Monday, July 15, 2002

TrackBack Truly Closing The Loop With Trackback. "Blogging is currently a one-way medium. Best you can do is have 2 (ok, 'N') people subscribing to each other's monologues. But with TrackBack you close the loop and notify your conversation partner that it's now her/his turn. Now you can TRULY have interchange. Something that's only hackishly possible at the moment. (Check the userland discussions for the number of times people ask for 'comment notifications'.)" [The Universal Church Of Cosmic Uncertainty] "I agree.  I think TrackBack is a very important technology.  I'm reaching for a metaphor but can't find a good one.  But effectively it's the difference between a broadcast system and a network.  Blogs alone are too much like public broadcasting.  You send and if you're lucky you get back letters and phone calls.  With TrackBack people can be wired in, feedback loops will be established, communities will grow, it'll all come alive." [Curiouser and curiouser!] TrackBack is a fantastic idea, because I could never manually find all of the posts that might point to mine. So it goes out and harvests them for me, but the problem becomes time to review them. Depending on how popular your posts are, it might be useful to Trackback notifications into your news aggregator. Of course, this could pretty overwhelming for folks like Dave and Doc but then again, it might save them the type of finding the cites manually. And could you build a master database of these things and organize them by category? Kind of make a Social Sciences Citation Index for your site? Something like that would be extremely useful within the Illinois libraries blogosphere I want to implement. [The Shifted Librarian] Steve, this may be an avenue to explore for your multi-user blog concept. 8:39:43 AM    comment

3D cracks the pro sports market! Take Me Out To The Holodeck..... FoxSports.com Game Converges with Real Life "Roger Clemens stands confidently on the mound as his stats pop up in a FOX graphic. Alex Rodriguez steps up to the plate, a "Best Damn Sports Show" billboard clearly visible in the distance. But it's not a live TV broadcast. It's FOXSports.com's 'Hit the Pros,' a brand new online game unveiled this week, just in time for the All-Star game. Like many baseball video games, the animation and 3D graphics are simply stunning. But don't be fooled, 'Hit the Pros' is more than just a pretty face, thanks to a high-tech link between fantasy and real-life. Using a network of strategically-placed cameras and tracking software, FOX Sports and its partner, WildTangent capture telemetry data from actual pitches at Major League Baseball games. Within minutes after a game's conclusion, the statistics are uploaded to the web. Fans who may have just watched the game can then punch up 'Hit the Pros' and face the exact same pitches from the same players. The game even integrates a batter's current real-life stats, reflecting the player's streaks and slumps in the online game.... As each pitch is thrown, online players use the mouse to position and time their swing. Then they compare their performance against the actual result. They can even challenge other online gamers to a duel. FOXSports.com may indeed have a hit, especially on the business side. The free demo is addictive, and players are bombarded with offers to upgrade to the full version. Instead of charging a flat fee, 'Hit the Pros' requires a $19.99 subscription fee, good until next season." [The Lost Remote] [The Shifted Librarian] Of all the 3D companies out there, WildTangent scores a coup with near real-time sports data being used interactively by sports fans. This is similar to the 3D hockey idea, where telemtry data is collected during the game, and then post-game, fans can skate with the players to see the plays from a new angle. 12:02:35 AM    comment

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