Twitter is a great tool for passive conversation. For me, it has been a great way to keep track of friends and follow people in the industry.
IMS plans to provide regular information about events, tickets, promotions, IMS trivia and much more through its Twitter feed, with opportunities for interaction with fans.
Check it out and follow all of the excitement going on at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during it's Centennial Anniversary.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Follow IMS through Twitter
Monday, December 15, 2008
Online Racing Community Continues To Grow
The Indy 500 Online Community continues to grow and is quickly becoming the Internets largest online racing community. As the Indianapolis Motor Speedway approaches it's Centennial Anniversary, participation continues to increase.
Look for a number of updates to the community section. As always, any ideas you have we want to hear them.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Live video streaming for USAC continues
The exciting action for USAC racing was streamed this year using Flash Media Server. USAC has a Live Pit Pass application http://www.usacracing.com/usac_live that lists how to follow all of the racing.
There will be a couple of enhancements to the player next year. FMS will still be the streaming application for next year. The quality will be upgraded to H264. Make sure you tune in and watch the races.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Centennial Era Around The Corner
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Centennial Era starts Jan 1. We are collecting everything from photos, videos, comments, Blogs, etc.. Please keep this information coming.
We are in the process of making this data easier to sort and access for everybody. This will be the largest collection of data for racing on the internet. A big thanks to everybody who is helping build this historical racing collection.
Go here to see where you can contribute to this collection.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Retail Updates
Still in catch up mode for the Blog. The IMS Retail store front was updated the week before Thanksgiving to get everything ready for the Holiday sales.
We are in the process of adding additional integration with Search Marketing, Directory Listings and enhanced site integrations.
I am still looking at a associate programs. If there are any good ones out there drop me a line.
Our store is being upgraded to be open ended. This means that 3rd party suppliers will be able to sell their products through our store much like what Amazon.com has set up through there stores.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Investigating Wowza and the Cloud
Next week I am going to investigate Wowza Media Server Pro Unlimited for Amazon EC2 (beta) and how it stacks up to Adobe's FMIS on the EC2 instances.
For 2008, FMIS did a good job streaming out our live T&S along with video. FMIS has a solid package that is easy to deploy in a small or large scale environment. The Origin/Edge configuration worked smoothly. There were a few odd instances on the edges from time to time but overall it did the job.
The reason we looking to move away from FMIS is because of price. FMIS is $4,500 per license. This is a good price if you use one server consistently. The price adds up quickly when you have to stream out tens of thousands of concurrent streams.
Adobe doesn't have an EC2 pay model. It makes no sense why not because most live events are large and don't happen daily. Using a per server license model isn't cost effective for scalable live events. One of the huge advantages of Cloud Computing is scalability and Adobe currently doesn't take advantage of this.
Wowza has a model for the EC2 (http://www.wowzamedia.com/ec2.php). The real question will be how easily it is to port our FMS setup to Wowza. If it is relatively easy, I can see a lot of businesses looking at Wowza.
If anybody else has had success using Wowza on EC2, I would like to hear your comments.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Head in the Clouds
Looking back at 2008, we made some huge changes on the technical side of our websites. The biggest change was the move to Cloud Computing. There are different types of cloud computing offered by various companies so I will only speak to Amazon's Web Services.
Our biggest challenge each year is to gear up for the month of May. Each year traffic increases 200% - 300%. Leasing hardware for one month is very expensive. The other issue we had was finding the right amount of hardware to handle the Indy Racing League events. ISP's and CDN's had partial solutions but nobody had the right combination to handle bursts of traffic for short durations of time during live events.
The complete solution for live events turned out to be Cloud Computing. Specifically, EC2 instances running Linux/Unix. Cloud allowed us to do 3 critical components for us. 1. Scalability, 2. Reliability 3. Massive Storage.
1. Scalability -- EC2 is broken down into instances ranging from small instances to xtra large instances. These instances are based on different configurations of memory, CPU and storage. These instances are rented by the hour which makes it very cost effective for our live events.
Scalability is nice but it is even more important to quickly scale up during events. A moving variable for us is not knowing how many users will watch events live. TV not showing an event causes a large increase in online viewer ship although that has leveled off with the adaptation of broadband over the past few years.
Our ingenious staff has been able to replicate and deploy these instances within 15 minutes. Down from 24 hours back in April. We monitor traffic levels during the events so we know when to start up new instances when we hit certain levels of traffic. This flexibility has allowed us to go to the next level of entertainment for our fans.
The EC2's have been used for our websites, Live T&S and Live video streaming.
2. Reliability -- CDN's do a great job handling large amounts of traffic. The biggest drawback is you have to estimate how much traffic you will have each year. This is difficult to do and if you underestimate then you are basically penalized by paying more for each Gig thereafter.
What Cloud Computing offers is basically an all in one package. You get the benefits of and ISP combined with a CDN. (Note: You don't get all the benefits you would normally get with a CDN). I am not sure what CDN Amazon uses or even if they use one. The bottom line is the experience didn't change enough to require a CDN.
