[...] people live tweeting a race is less of an issue to him than making sure the media gets all the results of the events in realtime. A lot of new software architecture has been created for this for the Olympics and there’s going to be a new Olympic Data Feed, an XML feed for the media and rights holders, which subsequent events will make use of. A new Commentator Information System (CIS) means realtime results rather than TV cameras picking up crowds cheering before the results appear on screen.

“We’ll also be developing some iOS, Android, RIM and Windows 7 applications [to] deliver various things” he says, adding that more will be revealed about this apps in due course.

[...] The sheer scale of the tech aspects of the Olympics have to be read to be believed.

The 16 days of the Olympics games and 12 days of the Paralympics will see 450 technologists keep 180 servers and 1160 PCs and laptops running 24/7. There are 92 buildings to be connected and BT is investing 640,000 man hours in the project. A volunteer portal created by Atos Origin will manage volunteer staff of up to 70,000 during the games. A radio trunked network from British company Airwave will will be used by stewards and the emergency services, and will act as a backup mobile network if anything goes wrong.

(Also read London warned Olympic games may mean mobile phone ‘capacity crunch’ in the Guardian last month.)

Worldwide IT partner Atos Origin says the first IT professionals are already working full time to design the IT infrastructure and systems that will process the accreditation badges for the 200,000 members of the Olympic Family; manage staffing rotas and deliver the results to the world in less than a second.

They add:

For the London 2012 Games, we predict that technology will play a bigger role in two areas. Firstly, in improving access to information as audiences worldwide expect more detailed and colourful information to be delivered, as it happens, to an increasingly complex network of channels. Secondly, the technology infrastructure will also enable a sustainable Olympic Games.

Think also of the opportunity for terrorists to cause disruption on a global scale: massive  denial of service attacks, for instance, or introducing viruses or malware into the computer systems. Part of all the preparations include preparations now for cyber attack tests for the games’ computer systems that will take place next year.

Maybe the success of it all will be judged by how you don’t think about all that effort in the background leading up to the events next year.

Seamless is how it should be so you can concentrate on the sport.

When you’re sitting in front of your widescreen HD television in July 2012 to enjoy two weeks of the 2012 Olympic Games, spare a thought for the huge technology infrastructure that will enable you to get images and sound as well as up-to-the-minute instant results, rankings and other metrics about each and every event, the participants and more, all without a second thought.

Mike Butcher interviews Gerry Pennell, CIO of London 2012, who provides some choice insights into the scope and scale of what he’s aiming to deliver between now and the opening ceremony at the London stadium on July 27, 2012 – that’s 288 days from now.

[...] people live tweeting a race is less of an issue to him than making sure the media gets all the results of the events in realtime. A lot of new software architecture has been created for this for the Olympics and there’s going to be a new Olympic Data Feed, an XML feed for the media and rights holders, which subsequent events will make use of. A new Commentator Information System (CIS) means realtime results rather than TV cameras picking up crowds cheering before the results appear on screen.

“We’ll also be developing some iOS, Android, RIM and Windows 7 applications [to] deliver various things” he says, adding that more will be revealed about this apps in due course.

[...] The sheer scale of the tech aspects of the Olympics have to be read to be believed.

The 16 days of the Olympics games and 12 days of the Paralympics will see 450 technologists keep 180 servers and 1160 PCs and laptops running 24/7. There are 92 buildings to be connected and BT is investing 640,000 man hours in the project. A volunteer portal created by Atos Origin will manage volunteer staff of up to 70,000 during the games. A radio trunked network from British company Airwave will will be used by stewards and the emergency services, and will act as a backup mobile network if anything goes wrong.

(Also read London warned Olympic games may mean mobile phone ‘capacity crunch’ in the Guardian last month.)

Worldwide IT partner Atos Origin says the first IT professionals are already working full time to design the IT infrastructure and systems that will process the accreditation badges for the 200,000 members of the Olympic Family; manage staffing rotas and deliver the results to the world in less than a second.

They add:

For the London 2012 Games, we predict that technology will play a bigger role in two areas. Firstly, in improving access to information as audiences worldwide expect more detailed and colourful information to be delivered, as it happens, to an increasingly complex network of channels. Secondly, the technology infrastructure will also enable a sustainable Olympic Games.

