Just in time for the 2009 Tour de France, Operation Gadget has updated one of its most popular articles of all time: The Tour de France on the iPhone. The article now includes the following topics:

• Twitter,
• Mobile Web Sites,
• Streaming Audio, and
• Streaming Video.

Check it out at http://www.operationgadget.com/2007/07/the_tour_de_france_on_the_ipho.html.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two years ago I reported on the Podcasts That Can Help You Follow the Tour de France. I thought that article provided a lot of good information, but it's dated now. I'm still listening to podcasts about the Tour, but there have been some changes in the providers and the content of their programs. I thought I'd revisit the issue and tell you which podcasts have been worth listening to so far this year:

1. ITV Tour de France Podcast (13-25 minutes): The granddaddy of them all has maintained its production values this year as well as last. Matt Rendell, Ned Bolting, and Chris Boardman analyze each stage. Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen's race calls of the stage winner crossing the finish line are included in case you hadn't heard it.
   
   This podcast has interviews with leading riders, thanks to ITV's position as a Tour de France television rights holder for the UK.
   
   The analysis has been excellent, with minimal meaningless speculation. This podcast has been produced for three consecutive Tours and has come back each time on the same iTunes URL as it was on during the previous year.
   
   
2. Cyclingnews.com Tour de France Podcast (14-36 minute duration): Peter Cossins, Daniel Friebe and Richard Moore review and analyze each stage. These three men are journalists that come from a web or print background, rather than from television. As a result, they speak a bit less glibly than the ITV hosts.
   
   Cyclingnews clearly has less resources than ITV. Some of their episodes have had a great deal of background noise, as if they were recording in a café or wherever they had the space to set up their equipment. They have access to interview subjects, but often in less optimal situations than ITV. So their podcast must rise or fall on the basis of the strength of their analysis.
   
   I certainly think that the Cyclingnews podcast is worth listening to, but I would always play ITV's podcast first.
   
   
3. Bicycling Magazine Podcasts (6-34 minute duration) : Hosted by Loren Moony, Bill Strickland, and Joe Lindsey. This appears to be a fledgling effort. Although the analysis has been good, production quality has been generally bad, and they don't choose their conference call provider with an ear toward listenability. Also not produced on a daily basis. You never know when this podcast will have a new episode.
   

Missing this year are VeloNews and The Daily Tour Podcast from The FredCast. They produced useful podcasts during the Tour de France in recent years, not this time.

Producing an audio podcast is more difficult than it looks. I can't imagine doing it on a daily basis while covering a grueling event like the Tour. I think all of the three podcasts that I reviewed has provided some useful information. If I couldn't commit the time and had to pick only one, I'd be listening to ITV.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I got in a bit of an argument with a friend of mine the other day on Facebook. He believes that Lance Armstrong betrayed his teammate Alberto Contador on Stage 3 to Le Grande-Motte. This was the stage when Columbia HTC created a split in the peloton near the end of the stage by using basic racing tactics that took advantage of a strong cross wind.

Lance and Fabian Cancellara saw the move coming from Columbia and managed to stay with them. Armstrong ended up being the only General Classification threat in the break. Contador apparently missed the signs of the impending break and ended up finishing with the second group.

As a result, Lance picked up 41 seconds on all of the other GC men while Cancellara stayed in yellow for another day. Contador, Cadel Evans, Carlos Sastre, and most other GC contenders lost the 41 seconds because they finished with the field.

The next day, during the Stage 4 Team Time Trial, we saw riders like Denis Menchov and Cadel Evans lose major time due to the bad performance of their teammates or basic bike handling mistakes that led to crashes.

Now after five stages Sastre is 2 minutes 44 seconds down, Evans is at 2:59, and Menchov is at 3:52. It's hard to believe that any of these great riders is going to get so far away from the peloton that they will be able to make up three or four minutes.

We can all draw our own conclusions about whether the riders who lost time in these cases should have known better or could have done something to avoid their losses. However, it's clear from the way this race has gone so far that this year's Tour de France may not be won in any one of the first few stages, but it can certainly be lost with a bad performance at a critical moment.

This sounds like a cliché, but it isn't always the case. If you look back to previous Tours in recent history, losing two or three minutes was not a problem at all. In 2001, François Simon had a lead of over 20 minutes after Stage 9, but he could not defend the lead in the Alps or the Pyrenées.

