Satellites beam the games around the world
Intelsat, one of the world's leading providers of fixed satellite services, will use its terrestrial platform, IntelsatONESM, to complement the distribution capabilities of its fleet as it provides the global transmission services of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. As the matches begin this week, nine Intelsat satellites will provide more than 900MHz of capacity specifically for Occasional Use Services to transmit the World Cup matches. It has relocated two of its satellites specifically to meet the capacity demand for broadcast services of the event.
Along with offering satellite capacity, its special events team is on-site to provide services for rights-holding and non-rights-holding broadcasters. Its managed services include platforms for encoding, multiplexing and compression in high definition and standard definition, teleport services and fibre circuits from South Africa to the IntelsatONE network inter-connect in London.
Global broadcasters and content distribution partners alike will rely on its extensive infrastructure to deliver the matches to millions of viewers throughout Latin America, Asia and Europe.
The eNews weather team unveils its latest technology in weather forecasting today, 11 June 2010. A real-time system that enables its weather anchors to monitor and report on global weather as it happens.
This graphics visualisation tool combines high-end computing power and a licensing agreement with Microsoft BING Maps, to give detail surrounding the forecasts of each individual soccer match. Two-metre resolution satellite imagery enables the audience to envision the exact location of the stadiums, while the presenter overlays detailed weather information to help relate it to the performance of the viewers' favourite soccer teams.
"Our new system has the ability to manoeuvre around South Africa and across the globe at the complete control of the presenter's hand movements. Whether it is to focus on the heavy rain in Johannesburg, or the tropical cyclone affecting the US, we have the ability to monitor and report on the world's weather as it happens," says eNews chief meteorologist Derek Van Dam.
This morning, Kaya FM kicked off its uninterrupted radio broadcasting with the Good Morning Gauteng Team in the Newtown public viewing area at 6am and it will keep going until the final whistle blows at 6pm tonight. Sponsored by Absa, the broadcast will be packed with celebrity and soccer legends such as Neil Tovey, Clive Barker, Jomo Sono, Francois Pienaar, Theo Kgosinkwe and Judith Sephuma.
Activities will include the Diski Dancers and a special soccer challenge with the GMG hosts Kgomotso Matsunyane and Ndumiso Ngcobo. Every hour, it will be giving away a R1000 to a lucky listener, as well as a total of R36 000 to charity.
Opera Mini, the world's most popular, mobile web browser, gives a full, fast and affordable access to all the major international football magazines. Half a million users in South Africa use it to keep up to date on sports, news and entertainment, along with 58 million other users worldwide. It is available free on practically any mobile phone and reduces the amount of data necessary to display a full webpage on a mobile phone. With this compression, the user gets more pages served for less money than other mobile browsers, up to 90% cheaper than by using native browsers.
"This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and everyone in the DDB SA agency has worked damned hard on brilliant World Cup communication for our FIFA sponsorship Clients - MTN, McDonald's and FNB - over the last two years. It would be a travesty if they then weren't there to enjoy the games in person with their families," said Glen Lomas CEO DDB.
He was commenting on the fact that all 96 people in the agency will be attending World Cup games, from the openers, to the quarters, semis and right up to the final itself. The agency has given away 46 single tickets and 50 pairs of tickets so that employees can also take their 'loved ones.' The tickets were allocated in a FIFA type draw with the lucky World Cup Final tickets going to Angelique Pallet, an assistant TV producer.
CNN has checked in with location-based social network Foursquare to connect fans all over the world throughout the month-long tournament. This is the first time Foursquare has teamed up with a media company for a multi-country initiative, with this one stretching across all 32 countries represented in the world cup.
Starting today, world cup fans who follow CNN at www.foursquare.com/cnn can check in at more than 100 venues to unlock special CNN badges. In order to unlock these badges, fans must check in at least three times at any of these CNN-tagged locations between June 11 and July 11. Fans in South Africa can check in on Foursquare from stadiums and landmarks to earn the South Africa Explorer badge, while fans in the other 31 competing countries can check in at viewing venues to earn the Super Fan badge.
Users can access more details about the special CNN badges on Foursquare, as well as CNN's complete coverage of South Africa 2010, by visiting www.cnn.com/worldcup.
Last updated at 11.54am on 11 June 2010.
