadget.com: "...this Chalet Doll House from Plan Toys is like a breath of fresh air with its openness and lack of minuscule plastic parts. With movable staircases and skylights, this doll house comes completely furnished - sans family...." Nice looking, substantial, and modern.


• Philips Blu-ray Player BDP7200 on Ubergizmo: "The BDP7200 is Philips’ first Full Profile 1 compliant BD player that features Dolby® TrueHD and DTS® HD High Resolution Audio, multi-channel audio decoding and digital audio optical outputs. The BDP7200 supports 1080p at native 24 frames per second...." On display at CES.

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Apple went ahead and announced an upgraded Mac Pro and an upgraded Xserve this morning. These announcements occurred one day after Intel announed 16 new processors based on 45nm silicon fabrication at CES.

I'm a bit confused by the timing of these announcements. It makes sense to release these new machines to the world as soon as possible since both the Mac Pro and the Xserve haven't been significantly upgraded in more than a year. But, why do this in advance of Macworld Expo? Is Steve Jobs going to have so much to demonstrate that these announcements couldn't be worked into his keynote?

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Kathleen, Jimmy, and I watched the 2008 NHL Winter Classic, an outdoor hockey game between the Buffalo Sabres and the Pittsburgh Penguins that took place at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park, NY. I have to officiate tomorrow afternoon in New Jersey, so we watched the game on NBC from our living room instead of driving to Buffalo to see it in person.

I thought the game was a huge success for The National Hockey League. The game drew over 71,000 fans. Reuters reported that the game was a "stunning success" and generated "unprecedented media coverage". I think the NHL could put on two or three of these games next season in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day as an alternative to College Football on television. I wouldn't be surprised to see games happen in places like Yankee Stadium or Gillette Stadium in Foxboro.

I thought the visuals were excellent. Orchard Park got an unexpected lake-effect storm that caused a fairly constant snow to fall. It was windy at times. The players had to deal with imperfect conditions. It went to a shootout with the NHL poster boy Sidney Crosby winning the game for the Penguins on the last shot.

The NHL reportedly used 24 cameras, one more than they would normally use during a game in the Stanley Cup finals. The extra camera was located in an airplane. They used the shot from the airplane a few times, it only emphasized the snowy conditions.

The most interesting technical information that I heard during the game was that the rink had to be designed to accommodate the nine-inch crown of the football field at Ralph Wilson Stadium. This meant that the rink had to be built on a platform that leveled the ice surface. Inside that platform were the pipes for the cooling system with styrofoam surrounding the pipes and sand poured over the top.

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I'm spending more time at work during the 2007 Tour de France than I am watching the coverage on Versus. For this reason, I have become a voracious consumer of non-TV information about the Tour. One of the things I've been doing is grabbing Tour de France-specific podcasts from iTunes and listening to them on the commute to work. This way I get 45 to 60 minutes of total immersion into yesterday's Tour news, so it's a good substitute for the Tour Pre-Race Show.

Here are the podcasts I'm listening to at the moment and why:

1. ITV Tour de France Podcast: Approximately 15 minutes of stage highlights and analysis from Matt Rendell and Chris Boardman. The advantage of listening to ITV's podcast is that they are a Tour rights holder, so they can grab excerpts of race action and rider interviews that the other podcasts really can't. Also Boardman is a very good color man.
2. Velonews TDF Podcast: 10 to 20 minutes of analysis with Joe Silva and Thomas Prehn. Prehn is the author of Racing Tactics for Cyclists. You can imagine that this podcast focuses on race tactics. It's probably the most analytical podcast I've heard so far.
3. The Daily Tour Podcast from The FredCast: 20 minutes of stage summary and analysis by David Bernstein. This podcast includes some useful information about Tour information resources and a section on basic information on the Tour for beginners. (The FredCast is a year-round weekly podcast for cyclists, so you may be interested in that podcast in addition to or instead of The Daily Tour).

This is the order in which I listen to the podcasts, which is probably proportional to the value of the information that I get out of each one. Your mileage may vary, depending on the amount of TV time you have, the experience you have in cycling, and the experience you have as a pro cycling spectator.

