I do, but not very well because it was my husband who followed sports on that site. Did they also have something to do with motorsports, because back then that would have caught his attention before multisport. Now it's a toss up. I remember he mourned their demise as well.

I have a couple of friends who worked for them. The problem was, as with all dot-gones, how much did you pay for that service? $0. A climbing partner of mine was on an expedition to climb the great trango tower in the Karakoram and they were well covered by Quokka. They had a small wireless network between the guys on the wall and base camp and they transmitted daily images and answered email from their porta-ledge. It was cool to email him and know he was sitting there 3000 feet of the deck, typing away.

Used to go there to follow dave breshears climbing logs and all of the everest logs were really cool.

Your idea sounds cool but would run up against some serious bandwidth issues... should be feasible to do with all of the elite riders though...

what might be neat is if you could then put all that info into a computrainer program then you could bike against hellreigel or McCormack... see how fast these guys are actually going...

the problem with all of this is that is takes huge capital that's why quokka went under large cost and low revenue.

but this gets to the point that the ironman live coverage really needs to improve cause right now it stinks I mean who wants to look at the transition area tent for hours on end?

Quokka had a lot of good ideas, but they tried too hard to reinvent the wheel. A lot of horizontal scrolling, unclear navigation and ginormous images that bogged down cable modems and DSLs. A classic example of dot com "visionaries" believing their own hype to the point where the ideas became technically and financially unfeasible. Pride cometh before the fall, y'know?

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No sidewindin bushwackin, hornswaglin, cracker croaker is gonna rouin me bishen cutter!

The best part of advancing technology is soon you will no longer have to separate your work life from your tri life. Cell phones will be so small that they will soon be integrated into sunglass frames. These sunglasses will also feature miniature video monitors built into the upper corner of the lens. Soon, you can be on a training ride or haulin' down the Queen K while trading stocks, negotiating that big contract or perhaps arguing a case. "Yeah Bob, why don't you get me 350 at 101 but be ready to dump that sh*t if it looks like it might go upside-down. Oh, by the way, I just went 11:33 at the Ironman. Hey, gotta go, see ya."

Brett

Proudly broadcasting live at 28.8 kbps on a 266 MHz. Cell phone free for 2 and 1/2 years now.

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"Du or Du not-there is no Tri" - Yoda

Something else that takes huge capital is $700 Aeron chairs for every employee, $12k 42-inch TVs, high-end workstations at every desk, custom cubicles and prime SF office space. Quokka burned through $200 million. It's a perfect illustration of dot-com indulgence. There were lots of good ideas back then, and lots of really bad decisions.

Bankruptcy auction provides snapshot of company that typified swagger of dot-com craze

"A lot of people wonder what it's like to spend tens of millions of dollars in so little time. Well, this should give them some idea."

The gps tracking is doable now. Not affordable yet, but doable. The GPS transponders are still a little too big for everyone to agree to carry one, but the tracking is available and is currently being used by many "field forces" in the business world. Think salesmen and telephone repair people.

Displaying icons on a map and splits would be relatively easy to do compared to some of the things currently being done with this data.

Now all we need is someone to PAY for it !

"Now all we need is someone to PAY for it!"

RJ, you hit the nail on the head. I used to love Quokka because they were about the only place to follow the last Americas Cup preliminaries. Unfortunately, there seem to have been about six of us watching.

IronMan, bike racing and sailing will only receive adequate coverage when there are enough of us willing to watch it to generate ad revenues. Face it, we're a pretty small group. Our only hope is that technology like internet streaming (or whatever) will become inexpensive enough to allow economical broadcasting to small groups.

They also sponsored sailing - not cheap...

Tom, great discussion if you get to the crux of it. Since IM Hawaii is reorganizing, what technologies ARE available which would provide better coverage to both that race, and the other races around the world?

First, the GPS tracking IS getting smaller. Last year on the way to IM MOO (Wisconsin), I sat in my friend's car driving up from Chicago. As we plugged in the final destination, turned on his laptop computer, and plugged in his 3 inch x 3 inch transponder and put it on his dashboard, we could track our own travels the entire way. OK, we are both techno geeks (and I'm not even an IT guy!), but that's beside the point.

So, I think there should be a way to either allow people the option of wearing one (possibly string/velcro it on their race belts or tie around their waists?), or shrink the technology further and incorporate it into the chip timing.

Another technology which is already available and currently being used, is that "notification" software used at races like the Chicago Marathon. The year before last, I plugged in my friend's race number, and then my cell phone number, and I got actual computerized notification of his times when he crossed predetermined points (5k, 10K, 20k, 30k, and end of race I think). As mentioned, this has been around at least 2 years.

Either of those would be VERY cool, but I think most people would simply be happier with more timing mats out on the course. Of course, the problem arises when many of the IM's have very remote locations where signals have a difficult time being broadcast. However, it CAN be done.

I'm going to venture out to NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) tradeshow in a couple of weeks, and look around at more of the satellite transmission stuff. With many of the IM athletes I know who attempt to keep track of their friends on race day, it would be nice to have something a bit more automated and faster than making those poor folks sit there and manipulate data to get it into the IM Live database and posted to the site (which is what I'm guessing is done because of the time lag from the time people actually finish until their times get updated).

Cool stuff...if anyone else has cool ideas or know of cool technology, you never know...perhaps someone from the WTC will see something and actually implement it? Call me crazy ;-)

~ Craig

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Craig Preston - President / Preston Presentations
Saving the world with more professional, powerful, and persuasive presentations - one audience at a time.