[thelist] hallo? And a discussion ...

[Seb Barre]

At 04:51 PM 10/16/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>The American Airlines Center, the new home of the Dallas Stars (hockey) and
>Dallas Mavericks (basketball) scheduled to open next October, is
>incorporating broadband connectivity and power to *every one* of its 18,000
>seats. Unlike other attempts to bring technology to sporting events, which
>included installing kiosk-like thin clients in the seats, this venture will
>supply the access, but the spectator will have to provide the hardware
>(laptop, pda, etc). The arena will also be a concert and special event
>venue.
>
>My question is (yes, I'm trolling, but its been a slow day on thelist and I
>wanted to say something other than "TEST"), Do you think this is doomed?
>Will spectators actually bring in a laptop so they can hook into the 'net
>while watching Mike Modano? Is this just another marketing gimmick, or are
>there viable services that can be built for this environment?
>
>Services planned to take advantage of the setup include instant messaging to
>other seats, viewing (and emailing home) video replays (what about games
>that aren't on tv? --will a fan be able to send home replays from the closed
>circuit feed? --How does that affect copyright and reproduction rights?),
>and customizing packages (stats and/or video) for a particular player,
>effectively letting a fan play scout.
>(http://hockey.dallasnews.com/stars/191788_15arena.html)
>
>Whaddya think?

One thing that has been tossed around back and forth in our office is the 
lack of attention people pay to services for the disabled, and how the 
Internet and new "connected" technologies can alleviate this in a 
cost-effective way and piggy-back on existing services for specialized 
purposes.

Just as an example related to this, the network connection could easily be 
used to provide closed captioning style services for people who are deaf or 
hard of hearing, to the point where the announcer commentary could be 
captioned on the fan's palm pilot or laptop (or a rented pad-like device 
for those without their own).  The reverse could even be implemented, with 
the spoken play-by-play fed through headphones for blind fans who still 
want the "I'm at the game" feeling (like one of my friends' father who is 
blind yet has season tickets to the Ottawa Senators because he loves the 
"game experience", but has to bring a walkman and pick up the crappy AM 
radio feed to hear what's going on).

Instant messaging to other seats is kind of cool, although you know there 
would be spam on there, and probably from the venue owners to boot.  Which 
brings up the issue of advertising.  If this is just an excuse to feed more 
ads to the fans, then I think it will fail.  If used properly, it could 
excite the fans and give more value to the game-going fan who shells out 
the bucks for a ticket.  There are plenty of possibilities that arise from 
inter-connectivity, as long as there are people out there who can think of 
them and implement them without having greed and marketing as the primary 
motive.


--- -- -
Seb Barre - sebastien at oven.com
OVEN Digital Toronto
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