There are several other Tour-related podcasts that I haven't had the chance to listen to, and I'm not sure when or if I will be able to do so. If you have information about some of the other podcasts, feel free to post it in the comments to this article.

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Kudos to my friend Frank Steele for his excellent coverage of the 2007 Tour de Georgia on his site TdGblog.com. Earlier this Spring, it looked like the race might not happen because organizers had failed to recruit a title sponsor. However, AT&T stepped up as a major sponsor and the race began as planned.

The big development in the early part of the race was a breakaway of 13 riders that finished 29 minutes ahead of the peloton on Stage 3. Gianni Meersman of Team Discovery Channel won the sprint in that select group.

Since then, Levi Leipheimer has won back-to-back stages including Stage 4's mountain time trial to the top of Lookout Mountain, and Stage 5's road race to the top of Brasstown Bald.

The race to the top of Brasstown Bald has proven to be one of the great one-day races in North America over the past few years. When I covered TdG in 2005, Tom Danielson won the stage. This was a truly amazing day, complete with snow at the summit on April 23. For fun, you may be interested in reading How I Made it to the Top of Brasstown Bald, Living on Clif Bars and 100 Calorie Snack Packs, and Getting Off of Brasstown Bald. This gives you some perspective on what it's like to try to cover a pro cycling race as a member of the credentialed media.

Janez Brajkovic of Team Discovery Channel should be able to hold the yellow jersey for the remaining two stages of the race, but I'm still planning to watch the highlights on Versus on Saturday, April 28 and Sunday, April 29 at 5:00pm Eastern Time. Update: I mixed up the dates of the broadcasts earlier. They are now correct.

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Frank Steele of TDFblog reports that race commissaires at the Amgen Tour of California decided to neutralize the last 10 km of the finish of Stage 1 after a massive pileup that caused half the field to crash or have to stop. This allowed Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team rider Levi Leipheimer to retain the leader's jersey despite finishing about one minute behind the stage winner.

Frank points out that the crash was caused by one of the lead riders in the field hitting a Botts' Dot, a raised pavement marker that's used as a traffic lane or pedestrian crossing marker. These markets are very common in California and are being used more and more frequently in the rest of the country.

A bit of controversy has followed this decision. This stage was neutralized at about 10 kilometers to go, at the discretion of the race referees. The current UCI rule governing sprint finishes is that crashes that take place within 3 kilometers of the finish do not affect rider placement. Some people say that the fact that this stage ended in a circuit (the course travels over the same roads multiple times) justifies the officials' ruling.

My question is, how often do Botts' Dots cause cyclists on open roads to crash? I've never hit one, to my knowledge, but I also don't think I've ever regularly ridden a route with any of these pavement markers on it.

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The 2007 Amgen Tour of California is taking place this week on the West Coast, so the cycling blogs are back publishing cool content for the new season.

My friend Frank Steele from TDFblog.com published a great article on photographing a bike race that comes from personal experience Frank has had taking pictures at races in Georgia including the Atlanta Olympics and the Tour de Georgia.

Frank points out that you don't have to have the newest Digital SLR to get good photos at a pro cycling race if you know your equipment and choose your shooting locations carefully. He shows off a bunch of photos he took at the Tour de Georgia, some of which he chooses because they show the problems with trying to capture action shots with modestly-priced digital point-and-shoot cameras.

Frank and I were together for the 2005 Tour de Georgia Individual Time Trial and my photos from that day are in the 2005 Tour de Georgia Album in the Operation Gadget Photo Gallery. My shot selection was different than Frank's that day. The big reasons were that I covered every stage of the 2005 Tour de Georgia, I had already taken hundreds of photos with my old Canon PowerShot A95, and I knew intuitively how much shutter lag I had to deal with.

I was also at the Tour de Georgia in 2005 with the goal of capturing what was going on behind the race, things like how the race officials supervised the race on the road and how the television camera crews captured the action. I guessed correctly that people wouldn't care about my action photography with so many pro photographers following the peloton.

My advice after taking photos at two Tours de France, one Tour of Georgia, and one USPRO Championship is:

• If you're serious about capturing action shots, get yourself a Digital SLR with as many manual control capabilities as you can afford. These can be bought if you have that kind of money, or you can rent them from professional camera stores.
• Use glass lenses with the lowest F-stops you can afford. These are the lenses with the fastest response.
• Get media credentials if you have the connections and a legitimate publishing capability. I did this for the 2005 Tour de Georgia and the 2005 USPRO Championship and it gave me the ability to ride in official cars, park my car in places that spectators couldn't get to, and just be there when the key moments happened.
• If you just want to take your point-and-shoot and get some good close-up photos of the riders, go to the stage start. Arrive 90 minutes before the start if you can. Look for where the riders "sign-in" and decide which side of the cordoned-off area will be the best place to shoot from. Focus on getting good pictures. Don't try to mix taking pictures and getting autographs.

Frank also pointed out an article from Spare Cycles called Shooting cycling photographs with a Canon Digital Rebel that was published last year. This article goes into even more technical detail about Digital SLRs and how best to use them to cover this sport.

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The LiveStrong Challenge Philadelphia took place on Sunday, September 10 without me. It sounds like it was a big success. The weather was nearly perfect that day, with rain coming in that night, well after all of the riders and runners crossed the finish line.

Many articles appeared in the media before the event. A good example is Birdsboro mother, stepson ride for a cure from the Pottstown Mercury:

Valerie Rowe and her stepson Steven will set out on a 40-mile bike ride to benefit cancer research Sunday as part of the Lance Armstrong Foundation’s Livestrong Challenge Philadelphia... The Penn State Berks professor she began cycling because he husband, Bob, is an avid rider... Her reason for accepting this particular challenge, she said, is because her sister and sister-in-law are both cancer survivors. "Plus, I have a lot of respect for Lance Armstrong," she said.

Here are a couple of the better articles that were published after the LiveStrong Challenge took place. Passion for cycling spurs cancer drive from the Morristown Daily Record:

Two years ago, Morristown resident Steve Jablon helped found a group of bicycling enthusiasts within his Bridgewater pharmaceutical company. Members of the PharmaFliers, as the group was dubbed by the employees of Sanofi-Aventis, found a kindred spirit in each other for the sport they love...

Earlier this year, the PharmaFliers discovered the... LiveStrong Challenge, a 100-mile charity bike ride through various cities across America. Sixteen members of the group who have been directly and indirectly affected by cancer began training for the Philadelphia Live Strong Challenge, which was held on Sept. 10...

Of the $2.6 million total raised for the Foundation in Philadelphia, the PharmaFliers contributed $19,400, nearly doubling its original goal, Jablon said.

LiveStrong Challenge Philly Report by Will Swetnam of The Paceline.com [ registration required to read ]:

Like many supporters of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, I was curious as to how the shift to the five city LIVESTRONG Challenge would play out. Having attended the last 6 Ride for the Roses events in Austin, I was curious how the "feel" would compare to this one. When making my choice, Austin would have been the easy one - just drive on down from where I live outside of Dallas - but I wanted to try one of the other rides. I've ridden in several of the LSC event cities, but never in Philadelphia, and so my decision was made for me...

{The early part of the course consisted of} rolling hills through neighborhoods, farm areas, past old buildings, and amazing houses. The course was well marked and I never once felt the need for a cue sheet. My riding partner for the day, Christine, who is training for a few centuries later in the year, and I had agreed to a steady pace to help build endurance, and so we were able to enjoy the scenery. We passed the first two rest stops, and stopped in at the third...

Continue reading "LiveStrong Challenge in Philadelphia Was a Success" »

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Last week The Washington Post published an article that talked about NBC's effort to start an action sports tour as a source of programming to intrigue a younger audience. The Dew Action Sports Tour is in its second year of existence. It's co-owned by NBC and Live Nation, Clear Channel Communication's event production subsidiary.

Believe it or not, the organizers have sunk an estimated $30 to 50 million into its success. I hope it works out for them.

This weekend, the tour stopped in Louisville, KY for The Panasonic Open, where Bob Burnquist won the skateboard vert competition and Simon Tabron took the BMX vert honors.

The tour will continue on to:

• Denver for The Right Guard Open on July 13-16.
• Portland, Oregon for Vans International from August 17-20.
• San Jose for the Toyota Challenge on September 7-10.
• Orlando for the Playstation Pro from October 12-15.

I can't really get into these sports myself. What interests me about these competitions is the fact that television networks are taking such a big stake in trying to get them off the ground.

One thing that's certain is they're trying to make these events spectator-friendly and not just made-for-TV spectacles. The tour drew an estimated 36,000 fans last year in Louisville over four days. The finale in Orlando five months later drew almost 60,000.

If it was all about local turnout for the event, however, NBC would do better to get behind something like the Commerce Bank Philadelphia International Cycling Championship or the Boston or New York Marathons, which draw hundreds of thousands of spectators to one-day events.

Technorati Tags: Dew Action Sports Tour, NBC.

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Deepweb has released LeTour 2006
to help Palm users follow the
2006 Tour de France. [ Image:
Deepweb Internet Solutions ]

Frank Steele at TDFblog.com recently pointed out that Deepweb has published Le Tour 2006 a PalmOS application that provides stage profiles and distances, as well as intermediate Sprint and King-of-the-Mountains points. An update is planned to provide information about teams including rider lists.

I downloaded Version 1.0 on to my Treo 650 in order to see how well it works. The screens are written mostly in English, with the big exception being that the application uses the term "Etape" to refer to each stage. No big deal there.

The biggest glitch I've seen so far is that the Le Tour 2006 application is supposed to be able to insert information about each Etape (stage) into your Datebook. Whenever I try this, my Treo 650 does a soft reset. This may be because I run DateBk5 from Pimlico Software. I emailed Deepweb to report the problem and I'll let you know if I hear that they can repeat the problem.

I definitely think this software is worth having on my Treo, and I'd recommend it to any Tour fan who is aTreo user.

Update: According to Ad de Vries from Deepweb, "At this moment we have no complains about using LeTour on a Treo 650 (the same for our F1 program) but of course we will check it ASAP with the Treo 650 simulator (we don't have such a nice device overhere) and let you know if we know more about your problem."

This is a great response to receive from a Palm developer-- another reason you should download LeTour and give it a try.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France, PalmOS, Treo 650.

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Tomorrow is the first annual Commerce Bank Philadelphia International Cycling Championship. This race was formerly known as the Wachovia USPRO Championship-- a race that Operation Gadget covered in 2005.

As The Philadelphia Inquirer points out the race lost its sponsor and its role as the U.S. professional championship after the 2005 cycling season, but thanks to the support of the governments of Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia, it was guaranteed to return for 2006. In the Spring, Commerce Bank-- an up-and-coming bank in the Philadelphia and New York Metropolitan Areas-- signed a four-year deal to sponsor this race and its siblings.

I made the decision not to cover the Commerce Bank Triple Crown of Cycling several months ago because I knew my wife was due to deliver our son Jimmy around this time. I wish it were possible for me to participate again this year because this is a great race.

If you're in the Philadephia area, I strongly recommend attending the race in person. If you go, you'll be joining about half a million fellow spectators. Some of these people are die-hard cycling fans, but most of them are local sports fans who didn't know a lot about pro cycling until they started attending this race. The atmosphere at this race is truly unique and would impress hardcore European cycling fans.

Update: VeloNews reports that Greg Henderson won the Philadelphia International Cycling Championship, making a strong comeback from a serious crash in March. He also won the Commerce Bank Triple Crown race in Reading, PA on Thursday night.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

The 2006 FIFA World Cup started in Germany yesterday. I watched my first game of the tournament this morning-- a surprisingly forgettable 1-0 victory by England over Paraguay.

There are a lot of World Cup-oriented websites to look at. One site I found useful already is the composite World Cup TV schedule compiled by SoccerTV.com that was mentioned in Matt Haughey's article World Cup and PVR's on PVR Blog. This schedule includes broadcasts in English and Spanish as well as explanations of how to receive games in German, Arabic, Portuguese, Farsi, and French by subscription.

This composite TV schedule will help me plan the games that I want to watch live. I'll leave the rest up to my TiVo.

Another cool thing about the PVRblog article is a comment that explains how to record all of the World Cup-related programs on a High Definition DirecTV TiVo PVR.

Technorati Tags: World Cup, TV schedule, TiVo.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

VeloNews Ticker: This is the latest
advancement in live coverage of pro
cycling events, brought to us by
VeloNews.

Earlier today I spoke to Jeff Henderson from One Million Revolutions who developed the VeloNews Ticker that's being used for the first time at the 2006 Tour de Georgia cycling race.

VeloNews has provided running commentary on each stage of many international cycling races for several years. That commentary was presented on a static web page that contained an HTML meta tag that instructed visitors' web browsers to refresh (reload the same page) every few minutes. That periodic client refresh directive was the extent of the interactivity of their previous live system.

When VeloNews editors saw the gorgeous Tour Tracker that Adobe sponsored for the 2006 Tour of California, they decided that they needed a more sophisticated live results page to retain their share of the Internet audience for major cycling races. That's when they spoke to Jeff.

Henderson, who is also the Interactive Editor of Inside Triathlon Magazine (a sister publication to VeloNews), pulled the VeloNews Ticker together in the weekend before the Tour de Georgia began. The core features of the VeloNews Ticker are:

• Stage Results and Current General Classification Standings
• Live Race Commentary
• Live Course Map, implemented using the Google Maps API
• Stage Elevation Profile
• Latest Photos

The Live Race Commentary pane is pretty similar to the commentary that was previously provided by VeloNews. The rest of the features of the ticker are new.

Read on for Jeff's comments on how reorganization of VeloNews' on-line databases helped facilitate the implementation of the ticker, information on how the photo stream and race commentary are created during the stage, little known features of the Ticker, and prospects for future use.

Technorati Tags: Tour de Georgia, pro cycling, VeloNews Ticker.

Continue reading "How VeloNews Built their Cycling Race Ticker" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

People are going to our 2005 Tour de Georgia live coverage information page, so I'm creating a new list for the 2006 edition:

• Velonews. Velonews has a "ticker"-- a very interesting page containing running commentary, a continuously-updated route map generated from Google Maps, and a photo stream. The problem is that there is no permalink for the ticker for the latest stage. You'll have to find that link on Velonews' home page.
• CyclingNews.com Live Coverage.
• Tour de Georgia Live Standings. The official site claims to have live information, but never showed anything for Stage 1.

See also: How to Listen to Race Radio at the 2006 Tour de Georgia

Technorati Tags: Tour de Georgia, pro cycling.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Todd Fryburger reports that he will be at Woody's Gap again this year to watch Stage 4 of the 2006 Ford Tour de Georgia. Stage 4 of the 2006 Tour de Georgia will take place on Friday, April 21, 2006.

Last year Todd provided some great on-the-spot information from Woody's Gap, including the MPEG movie clip that we published in How Bad Was the Weather on Woody's Gap? which shows an intense hail storm.

Todd wrote:

{Many of us} in the Atlanta cycling community plan on sitting atop Woody Gap on Friday to watch / listen as TdG Stage 4 unfolds.

We will be using Cingular EDGE / GPRS service via my cellphone attached to my laptop to receive the web-based updates from http://www.velonews.com/ and http://www.cyclingnews.com/. In addition, we will be monitoring Nexrad weather radar via http://www.wunderground.com/radar/map.asp as well as a few
other sites - do not want to repeat the hailstorm experience of last year. We are using Cingular service as we understand the Verizon does not have broadband coverage that far North. We will use a Wilson omnidirectional
external "trucker" antenna to ensure we have the best bandwidth performance via Cingular - it won't be broadband, but should be sufficient for the text-based race updates provided by these websites.

Read on for additional resources that Todd and his friends will have to follow Stage 4, radio frequencies that Todd thinks will be useful, information about how to get to Woody's Gap, and when to arrive....

Technorati Tags: Tour de Georgia, pro cycling, race radio.

Continue reading "How Pro Cycling Fans Will Watch the 2006 Tour de Georgia at Woody's Gap on April 21" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)