Think also of the opportunity for terrorists to cause disruption on a global scale: massive  denial of service attacks, for instance, or introducing viruses or malware into the computer systems. Part of all the preparations include preparations now for cyber attack tests for the games’ computer systems that will take place next year.

Maybe the success of it all will be judged by how you don’t think about all that effort in the background leading up to the events next year.

Seamless is how it should be so you can concentrate on the sport.

Comments

For the past few days, our TV screens have been filled with video footage of police in full riot gear storming a suspect’s house, smashing down the door and dragging an alleged perp outside in handcuffs under the full gaze of assembled TV cameras and photographers.

It’s what a majority of people seem to want to see – police dragging the crooks off to court with swift justice administered involving jail time. And that’s precisely what we’re seeing.

Underlying much of this is what role social networking played during the riots, notably  Blackberry Messenger, Facebook and Twitter, the three services most mentioned. The government has said they want to examine what to do about such communication tools in times of civil unrest and say they will be speaking with the owners of those three services.

Meanwhile, we have news of two young men going to jail for four years for what they did during the disturbances where the means of doing, as it were, played a key role in their offences. The means was Facebook.

The story is all over the media today. As the Guardian reports, the two posted messages on Facebook inciting other people to riot in their home towns. What I find most interesting about the reports on their sentencing isn’t so much the act of using Facebook this way but the effect it had which is central to the Crown Court judge’s commentary on the sentence he handed down to one of those found guilty:

[...] Jordan Blackshaw, 20, set up an “event” called Smash Down in Northwich Town for the night of 8 August on the social networking site but no one apart from the police, who were monitoring the page, turned up at the pre-arranged meeting point outside a McDonalds restaurant. Blackshaw was promptly arrested.

[...] Sentencing Blackshaw to four years in a young offenders institution, Judge Elgan Edwards QC said he had committed an “evil act”. He said: “This happened at a time when collective insanity gripped the nation. Your conduct was quite disgraceful and the title of the message you posted on Facebook chills the blood.

“You sought to take advantage of crime elsewhere and transpose it to the peaceful streets of Northwich. The idea revolted many right thinking members of society. No one actually turned up due to the prompt and efficient actions of police in using modern policing.”

Four years behind bars (or at least, loss of liberty). That’s a long time for an offence that many voices today see as disproportionate to the offences committed. I’d expect to see more of this as a hardening establishment attitude to behaviours in society becomes clear.

This is but one part of a huge debate that has only just begun and does embrace methods of communicating and how people use modern communication tools and channels such as social networks for good and for evil: what responsibilities come with what rights. Many people have strong opinions and, thanks to how connected we all are, are voicing those opinions (you can hear some of them in episode 612 of the FIR podcast I co-present, published on August 15.)

I do not believe there are easy answers to any element of what happened last week and the consequential events. As communicators, we can contribute to the debate so as to offer our opinions that may help politicians and others make the right decisions.

It’s a long process and will no doubt take a long time.

The Guardian’s full report is appended below, published with their permission via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Two men who posted messages on Facebook inciting other people to riot in their home towns have both been sentenced to four years in prison by a judge at Chester crown court.

Jordan Blackshaw, 20, set up an “event” called Smash Down in Northwich Town for the night of 8 August on the social networking site but no one apart from the police, who were monitoring the page, turned up at the pre-arranged meeting point outside a McDonalds restaurant. Blackshaw was promptly arrested.

Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, of Latchford, Warrington, used his Facebook account in the early hours of 9 August to design a web page entitled The Warrington Riots. The court was told it caused a wave of panic in the town. When he woke up the following morning with a hangover, he removed the page and apologised, saying it had been a joke. His message was distributed to 400 Facebook contacts, but no rioting broke out as a result.

Sentencing Blackshaw to four years in a young offenders institution, Judge Elgan Edwards QC said he had committed an “evil act”. He said: “This happened at a time when collective insanity gripped the nation. Your conduct was quite disgraceful and the title of the message you posted on Facebook chills the blood.

“You sought to take advantage of crime elsewhere and transpose it to the peaceful streets of Northwich. The idea revolted many right thinking members of society. No one actually turned up due to the prompt and efficient actions of police in using modern policing.”

Sutcliffe-Keenan, the judge said, “caused a very real panic” and “put a very considerable strain on police resources in Warrington”. He praised Cheshire police for their “modern and clever policy” of infiltrating the website.

The Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement that the men’s posts on Facebook “caused significant panic and revulsion in local communities as rumours of anticipated violence spread”.

It added: “We were able to serve upon the defence in both cases sufficient case material that led to early guilty pleas and we were able to present the facts in both cases in a fair but robust manner.

“While the judge heard the two defendants were previously of good character, they admitted committing very serious offences that carry a maximum sentence of 10 years. The consequence of their actions could have led to more disorder and this was taken into account.”

The heavy sentences came as defence lawyers and civil rights groups have criticised the “disproportionate” sentences imposed on some convicted rioters as the latest official figures show nearly 1,300 suspects have been brought before the courts.

The revelation that magistrates were advised by justices’ clerks to disregard normal sentencing guidelines when dealing with riot-related cases alarmed a number of lawyers who warn it will trigger a spate of appeals.

Also on Tuesday, a looter was warned he could be jailed for helping himself to an ice-cream cone during disturbances.

Anderson Fernandes, 22, appeared before magistrates in Manchester charged with burglary after he took two scoops of coffee ice-cream and a cone from Patisserie Valerie in the city centre. He gave the cone away because he didn’t like the flavour.

Fernandes admitted burglary in relation to the ice-cream and an unconnected charge of handling stolen goods after a vacuum cleaner was recovered from his home. District judge Jonathan Taaffe said: “I have a public duty to deal swiftly and harshly with matters of this nature.” Fernandes will be sentenced next week.

In sentencing four other convicted Manchester rioters, a crown court judge, Andrew Gilbert QC, made clear why he was disregarding sentencing guidelines when he said “the offences of the night of 9 August … takes them completely outside the usual context of criminality”.

He added: “The principal purpose is that the courts should show that outbursts of criminal behaviour like this will be and must be met with sentences longer than they would be if the offences had been committed in isolation. For those reasons, I consider that the sentencing guidelines for specific offences are of much less weight in the context of the current case, and can properly be departed from.”

The Ministry of Justice’s latest estimate, at midday on Tuesday, shows the courts have dealt with 1,277 alleged offenders of whom more than 700 have been remanded in custody. Two-thirds of the cases were in London.

By midday on Monday, 115 people had been convicted; more than three-quarters of those were adults. About 21% of those appearing before the courts have been juveniles. The proportion of alleged youth offenders was higher in Nottingham, Birmingham and Manchester. An MoJ spokesperson said: “Everyone involved with the courts and prison service has put in a huge effort to make that possible and that work will continue.”

But doubts are now being expressed about the fairness of some sentences. For example, one student has been jailed for six months for stealing a bottle of water from a supermarket.

Sally Ireland, policy director of the law reform organisation Justice, said: “The circumstances of public disorder should be treated as an aggravating factor and one would expect that to push up sentences by a degree, but not by as far as some of the cases we have seen.

“Some instances are completely out of all proportion. There will be a flurry of appeals although, by the time they have been heard, those sentences may already have been served.

” There’s a question about this advice [from justices' clerks] and whether it should have been issued at all. We would expect them to be giving advice [to magistrates] in individual cases rather than following a general directive.”

Rakesh Bhasin, a solicitor partner at the law firm Steel & Shamash, which represents some of those charged following the riots, said some reported sentences seemed to be “disproportionate”.

Paul Mendelle QC, a former chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, said: “The idea that the rulebook goes out the window strikes me as inherently unjust. It sets all manner of alarm bells ringing. Guidelines are not tramlines. There are guidelines and they take account of aggravating and mitigating circumstances.

“There have been rulings following the Bradford riots and Israeli embassy demonstrations that said which sort of guidelines should be followed. I don’t see why [magistrates] should be told to disregard these.”

The judiciary and the MoJ have denied that they were involved in circulating the advice to justices’ clerk last week.

