På woO-TV Norge finner du nå et intervju med en av Norges aller beste juniorløpere for tiden - Olav Lundanes. Du kan enten se intervjuet i web-browseren din med relativt dårlig bildekvalitet eller i full-skjerm modus på datamaskinen din i god kvalitet ved å klikke på filmsnutten nedenfor og velge “Download video”.

(beklager noe dårlig lydkvalitet - det kommer til å bedre seg i fremtiden)

Who is this Alexey Bortnik who did several very good runs in the Mediterranean Open Champs two weeks ago? I wondered about this when I read the results two weeks ago, and now I know more: A Russian fast running and talking upcoming man, aiming for the Top 10 in the WOC in Ukraine this August. If you look at the 10 minute Spring Cup report below, you get to know Alexey better - as well as David Andersson, Matthias, Merz, Holger Hott Johansen and several more. It is really different to see and hear a person than to read his thoughts in a blog entry. - and I hope and think we will see a lot more of this the coming year with woO-TV. This way the orienteering sport can build their profiles, sponsors can get their visibility - and people within the orienteering sport can in the longer run hopefully themselves produce some content which can make it up into the “real” TV channels

Amateur content
This is clearly amateur content - not at all to be compared with productions like the one at WOC 2006. However, I think that this type of content from many of the major competitions would become very popular among viewers, and help getting to know the orienteering elite better - and also positive for sponsors, even if it is very clear that this is amateur content from the way the filming is done etc. My first experience with a video camera was about a month ago - so I hope to improve. And the sound is muffled due to a problem I had in the conversion process, but these kind of problems will be solved in the future.

It is, as I see it, however no problem that the filming is not perfect as long as the story told is interesting, and one gets to know the people who are important in international orienteering. So all of you out there: Start generating interesting content! Elite runners: Start making interviews with each other when you are at a training camp and submit it to woO-TV. I am sure this will increase your possibilities to get sponsors in the long run!

More to come
In addition to the Spring Cup video shown here, I have also material for several interviews and a short documentary about the TracTrac system which I will publish the coming month.

Spring Cup 2007 report
I would recommend to use the Veoh player application on your PC for viewing this, giving you much increased viewing experience as you can then view in full screen with a much better picture quality. But still - viewing it in the browser is also possible. Enjoy!

(29/3/07 0800: Veoh is currently down for maintenance - woO-TV won’t work now)

You can also easily embed this video or any other videos at woO-TV in your web page. Click the video above, and you get to the video page, where you press the “Share” button to get a few lines of html code which you simply paste into your webpage. If you have problems with how to do this, just send me an email at jan@kocbach.net, and I’ll guide you.

A small note about advertising
As you know, nothing is for free - so there might be advertising included by Veoh in conjunction with videos shown at woO-TV in the future. According to the Veoh blog: - We will be experimenting with all kinds of ad units (Pre-roll, Post-roll, Mid-roll, Overlays, Curtains). The future will tell, but this is nevertheless an excellent opportunity for the orienteering sport!

Bergen, Norway / Lapua, Finland, March 28th 2007 (in Finnish below): WoO-TV and Virkiä Jukola have agreed to cooperate around the Jukola video competition previously announced by Virkiä Jukola. Instead of submitting videos by email as previously announced, the woO-TV/Veoh system will be used for submitting videos to the Jukola video competition. This will make it possible for people to see all the submitted videos, and a voting arrangement will be set up by World of O to aid the Jukola video jury in selecting the best clips. The best clips will as previously announced be broadcast between June 14th and June 17th on the two giant TV screens in the Jukola competition center. In addition, the winning clips will be broadcast on woO-TV Prime from June 18th.

Note that no sponsor ads are allowed in the videos entered for the Jukola video competition, due to restrictions in conjunction with the giant screen on Jukola.

Links

• For more information about the Jukola video competition, see: http://www.jukola2007.net/virkia/jukola.nsf/sp?Open&cid=content744C0F
• http://tv.worldofo.com : Main page of woO-TV

WoO-TV isännöi Jukolan videokilpailun

Lapua/ Bergen, Norja 28.3.2007: WoO-TV ja Virkiä-Jukola ovat sopineet yhteistyöstä Jukolan viestissä järjestettävästä videokilpailusta. Sen sijaan, että suunnistusvideot lähetetään Virkiä-Jukolan toimistolle sähköpostitse tullaan kilpailussa käyttämään uutta woO-TV/ Veoh –tekniikkaa videoiden lähettämisessä Jukolan järjestäjille. Tekniikka tekee myös mahdolliseksi lähetettyjen videoiden katselemisen. Videokilpailun videoiden lopullisen järjestyksen äänestää Virkiä-Jukolan videoraati yhteistyössä suunnistusnettiportaali World Of O:n kanssa. Parhaimmat videot tullaan näyttämään 14.-17.6. kahdella Jukolan isolla videotaululla Virkiä-Jukolan kilpailukeskuksessa. Parhaimmat teokset esitetään myös WoO-TV:ssä 18.6. alkaen.

