My Reply To One Blogger
Here's a reply I made to one of the bloggers (http://www.veen.com/jeff/archives/000962.html) that sheds some light on some of his and his reader's questions. Thought reproducing it here might be useful...
Hi Jeff. I wrote the Tracker (for more see http://www.allanpadgett.com/blog) and thought it might help to respond to your comments and those of your readers. First off, timeshifting. You are 100% right. That was in the dream plan, but with only 4 weeks from concept to ship, and only one programmer on the client, only so much got done! In particular, we didn't have anyone willing to store that much archived video, and while CSC did archive the GPS data, they forgot to include timestamps in the data. Soon, however, I'll be putting a version up that will allow you to scrub through each stage and at least see the photos and play-by-play. Adobe saved GPS data for the last few days once we realized CSC's error, and I will try to incorporate that too. As for "too much at once," you are not alone on that one, and the next version (Tour de France?) will have better information management. As for your readers, here are some answers to their comments. Dunstan commented on Flickr usage. We used a specific account instead of tags as part of protecting the photographer's copyright. Plus, Amgen and the other sponsors understandably did not want random photos showing up in a branded application. Matt mentioned Quokka, and yes, we owe a great deal to Michael's past at that trail blazing company! Sadly, Michael was too busy schmoozing with race officials to be a big part of the project... Brett mentioned Portent as the designer, but they just provided the backend support for hosting the application and the results from each day. Sadly, they didn't set up a cluster for a few days, so getting the application and data was a challenge for many users. Dan asked about future Grand Tours? As a bike nut (that's why I volunteered to write the application) I'm all over that! Finally, and most importantly, Gartenfackel said that the infrastructure was inadequate, and that's 100% true. Akamai provided the video and audio streaming and they were running beta software (why? who knows!) which went down every day. CSC's GPS system was dependent on beta GPS devices and T-Mobile's terrible coverage on California back-roads. And as I mentioned, the Amgen site itself was running just one machine for much of the race, while we had 8,000 or so viewers. If you or your readers have more questions or comments, feel free to ask away!
Hi Jeff. I wrote the Tracker (for more see http://www.allanpadgett.com/blog) and thought it might help to respond to your comments and those of your readers. First off, timeshifting. You are 100% right. That was in the dream plan, but with only 4 weeks from concept to ship, and only one programmer on the client, only so much got done! In particular, we didn't have anyone willing to store that much archived video, and while CSC did archive the GPS data, they forgot to include timestamps in the data. Soon, however, I'll be putting a version up that will allow you to scrub through each stage and at least see the photos and play-by-play. Adobe saved GPS data for the last few days once we realized CSC's error, and I will try to incorporate that too. As for "too much at once," you are not alone on that one, and the next version (Tour de France?) will have better information management. As for your readers, here are some answers to their comments. Dunstan commented on Flickr usage. We used a specific account instead of tags as part of protecting the photographer's copyright. Plus, Amgen and the other sponsors understandably did not want random photos showing up in a branded application. Matt mentioned Quokka, and yes, we owe a great deal to Michael's past at that trail blazing company! Sadly, Michael was too busy schmoozing with race officials to be a big part of the project... Brett mentioned Portent as the designer, but they just provided the backend support for hosting the application and the results from each day. Sadly, they didn't set up a cluster for a few days, so getting the application and data was a challenge for many users. Dan asked about future Grand Tours? As a bike nut (that's why I volunteered to write the application) I'm all over that! Finally, and most importantly, Gartenfackel said that the infrastructure was inadequate, and that's 100% true. Akamai provided the video and audio streaming and they were running beta software (why? who knows!) which went down every day. CSC's GPS system was dependent on beta GPS devices and T-Mobile's terrible coverage on California back-roads. And as I mentioned, the Amgen site itself was running just one machine for much of the race, while we had 8,000 or so viewers. If you or your readers have more questions or comments, feel free to ask away!
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