If you use software and want to share what you know, and find out what others know, then your prayers are answered. Below is my ten minute review of “software gone social”. Not for everyone, but worth a look.
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What is it: The Hotel Wi-Fi Pit
I’ve never had a really good experience with hotel Wi-Fi. The connections are slow, inconsistent and quite often just not there. Seems like I’m not the only one. Why is this? And why do hotels persist with offering only wireless when most of them are fully equipped with cable outlets too? How can you tell before you check in whether a hotel’s Internet connection is worth the name?
Old Habits, or New Uses?
Young hospital worker using her cellphone in a phone booth, Jakarta, April 2007
Either she uses the phone booth out of habit from her pre-cellphone days, or else she’s making use of a privacy feature of old technology — the sound-proofing booth — her new technology doesn’t offer.
The Sound of the Crowd as Trigger
British Telecom (BT) is working on software that picks out the best bits of a soccer game and puts it together as a presentation. The software – developed over four years – views a football match and produces a graph assessing each passage of play, saving only what it considers to be the most interesting moments.
It selects them based not on a sophisticated understanding of football but on “factors such as the volume and excitement levels of the crowd and the commentator, changes in camera views and the amount of motion and speed of play at any time.”
Clever idea, really, although I’m guessing you couldn’t do the same thing for tennis. Or chess. Or cricket. Or lawn bowls.
It selects them based not on a sophisticated understanding of football but on “factors such as the volume and excitement levels of the crowd and the commentator, changes in camera views and the amount of motion and speed of play at any time.”
Clever idea, really, although I’m guessing you couldn’t do the same thing for tennis. Or chess. Or cricket. Or lawn bowls.
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Football: The New Kremlinology
Following football these days feels more like Kremlinology — trying to read into the minds of managers, players defecting like scientists and ‘agents’ cutting deals in exotic locales via dead letter boxes. As usual, in such games, information is power, which is why I liked this throwaway line from a Guardian report about this weekend’s Chelsea v Bolton game: Chelsea needed a win to realistically stay in the title race and hoped for rivals Manchester United to be held to a draw at Everton. Things looked good with Chelsea in the lead at one point and Everton’s two goal lead against ManU prominently displayed on the Chelsea scoreboard. But as Chelsea lapsed and ManU fought back at Everton the scoreboard seemed to get stuck, those operating it presumably hoping that players and supporters alike would perform better if kept in the dark. ManU scored four, eventually, though only those in the ground with radios, phones or TVs would have known:
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