Ah. The World Cup. Where all the countries of the world gather together 24 prima donnas and go chase a bag of leather around some grass to decide who wins a cup. Isn’t sport wonderful? And with the 2006 World Cup now upon us, and the benefits of modern technology, there are a huge number of ways to get your daily football fix while you are out and about. Apart from traditional TV and Radio, you have web sites, news feeds, custom applications, and on-screen tickers… the list is as long as the odds on Scotland ever qualifying for the second round.
I’ve already looked at one of the standalone applications for getting the World Cup news, so I want to now turn to using your smartphone’s browser. Pretty much every football site will carry news, but what we wants is something in-depth, well formatted, and low bandwidth, because you’re going to be checking the site a lot.
The BBC
So, as always when looking for news, I turned first of all to the BBC. As well as having one of the most well laid out news sites, their sports section is just as in-depth, and has a dedicated World Cup section. The main site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/ ) has a low-bandwidth equivalent at (http://news.bbc.co.uk/text_only.stm ) which carries the same content as the main site, but without all the formatting and colours, and with smaller pictures, and is generally a joy to navigate.
Of course, you can now click through the site to the Sport section, call up Football, and then World Cup and bookmark that page if you don’t feel like typing in (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/low/football/world_cup_2006/default.stm ), because it is a bit of a handful.
RSS Feeds
One advantage the BBC has is that every page has an RSS feed, so it's a simple matter to take the RSS icon on the main World Cup News page (RSS Link) and plug it into Bloglines. Using their mobile web page version (http://www.bloglines.com/mobile) along with the other RSS feeds from your top sites and you don't even need to hit the low bandwidth version - bloglines will grab whatever you need.
Sky Sports
The BBC isn’t the only major web site to cover the event. Pretty much every site does, but we’re looking for sites that have good ‘low bandwidth’ versions, and for a second opinion on all the issues from Germany, I’d turn to the Sky Sports web page, which has a specific World Cup section (http://home.skysports.com/worldcup/ ) and an equivalent mobile version at (http://pda.sky.com/sports/pda_sports_menu.asp?path=football--international--world_cup&sport=World%20Cup )
Yahoo
Finally, it’s time to mention Yahoo. As the official web site partner to the World Cup, it’s only natural that they have a mass of web content – and there’s a lot of content for your mobile. First of all, their “World Cup On Your Mobile” is a downloadable client (similar to the other commercial offerings). Yahoo points out that it should be delivering around 20K per match, or, if you update everything, around 175K a day. So for the 21 days of the tournament, 4MB of data allowance should be enough.
Along with the client, Yahoo have a number of ringtones and wallpapers which are sure to be continually updated throughout the event. And, if you need to have your information as soon as possible, then you can subscribe to the SMS alert service – which is only available if your home network is in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain or the USA.
Handling These Long URL’s
Yes those URL’s are a pain, but there is a solution - and it’s one that many of you already know. TinyURL is a web site that acts as a redirector. On your computer you put in the long url, and you get a tiny URL back – which makes the typing a lot easier. So to get to the two sites above, just put these in your phone browser.
- BBC Sport: World Cup (http://tinyurl.com/kzju7)
- Sky Sports World Cup (http://tinyurl.com/zmjq9)
- Yahoo FIFA World Cup (http://tinyurl.com/moaxm )
Summary
Put simply, this World Cup isn’t about the football, it’s all about people digesting the competition in many new ways, as conveniently as possible. The mobile phone may well have had its wap pages during the last competition in South Korea 2002, but in 2006 the technology and power of the smartphone is going to unlock a massive number of services to the general public.
At the end of the day, the safe money is on a) Brazil lifting the trophy, b) the networks watching their Internet traffic rise, and c) you’ll all be able to get what you want, when you want it. GOAL!