internet cool?!

Saw this over Iain’s shoulder yesterday and I just had to share. Running is a solitary sport. But the interwebs (and all sorts of mobile / community apps) have created a tremendous opportunity to “lessen the running loneliness” as it were. Adidas Japan, making full use of leading-edge web technology, has introduced a brand new app that aims to do just that.

Meet Hello! Runners Map developed by 777interactive. The user/runner can show up either pre/post run and draw their route on a map. Once drawn, the widget then gives them their route mashed up using Google Street View to preview and “pre-run” their run. But what I thought was really cool was that you can share that mashup - a fun way to play and display your runs for other friends (foes?). Put it on your bloggy pants or even on your MyFace and SpaceBook. Heck even tweet that shit. Pretty neato.

Oh, and bear with some of the translation weirdness. This launched in Japan. Weeeee!

I’ve never really been much of an “Olympics buff” and I suppose if I were to pick a game I’m most into it would probably be the Winter Games. So I was just as surprised as you are when I really got into the Beijing games this year. The much awaited Beijing Olympics 2008 have started, and funny enough, I had a trip to Mexico planned  right in the heart of the games. I was a bit worried about how I was going to stay on top of the Beijing Olympics action.  

Well, between http://tvgratis.tv  and a slew of awesome stuff by Google, I’ve genuinely aggregated enough Summer games content to keep my fix. Here is a collection of Google’s updated maps, gadgets, videos, sites, searches, 3D images and some Google powered Chinese sites that are purely dedicated to serve Olympics.

Google has designed a seris of web pages for the Summer Games. Among them, the home page for China has a bit more pizazz than our US home page, but both offer a stream of updated Olympics news, links to associated articles and video. The updated interactive US page offers a collection of Olympics related Google apps in the form of gadgets, maps, news, one box search and videos.
_{I’ve embedded one of the apps below.  Click the tab to expand the map.}

Google has updated its maps for Beijing Olympics. If you cant make it to Beijing than track it through Google maps by exploring 3D stadiums, tracking medal counts and watching live sport results. They have also recently released a new Mobile search tool that allows its users to enjoy sports results at the top of every search results. On typing sports name or medals in your search query by heading to Google.com from your mobile, it will return all the details with respect to Olympics. In true Olympic fashion, the tool is multi-lingual (36 languages in over 60 countries) and covers almost all the different events.

Rock on.  I’m off to the beach to score an Olympic-sized Mojito.