Predictions: Who said Alberto can win the Tour? (click graphic to open Contador Notebook) The Alberto Contador Tour de France Notebook is back.  Though Rebecca submits her prose like clockwork, we got behind in our posting.  Sorry about that. Click the graphic above to pick up where we left off and see who is predicting Alberto can win the Tour!  On page 3 is Alberto's impressive palmarès.  On page 4, read about a typical day for Alberto, what he eats for breakfast, how he spends his afternoons, etc.  On page 5, read about Discovery Channel's and Alberto's mountain recon.  Christine Kahane submitted a couple of photos from the Tour and also translated some texts from Spanish.  Thanks, Christine!

ADVERTISEMENT CIRCUITI jewels: the perfect fusion between sport and jewel -- Official jewels collection, Giro d'Italia

I'm going to tell you about a cool product.  Some of you may have heard about it.  Some of you may even already have one of these boxes.  Some of you, and I'm thinking in particular of the employee of the Amaury Group (owner of L'Equipe and Amaury Sport Organization (A.S.O.), organizer of the Tour de France) who has appeared numerous times in the cyclingfans.com site logs since Monday and who may have played a role in pressuring Versus into demanding that we not link to the Versus live video feed of the Tour de France, may be afraid of this product.  (Bonjour, Jean-François, hope you enjoy your visit to the site today.)

A.S.O., who according to Daniel Baal in his book "Tour de France: Rêves et Réalités" ("Dreams and Realities", 2004) was so resistant to using technology at its headquarters just outside Paris that even PowerPoint wasn't an option, must be absolutely terrified of this product and the technology.  Baal was Director of Cycling at A.S.O. and was to replace Jean-Marie Leblanc as director of the Tour.  He gave up trying to change the organization and left in early 2004, with A.S.O. having decided that a non-journalist (Baal was a banker by trade) could not run cycling's biggest race.

I've been thinking about this product, and the technology, a lot lately, trying to decide how it might fit in to what we do at cyclingfans.com.

"Time-shifting" products like VCRs and Tivo allow you to watch programs whenever you want.  "Place-shifting" products allow you to watch programs WHEREVER you want.  (I tried a 3G mobile bandwidth card with my laptop on Mont Ventoux at the 2006 Dauphiné Libéré - no go, no signal up there so I couldn't connect to the internet.)


Sling Media's Slingbox Tuner is an example of a "place-shifting" device.  It redirects your home television signal to your computer anywhere in the world - at work or on the road while traveling.  Have Versus Tour de France coverage at home?  Watch it at the office, or anywhere in the world.

It's not difficult to see how such a technology could wreak havoc with ASO's (and Versus') attempts to control how people watch which broadcasts, and where.  Imagine an exchange program by which a Frenchman interested in watching U.S. broadcasts of NBA games hooks up with an American interested in watching more cycling.  The Frenchman could hook up a box to his TV's signal and send live cycling to his new American friend and the latter could do the same for NBA games.  Because the internet makes it so easy for sports fans worldwide to communicate, this prospect could be ASO's worst nightmare.  It is difficult to see how ASO could do anything to stop it.  But if ASO followed the lead of the organizers of the Giro d'Italia and at least offered low bandwidth streams for free on their website, surely that would go a long way toward undermining any illicit activity involving ASO content.  Alas, Versus has long seemed so afraid of offering at least some limited live streaming themselves that perhaps PowerPoint-phobic ASO is happy not to stream from their site.  It remains to be seen if recent streaming tests by Versus amount to much for cycling-hungry fans.

When Versus demanded on Tuesday that we remove a link to its live video stream of the Tour de France under threat of legal action, I complied immediately.  Though we were not streaming anyone's content and never have, or would, I was not about to take the risk that Versus would try to make things difficult for us because we linked to content that apparently no one is supposed to know about.  I did reply, however, that we have long promoted their product for free, just as we have promoted ASO's events year-round from Paris-Nice to Paris-Tours, including, among other races, the Critérium International, Tour de Picardie, Tour de l'Avenir and defunct Grand Prix des Nations.  In fact, at one time or another we have promoted everyone who organizes races and everyone who provides some form of live coverage.  (I have also photographed all of ASO's various cycling events in Europe and supplied those photos to others.  In some cases, my photos of ASO's smaller races were the only photos posted on cycling's top news websites.)  Many people out there recognize our role in promoting cycling worldwide and have sent us emails to thank us.

The response of Versus is to threaten legal action.  However much Versus may have been under pressure from ASO (and the contract does give Versus obligations in addition to rights), they could be handling this differently.  After removing the link to their live streaming, I asked them for some information about the streaming, if it was available in some legitimate form, whether free or for pay, and was promised some answers.  I'm still waiting.  And I know many of you are upset.

"Place-shifting" solutions like the Slingbox Tuner of course do require that you have a television signal with cycling coverage to connect to.  If you have that, then you can have that signal streamed to your computer anywhere in the world.

There are numerous websites that post links to anything and everything in terms of live video streaming in every sport, much of it illicit.  Virtually none of them go so far as to provide added-value to video streams, something we have done here for nearly three years.

ASO and Versus are never going to be able to contain this beast that is live streaming.  They might want to consider fully embracing the technology instead of going out of their way to alienate the fans.

So, while we wait for answers from Versus that may never arrive, how about that Slingbox Tuner folks.  It's in stock at Amazon.com and you can purchase it right here: