Kadisco: Josh Kadis is a technologist.

Diggin’ in the crates: War of the Trackers?

Posted on 19. Aug, 2009 in Bike Racing, New Media

For a few reasons, my blog posts have been getting longer and less frequent. I’m happy with that, but the downside is that I don’t have time to complete every post I start while it’s still relevant. With that in mind, I’ll be adding a few previously unfinished posts now that I have some time.

Here’s the Tour de France follow-up to my comparison of the Race Tracker used by Universal Sports for the Giro d’Italia to the Tour Tracker used by AEG for the Tour of California. In that post, I concluded that the Giro tracker “isn’t a fully baked product” with this qualifier:

The fundamental difference between the two is that the ATOC tracker is produced by AEG, who owns the event, while Universal Sports is limited by their role as a broadcast rights holder. AEG can duct tape GPS units on everyone’s bike, while it seems like Universal Sports just has one in the Garmin-Slipstream car (Garmin sponsors the Race Tracker).

Then I was contacted by Allan Padgett, the guy who built the Adobe Tour Tracker as part of their sponsorship of the Tour of California. He informed me that the Giro tracker was simply a re-skinning of the ATOC tracker with several features that had to be removed to due logistics and timing constraints. (If you recall, Universal Sports picked up the US broadcast rights to the Giro just days before the race.)

Then, when the Tour de France started, Versus rolled out their own live tracker. Just looking at the front end, the Versus tracker is clearly a different product from the Adobe tracker used for the Tour of California and the Giro. Visually, I prefer the cleaner, more modern look of the Adobe tracker. To me, the Versus tracker just looks dated.

The Versus tracker organizes the information differently, with a bigger panel that gives relatively less billing to the main attraction: the video. (Note that this is a screenshot of the free version; the paid version has slightly bigger video including full-screen mode.) Unfortunately, the Versus tracker’s prominently featured stage map and profile panels have been buggy, sometimes not even referring to the current stage. Like the Adobe tracker, the Versus tracker suffers from unreliable GPS data during bad weather and in the mountains. But with the advantage of a few years of development, the Adobe tracker seems to have this a little more dialed.

That said, the Versus tracker does a pretty good job of keeping track of which riders were in the different groups on the road, even if the time gaps are off – sometimes way off.

In terms of text commentary, the Adobe tracker has a significant edge. During the Tour of California, in-house commentators JoE Silva and Frankie Andreu did a good job with timely updates. For the Giro, the Adobe tracker had an even better source: Cyclingnews, the first web site to do any sort of live race coverage, albeit text-only. The Versus tracker meanwhile, is infrequently updated with Garmin-centric coverage. The latest update in this screenshot reads, “The elite of the Tour have shown themselves. Bradley Wiggins (Garmin-Slipstream) dropped a little but his teammate Christian Vande Velde rode outside himself to help his teammate. Armstrong played the perfect role of teammate as well.” It’s likely no coincidence that the ad below the text commentary was for the Garmin-Slipstream team store for much of the race.

The Versus tracker includes a three-column Twitter feed of the #tdf hashtag, @TeamSlipstream, and @lancearmstrong. The latter two seem out of place during the stage, but I like the idea of replacing the Adobe tracker’s in-site chat room with the world’s Twitter conversation.

From a technical standpoint, I appreciate Adobe tracker’s ability to resize all the panels manually and automatically with the size of the browser window. It’s also a much cleaner implementation – about 1/3 as many lines of code as the Versus tracker and a smaller Flash file. Granted, the Versus tracker has a lot more navigation and other stuff on the page.

I guess I’m coming down pretty clearly on the side of the Adobe tracker. That’s probably not too surprising, given that they produce the Flash platform that both products are built on. On the other hand, slick Flash development is not the hardest thing to find. Versus maybe be able to close the gap but Adobe will always be at least one step ahead in terms of technology. It’s unclear how either one of them is making money, but that’s a separate question…

Postscript

After I shelved the draft of this post, Allan sent out an email clarifying the difference between the Versus and Adobe trackers and pointing out the Australian broadcaster SBS was using the Adobe tracker for the Tour de France. The Aussie version also had a “Twitterati” section, although without the #tdf feed, and a few excellent new features: a live feed of Flickr photos from fans, live data from riders’ SRM power meters, and a return of the ATOC tracker’s  “My Riders” feature that allows users to track specific riders throughout the race via GPS. Although I couldn’t see the video, it looks like the best tracker yet.

I took the first two screenshots while watching the Giro and Tour coverage; the last is from the Adobe Tour Tracker website.