GPS tracking is spreading like wildfire. Bill "Surfski" V pointed out that the World Surfski Championships, in Molokai Hawaii, are experimenting with tracking. They have a live tracking system on their website to make their Molokai-to-Oahu (32 miles) paddle event more accessible to web viewers. From their online summary:
"The top seeded male and female paddlers will have GPS Tracking units
attached to their skis for the race. The units are small, weigh only
about 140g and will not affect the skis/paddling in any way. But they
will allow viewers from around the world to watch the race positions
real-time, adding hugely to the interest and excitement in the race."
The Start from the 2005 Championships in Molokai (Photo: Epic Kayaks)
The race is NOT using SPOT tracking but a device from South Africa called SportsTrack. I'm sure Russell will be psyched to see the South Africans getting in on this! It will be interesting to compare and see how the race tracking works, because if those were SPOTs on the paddlers it would be very hard to follow the event since SPOTs update on irregular intervals and visualizing where each paddler was at the exact same time would be impossible without some serious data interpolation. You can't watch a horse race when you only get one data point every 10-15 minutes and the time interval is different for every unit. Maybe the SportsTrack has programming to solve this, who knows?
I'll be curious to see how the Surfski champs handle the tracking and their map; usability for any live tracking is critical or people just get turned off by it. Ideally, you want something intuitive and simple enough for even Grandma and Grandpa to use; I call it the Grandparent test.
I should come clean here: I've been guilty of some heinous acts of bad web design that would surely fail the Grandparent test . . . hopefully nothing too recent and hopefully our New England site keeps the grandparents entertained!