Lisätietoa WoO-TV:stä: http://tv.worldofo.com

Lisätietoa Jukolan videokilpailusta:
http://www.jukola2007.net/virkia/jukola.nsf/sp?Open&cid=content739D25

Bergen, Norway, March 28th 2007: World of O, the major webpage for international orienteering news, today launches woO-TV: Online TV for orienteering content - available in near DVD quality. The main channel, woOTV Prime, will focus on top quality content about elite orienteering, and other productions with a broad audience. The plan is to broadcast reports and interviews from main international orienteering happenings by working with the race organizers and different professional and amateur producers. We also hope to be able to provide older high quality orienteering productions from previous WOCs, PWT races and so on, which are now available only in forgotten archives and in people’s drawers. The second channel – woO-TV 2 – will be for other types of good quality orienteering content, which either has not the content or note the quality to be broadcasted on woO-TV Prime.

First up on woO-TV Prime is a production from the international season opening - Spring Cup in Denmark. This is to be followed by parts of the Swiss 60 minute movie about Simone Niggli-Luder by Janosch Hugis, and an interview series with some of the top profiles in International Orienteering. Through cooperation with the WOC 2006 organizers, the video content from the WOC 2006 DVD will be available through woO-TV. There will also be content from the Mediterranean Open Championships 2007, a long report from a PWT race in Mulhouse, France in 2002 and a 22 minute video from the PWT races in Alberobello & Matera in Italy, 2002.

As a head start for the woO-TV 2 channel, the Jukola video competition will be hosted at woO-TV 2 (see separate press release), hopefully providing the viewers with many interesting videos in the months towards Jukola. In addition, Thierry Gueorgiou shows his support to woO-TV by allowing us to put up the legendary “Follow me” videos in high quality at woO-TV 2: – I really believe that this online TV-channel can be a big step towards the right direction. The audience will probably increase a lot over the first months, and therefore will attract a lot of potential producers/partners. It can be more than a good help for the future of orienteering. WoO-TV has also been in discussions with several other parties who have announced that they will submit content to woO-TV 2 the coming months.

From the start, there will also be a special channel for Norwegian orienteering content, woO-TV Norge. The first content that will be available at woO-TV Norway is an interview with JWOC champion Olav Lundanes, and there will probably also be content available through the Norwegian Orienteering Federation in the future.

More spectacular TV future for orienteering

One of the main goals for woO-TV is to help orienteering to become a better TV-sport. By launching an online TV channel for orienteering where producers in all categories can get out to a wide audience with their work through the World of O website and partners, our hope is that many new and creative ways for showing orienteering on TV will emerge. As a part of the way towards a more spectacular TV future for orienteering, woO-TV has got an agreement with Greg Walker, the man behind the computer game Catching Features, to develop software for 3D route choice visualization for orienteering races based on the Catching Features engine and the OCAD converter built into Catching Features. This will be an important step forward into the future for TV coverage of orienteering events. Furthermore, an agreement has been made with the Danish company TracTrac to be allowed to use their live tracking material in post-race reports on woO-TV.

The Danish Orienteering Federation also fully supports the woO-TV project through their TV contact Johan Fegar - who was also the media director of WOC 2006; - With their latest service, WorldofO.com again sets new standards, and lowers the limit for getting out content about the orienteering sport. The TV medium is in a constant change, and if we want to be visible, many things point towards that the Internet and making our own TV production is the future. The Swedish Orienteering Federation has for example success with producing TV clips for their own TV magazine which is shown both on digital TV and on the Internet; and media like YouTube.com show that today, anybody can make TV. With woO-TV, WorldofO.com has given us a common platform to show our work to get out our fantastic sport in pictures. Now it is up to us to jump into it, and follow up the initiative by filling woO-TV with exciting material of a steadily increasing quality.

Attractive for producers

The model chosen for woO-TV from the start is designed to attract producers in all categories – both professionals and amateurs: Producers include their own sponsor ads in their productions, and thus can use these sponsor ads for financing. Also, producers retain all copyright rights, and have full rights to publish their content anywhere else in addition to at woO-TV. Thus if an organizer has full rights for a video production from their competition – as is often the case – they have not much to loose by broadcasting at woOTV. Instead they get good publicity, and extra sponsor exposure. The largest international orienteering magazine, OrienteeringToday, report that they support the idea of an online TV channel for orienteering related content, and will work on ways to provide high quality content for woO-TV to accompany some of their magazine articles.

The woO-TV platform

The platform to be used for woO-TV is Veoh (www.veoh.com), which is unique in the online video/TV hosting market in that it provides the best of two worlds:

• A flash-based viewer which makes it possible to include the woO-TV channel and single videos from woO-TV in any web page – even in the webpage of your orienteering club or in your Blog.
• A standalone application for PCs which gives you woO-TV in near DVD-quality content in full-screen mode using peer-to-peer technology. The content is downloaded in the background while you are performing other tasks, and if you subscribe to the woO-TV channels using a free substription, your Veoh-player will always be updated with the latest

It is easy to submit a video to woO-TV. Just open an account at Veoh, upload your video of any quality and length, and visit tv.worldofo.com/submit.html to submit the video for inclusion at one of the woO-TV channels. Note that all content is checked by the editors before it is made available to the public. See tv.worldofo.com/submit.html for details.