Gaps of 3 and 4 minutes are significant, in my opinion, when the people leading the race are credible threats to win the GC. In this year's Tour Armstrong, Contador, Andreas Klöden, and Levi Leipheimer are all within one minute of the lead. Perhaps a rider like Andy Schleck can make up his 1 minute 41 seconds. One of the top few riders is likely to win by not giving riders like Evans, Menchov, and Sastre the chance to make up their current time deficits.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My friend Frank Steele keeps going and going with TDFblog. A couple of days ago he published Tour de Twitter, which is a pretty comprehensive list of pro cyclists and teams as well as press and bloggers that cover pro cycling.

I went through the list and I was only following about a third of the 60+ people on his list. Now I follow them all and my Twitter client is blown away every morning there's a stage.

I'm not on Frank's list. You can follow me at @daveaiello or just the stuff I think is on topic for Operation Gadget at @OperationGadget.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I think this is going to be a great year for the Tour de France. I watched quite a bit of the Stage 1 Time Trial in Monaco, and I have to ask, why haven't the Tour organizers given us an opening time trial like this before?

The key to the Stage 1 time trial was the steep climb at the very beginning followed by a fairly technical descent. This forced the potential General Classification candidates to lay their cards on the table from the outset. The potential for gaps between the leaders was great if anyone didn't push themselves to the aerobic limit in the first 7 or 8 kilometers.

What surprised me most was the fact that Alberto Contador was unable to stay closer to Fabian Cancellara, considering that Contador had about an eight second advantage at the top of the Category 4 Côte de Beausoleil. Cancellara is known to be an excellent bike handler, but it takes special skills to be able to gain 26 seconds over one of the better TT riders in the world in only 8 kilometers of riding.

I was also particularly impressed with the performance of Andreas Klöden and Cadel Evans in this stage.

Lance Armstrong did well enough to make some of his detractors take him more seriously. It shocks me when I read and listen to correspondents writing for non-U.S. audiences how little credit they give Armstrong for arriving at the start of the Tour in shape to be in serious contention. Particularly considering how his collarbone injury affected his training.

I thought Stage 1 was an excellent way to start the Tour. Passing through the streets of Monaco gave the race a very picturesque background. The 15.5 kilometer length made the course a better test for the riders than the typical, shorter prologue. And the inclusion of a Category 4 climb right in the middle of the course made the results very interesting. I wish I could have sat in front of my TV for the entire time the live broadcast was on.

I realize that I've been absent from Operation Gadget for quite a while. I'm looking forward to writing more in the near future. I hope to start off by writing a few articles about the more technical aspects of the Tour. I've been sitting on this article for a few days, and I wanted to get it out on the site before the subject matter got completely dated.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This article was originally written for the 2007 Tour de France. I've updated it for this year. If you want to read the original version of this article keep reading after the jump.

If you are out and about during the times when the Tour de France is aired live, you may feel like you are missing out on the action. While it's still very difficult to find live video of the Tour, there are many other options for real time and near real-time race information:

• Twitter: Probably the best way to get an almost continuous stream of news about the Tour.
• You can use it through Safari on the iPhone, but you'd be better off downloading a good Twitter client application such as Tweetie or Twitterific.
• Sign up for an account if you don't have one.
• Then follow some of the people and media outlets that are recommended in the article TDFblog Publishes Comprehensive List of Pro Cyclists Who Use Twitter.
• Mobile Web Sites: A couple of the best are mobile-friendly sites with content in English are VeloNews and Bicycling Magazine.
• Streaming Audio: My personal favorite audio feed is Eurosport's Tour de France coverage in English which is typically only available on devices that support Flash. An iPhone app called ooTunes ($3.99) claims to be able to play a stream from Eurosport. I bought this application, found the Eurosport stream by searching in the app, and it definitely plays properly.

• Streaming Video: There generally is a Ustream feed of Eurosport which is up during the daily Tour de France coverage. (You can find a link to it on CyclingFans.com). This means that theoretically you should be able to watch the Tour on the Ustream Viewing Application on the iPhone. However, at this writing, reviews of the Ustream application are pretty bad. The app is reported to crash a lot on the iPhone 3G, to be unusable on the iPhone 3GS, and to only work on WiFi.

  Comprehensive lists of Streaming Video Sites for the Tour are located on the Streaming videos page on the Tour de France Website and on the home page of CyclingFans.com, near the bottom right of the page. A lot of these streams are not available in the USA and will not play on the iPhone.

• Stage Highlights: One place where they are available is on the le Tour de France Channel on YouTube. I will add more sources of highlights as I find them.

I hope that more mobile resources will be forthcoming in the future, and I will update this article as I learn of new websites and services that can be effectively used on the iPhone.

Continue reading "The Tour de France on the iPhone" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)