JC / Railbird

Racing & Technology Archive

Music Lesson

“The lesson from Napster and iTunes is that there’s even MORE music than there was before,” marketing guru Seth Godin says in a recent interview. Pull the Pocket translates for racing:

And yet …

Posted in Racing & Technology on November 14, 2008

It Bears Repeating

A reminder: “Web 2.0 is a conversation.”
See also: “He was the first politician I dealt with who understood that the technology was a given and that it could be used in new ways.” (There’s a lesson for racing in that understanding.)
Will do: “Look for the NTRA to continue its efforts … with a heavy emphasis on wikinomics.”
Just one small thing: “The age of crowdsourcing your way to success is over.”

Posted in Racing & Technology on November 11, 2008

It’s Awesome

Version 1.2 of the MLB At Bat iPhone app wins raves from baseball fans. And makes this racing fan a little envious. Imagine: Results from any track? Final times, fractions, and odds? Chart comments? Video highlights? All on my mobile device? Yes, yes, yes, yes, please. As long as I’m dreaming, let’s throw in the ability to look up historical data on horses, jockeys, trainers, etc., and simple stats too.
Related: MLB has been ahead of most sports when it comes using web and mobile technologies successfully. Check out this interesting Fast Company article about the success of MLB Advanced Media, started in 2000 after 30 clubs pooled $75 million. The group, responsible for developing wireless services, web apps, streaming video products, etc. brought in $450 million in 2007. “No one in the game believed that the Internet would be as pervasive a commercial vehicle for us in such a short amount of time.” There’s a lesson in there for racing, despite the industry’s fragmentation …

Posted in Racing & Technology on September 4, 2008