There’s a chip in my ‘Strawberries and Cream’
People say that the Wimbledon Championships have not changed since 1877, not to the lay man anyways. Listed below are a set of technologies being used around the Wimbledon tennis courts this fortnight.
- Wired and wireless IP phones are used by the organizers that help keep walkie talkie radio waves free and the grounds clear of unnecessary cabling.
- Security personnel carry wireless internet enabled hand-held computers on which they can watch the games, helping with the exact timing at which they can usher in spectators.
- A shot tracker called Hawk-eye is used by broadcasters to replay critical umpire calls. This technology creates a 3-D image of every rally played.
- Along with the mountain of match data collected, shot tracker helps coaches and players study further into the players’ performance.
- The IBM website gives real-time scores of the matches in progress. There are 3 massive internet farms hosting the Wimbledon website.
Luckily, we did not have the Hawk-eye during John McEnroe’s career; he would really have had nothing to scream about and let’s face it, his tantrums were entertaining.
RSS or Real Simple Syndication is a format used for syndicating news and content of news-like sites like yahoo, wired.com, blogs, etc. RSS has evolved and is currently used for any kind of information that can be broken down with a common data pattern. Using RSS, we can now monitor news, blogs, job listings, personals, and classifieds. Many sites and blogs offer feeds, which you can identify by a small button that says either RSS or XML. However, if you click one of these links, you will most likely get a page full of code in your browser. To properly read this feed, you will need an RSS reader or aggregator. 
A new version for the theme from Beverly Hill’s Cop, Crazy Frog Axel F, became the first ring tone to reach no.1 in the U.K, singles chart (what kind of music do they listen to?). It has been a craze all over U.K….. until now. There are stories emerging about how 
There used to be a time when kings had their own live chess boards with people representing chess pieces and you have seen it in one of the Harry Potter movies too, but now, you can have your very own live Monopoly board. 
GPS (Global Positioning System) is a satellite based network which consists of 24 satellites orbiting Earth. These satellites have been placed by the U.S. Department of Defense and just like the internet, GPS was originally intended for military use, but was made available to civilians. These satellites orbit the Earth twice a day and transmit signals to Earth. GPS data is used as navigation aid for planes, ships and cars and is commonly bundled into PDA’s, phones and computers. The GPS system is divided into 3 components – space, control and user.
Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth II, said that she finds Sony’s products too difficult to use. The Queen told Sony’s new CEO, Howard Stringer, that the remote controls of Sony’s products are confusing and that they have too many arrows. As Sony does not think that of old women as their target market for their hi-fi products, I don’t think Mr. Howard would have taken the complaint seriously and ordered a revamp of Sony’s products (I hope). The Queen was also recently in the news for buying an iPod. She sent a courtier to the Apple store on Regent Street to pick up a silver iPod mini and the courtier is said to have asked for a ‘royal discount’. Now why would the Queen of a country ask for a discount? If the Queen needs a discount, shouldn’t we all get iPods for free. What do you think?