You will provide the stories – we will provide the viewers!

The motivation for launching woO-TV is to promote orienteering, and to motivate people to work on better ways to show orienteering on TV, as potential producers – amateurs and professional ones – will know that they can reach a wide audience with their productions. And this with near-DVD quality, says Jan Kocbach – the man who started World of O back in 1995. - The philosphy behind all of the World of O website, including woO-TV, is “Keep it simple – and help people get out their content to the masses”. The World of O website has motivated many to set up orienteering websites, as they know that even if they only write an article a month, their stories will be exposed to thousands of readers – their only job is to provide the interesting stories. We want woO-TV to do the same for video content: Your job is to provide the stories – we will provide the viewers!

Tune in to worldofo.com and enjoy online orienteering TV! Remember to download the standalone Veoh-player to watch the content in full quality – we can assure you it is a completely different viewing experience than watching woO-TV in a web browser!

About World of O and woO-TV

World of O was the first major international orienteering portal on the World Wide Web – started up by the Norwegian orienteer Jan Kocbach in the childhood of the Internet in 1995. In the following years, World of O grew to a hugely popular link database by allowing for users generated content in the form of email addresses and links to orienteering pages. As spammail and spambots started to dominate the Internet at the start of this century, the old World of O links database slowly lost part of its strenght, and the number of daily users of World of O slowly declined until the rebirth in april 2006 as a news portal for international orienteering news. Since then, World of O has grown steadily by including popular services as the WoO International Orienteering Calendar, the WoO Runners database and WoO Maps – and has
now more than 100.000 monthly visits. In march 2007, woO-TV is launched as a new World of O service – with potential to become one of the most popular parts of World of O. The woO-TV team consists of the founder of World of O, Jan Kocbach, along with Russian orienteer Alex Lebedev based in St. Petersburg, and general manager of Veoh Networks’
branch in Russia.

Links

• http://tv.worldofo.com : Main page of woO-TV
• http://tv.worldofo.com/submit.html : Information about how to submit content to woO-TV
• http://www.veoh.com/downloadFlow.html : Download Veoh player for high quality viewer
• http://www.veoh.com/channels/wootv : woO-TV page at Veoh.com
• http://www.veoh.com/channels/wootv2 : woO-TV 2 page at Veoh.com
• http://www.veoh.com : Veoh main page

The new norwegian TV channel TV2 SPORT today announced that they will transmit 10Mila live. - 10 hours, 10 orienteers on every team, is the message from the big boss in the sport department of TV2 - Bjørn Taalesen. - When we get a separate TV channel for sport, there are possibilites for some experimenting, Taalesen said at the press conference today.

TV2 - the owner of TV2 SPORT - is the channel that had high flying plans for a fantastic live transmission from this years second world cup event in Hovden, as you could read about in a previous article at World of O, “Live TV with 14 cameras and Micro” - but ditched the plans. Thus, TV2 is also one of the main reasons for the micr-o experiment in Norwegian and international orienteering. Some orienteers had hoped that micr-o would slowly die when TV2 lost interest for orienteering - but this announcement by TV2 SPORT shows that orienteering still has a future at TV2 - and thus the fight around micr-o (and now also macr-o) will continue.

Photos: Press release from the Norwegian Orienteering Federation

There is an interesting discussion going on over at Attackpoint regarding the future of punching in orienteering.
[As you might have noticed, you now get to see the latest messages in several of the most important orienteering forums here at World of O (just scroll down to the day before yesterday) - and based on my server logs, quite a few of you are already following the forums this way.]

Before you head over there to join the discussion about e-punching, here is a short summary about the starting point for the discussion:

• The starter of the discussion, “Jagge”, has a problem with both e-punching systems available today: SI and EMIT. The point here is not a discussion about how complicated/fast it is to punch, but rather about how to get a failsafe problem with a 100% backup solution.
• SI 1: In some cases, competitors have been DQ’ed even if they were at the control and had the SI stick inside the control unit for a time which should normally be long enough (see Tiomila video below).
• SI 2: In other cases, runners have used extra time to make sure they had a punch, and lost many seconds due to this (a case of a lost victory in a PWT race is given in the discussion)
• EMIT: With the display units, people tend to check at the unit if they have a valid punch - and if not, they go back to punch again, and loose time in the same way as described for the SI unit. The good thing about the EMIT system is that you have a paper-backup, so you don’t actually have to run back if you know that your first punch was good enough to get the mechanical backup…

The perfect system should therefore be

• No instant feedback: No way to check if you have got a valid punch while you are running - thus all should use the same time for punching.
• Mechanical backup: A 100% mechanical backup solution, so that there is no risk for people being DQ’ed when they were at the control and punched according to the rules (Note that “punch according to the rules” for SI is that you get the correct feedback).

A last point: The future is wireless! EMIT is working on a wireless punching solution, and probably SI is as well(?). What about backup in this case?

Join the discussion:

• E-punching in orienteering discussion at Attackpoint