Norway makes history with cell-phone sportscast

TV watchers in Norway got a video view of the future during a live broadcast of a ski competition. Some of the video was beamed directly from a camera-equipped mobile phone.

Norway’s state broadcaster NRK claimed its test transmission from the grueling, 90-kilometer Vasaloppet cross-country ski marathon in Sweden earlier this month was a world first.

NRK equipped a sports reporter with a third-generation, or 3G, cell phone and sent him off with 15,000 skiers who started the race. He stopped six times to provide commentary and images from his perspective of the world’s oldest, longest and biggest ski race.

“We decided to test this in order to create a more dynamic broadcast,” NRK sports editor Oeyvind Lind said. “By using a reporter who was also a competitor, we managed to give the viewers a rather unusual perspective on a ski race.”

NRK said images were as good as those transmitted by satellite telephone from conflict or catastrophe areas but that 3G was cheaper and easier to use.

Web logs are growing, but so are fakes

As many as 40,000 new Web logs are being created every day, according to David Sifry, the founder and chief executive of Technorati, a real-time search engine that monitors posts and content in almost 8 million blogs.

However, part of that growth, he said, is due to an increase in fake blogs. Such Web logs are created to improve Web sites’ rankings in search engines or to drive traffic to boost advertising revenues.

Until this year, Sifry wrote on his blog, such spam wasn’t much of an issue. Nonetheless, that the number of blogs Technorati is tracking has doubled since October 2004.

“With the launch of MSN Spaces and the growth of tools like Google’s Blogger, SixApart’s LiveJournal (and) AOL Journals, the number of people out there blogging has jumped in the past few months,” he said.

While we’re reporting statistics, the number of Podcasts continues to grow. After just about nine months, Ipodder.org said its directory now includes 3,981 amateur-produced audio programs that can be played on PCs or portable players like Apple Computer’s iPod.

Singapore leads world in infotech

The United States is no longer No. 1 in making the best use of information and communications technology, a new study says. It dropped to fifth place this year and Singapore is now tops.

Singapore’s ranking in the so-called “networked readiness index” was based on several factors, including quality of math and science education and low prices for telephone and Internet services, said the World Economic Forum report.

The United States’ drop from first place last year “is less due to actual erosion in performance” than to the improvement of other countries, the report said.

Iceland, in 10th place last year, moved up to second place. Finland held onto third, and Denmark rose to fourth from fifth.

IBM engineer to head standards group

An IBM engineer who works in networking technologies has been named the next chairman of an influential standards-setting body for the Internet.

Brian E. Carpenter starts as head of the Internet Engineering Task Force as the group convenes in Minneapolis this week. He succeeds Harald Alvestrand.

The IETF is in charge of developing and coordinating technical standards on many aspects of the Internet, including e-mail and techniques for distributing video.