Comments

Basically, we’re big on books and other content – which includes magazines and blogs – however they’re offered, not platforms and delivery formats. That said, there’s something quite compelling about a device that weighs less than a pound that can hold 3,500 digital books, and that lets you make comments and annotations on what you’re reading (I love that feature) and share them online if you wish

So while a debate goes on about print vs digital, news came from Amazon a few days ago that Amazon.com customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all print books – hardcover and paperback – combined.

In its press release on May 19, Amazon includes some choice metrics:

• Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.
• So far in 2011, the tremendous growth of Kindle book sales, combined with the continued growth in Amazon’s print book sales, have resulted in the fastest year-over-year growth rate for Amazon’s U.S. books business, in both units and dollars, in over 10 years. This includes books in all formats, print and digital. Free books are excluded in the calculation of growth rates.
• In the five weeks since its introduction,  Kindle with Special Offers for only $114 is already the bestselling member of the Kindle family in the U.S.
• Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books so far in 2011 as it did during the same period in 2010.
• Less than one year after introducing the UK Kindle Store, Amazon.co.uk is now selling more Kindle books than hardcover books, even as hardcover sales continue to grow. Since April 1, Amazon.co.uk customers are purchasing Kindle books over hardcover books at a rate of more than 2 to 1.

Does this look like a trend that spells the demise of traditional print? Some may argue so. Personally, I don’t think so – as long as the business of traditional print evolves to match the changes in market conditions that technology has brought about, in a big picture sense, as well as changes in people’s habits and preferences about content consumption that devices like Kindle and tablet computers (think of the  iPad especially) have enabled.

There are some very interesting developments that show how print and digital could live in harmony for the foreseeable future. How libraries might evolve, for instance, and offer e-books on loan as they do with traditional printed books. Or lend a book directly to a fellow Kindle user.

These are brilliant ideas and I look forward to the day when I can do that in the UK. In the meantime, time to browse the Kindle Store for another book…

Comments

Such musing is a way to introduce some new stats from internet monitoring and analyst firm Pingdom on how the internet has exploded in growth since the beginning of this century, in just ten years. If the 1990s were the time of embryonic development, experimentation and no way ready for a global mass market, then the 2000s – especially since 2005 – were the time for the start of enabling a mass market to develop around the world that enables people anywhere with a connection to the internet to do amazing things.

In the words of Pingdom:

Here is how much the Internet has grown since the year 2000.

There were only 361 million Internet users in 2000, in the entire world. For perspective, that’s barely two-thirds of the size of Facebook today.

The chart really says it all. There are more than five times as many Internet users now as there were in 2000. And as has been noted elsewhere, the number of Internet users in the world is now close to passing two billion and may do so before the end of this year.

The Internet hasn’t just become larger, it’s also become more spread out, more global.

1. In 2000, the top 10 countries accounted for 73% of all Internet users.
2. In 2010, that number has decreased to 60%.

This becomes evident when viewing the distribution of Internet users for the top 50 countries in 2000 and in 2010. Note how much “thicker” the tail of the 2010 graph is.

That’s one heck of a 5″>long tail.

Read Pingdom’s post for more detail including comparing top countries then and now, and how internet use in Nigeria has grown by a whopping 21,891 per cent. Must be all that email traffic with offers of “Cheap Viagra®” (have you noticed how those emails always include the registered trademark symbol?) and “genuine fake Rolex” that we all get.

In any case, it really is amazing to see the extent to which the internet has become an essential tool for connecting people around the world in such a short time. Pingdom bases its analysis largely on data from Internet World Stats, itself a very useful information source.

I wonder what 2020 will look like. That’s only ten short years way.

Comments

In addition to the WordPress plugin, Chat Catcher works on any blog via a PHP script you can get from the Chat Catcher website. There’s also a module for Drupal.

However, Chat Catcher became a victim of its own success when, earlier this month, Shannon announced that he didn’t have the resources to keep up with it any longer and so could no longer continue supporting it.

Happily, others believed it was worth supporting as Shannon noted in an announcement email last Thursday.

Community spirit in action.

Even better news from Shannon over the weekend shows that Chat Catcher is here to stay:

Chat Catcher is pleased to announce the completion of an investment round with Ocasta Labs, an early stage technology investment group. Ocasta Labs have injected both funds and resources to extend the Chat Catcher team and to accelerate development of the service.

Terrific and many congrats, Shannon!

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