Amazon's infrastructure has been reliable given the importance of delivering live data on a large scale.
3. Massive Storage -- A service called S3. S3 can be used as a stand alone service or tied into the EC2 services. We use it for both. S3 has been great for a backup large scale storage solution. Hopefully by the end of 2009, the entire Indianapolis Motor Speedway image library will be on the S3 service.
This is just a very brief overview of a technical shift we embraced for 2008 and have grown it throughout the year. The 2009 season will see a number of enhancements and new developments based on cloud computing that we could have never done before.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
It has been awhile!
I haven't blogged since last April but will be picking up again as we get ready for the new season.
For those interested in how we do Live Events, I will continue to discuss our progress and the technologies we use.
I am always interested in comments and ideas on how to improve the user experience so feel free to leave comments.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Indy 500 Media Tour Live
We are showing the Indy 500 Media Tour live April 07-08. For this event we have switched back to our old player which is using Windows Media Player and only works in IE. We have a single cam focused on the podium.
This event is being broadcasts using the VideoXpress capture card. I wasn't sure how well that would work but it seems to do a decent job. Below is the schedule of events.
Tuesday, April 8
9 a.m. “Breakfast With Tony George”
What: Opening Remarks and Q&A
Participant: Tony George, CEO,
9:30 a.m. “Getting Ready For Indy”
What: Q&A Focused on IndyCar Series’ Preparations for the “500”
Participants: Brian Barnhart, IndyCar Series President, Competition & Operations Division
Terry Angstadt, IndyCar Series President, Commercial Division
What: Month of May Overview and Q&A
Participant: Joie Chitwood, President and COO,
3 p.m. “Racing, Dancing And Winning!”
What: Q&A with Team Penske
Participants: Tim Cindric, President, Penske Performance, Inc.
Helio Castroneves, Driver and Two-Time
Ryan Briscoe, Driver and
4 p.m. “Returning With Experience And Youth”
What: Q&A with Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing
Participants: Graham Rahal, Driver and
Justin Wilson, Driver and
Brian Lisles, Team Manager
Wednesday, April 9
9 a.m. “A Champion Returns”
What: Q&A with Emerson Fittipaldi
Participant: Emerson Fittipaldi, Two-time
10 a.m. “Chevy Pace Car Program”
Participants: Terry Dolan, Marketing Director, Chevrolet Racing
Emerson Fittipaldi, Two-Time
Joie Chitwood, President and COO,
12:45 p.m. “Indy – The Ultimate Conquest”
What: Q&A with Conquest Racing
Participants: Eric Bachelart, Team Owner
Franck Perera, Driver and
Enrique Bernoldi, Driver and
1:30 p.m. “Reporting For Duty, Sir!
What: Q&A with Panther Racing
Participants: John Barnes, Team Co-Owner
Vitor Meira, Driver and
Major General Martin Umbarger, Adjutant General,
What: Q&A with A.J. Foyt Racing’s Darren Manning
Participant: Darren Manning, Driver and
What: Q&A with Target Chip Ganassi Racing
Participants: Chip Ganassi, Team Owner
Mike Hull, Managing Director
Dan Wheldon, Driver and 2005
Scott Dixon, Driver and 2003 IndyCar Series Champion
Alex Lloyd, Driver and 2007 Firestone Indy Lights Champion
3:15 p.m. “Welcome Aboard”
What: Q&A with KV Racing Technology
Participants: Oriol Servia, Driver and
Will Power, Driver and
Mark Johnson, General Manager
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
IndyCar Testing Day 2 from Homestead
Day two of the testing went well. A number of updates are being made right now. Tomorrow we will be putting connectivity into the production truck. Then we will be setting up the video encoders and sending a test feed back to WhiteBlox.
Monday, March 24, 2008
IndyCar Testing from Homestead
IndyCar testing continues for the Champ Car teams at Homestead. The new Live T&S application is running very well. Due to an issue with licenses, we may have the older HTML T&S system running on indycar.com. The new Live T&S system will run on indy500.com so take your pick.
Really wish I had video to shoot down here of the testing. Video testing won't start with the new HD equipment until Wed. That is too close for my comfort.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
New Indy 500 Website Coming
As you know, we have updated the Red Bull Indy GP website http://www.redbullindianapolisgp.com/. We are now updating the 500 site. It will have the same look and concept as the Red Bull site. All of the Indy sites will soon have this look.
As always, the underlying goal of the site is fan first. The community elements to the 500 will be part of the roll out. We have already started this process with the submit your 500 stories that will be in the program if selected. (Post your story here)
The backend admin will control all of the sites independently. This is a major undertaking as you can imagine but important. We will be able to cross promote these elements when needed. I hope to get it rolled out by the first race at Homestead but that may be wishful thinking.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Share your Indy 500 Memories
The beginning of our evolving community is asking users to share their 500 memories.
The Indianapolis 500 has created countless memories for generations of race fans, whether it was side-by-side action among Indy legends, a family reunion in the grandstands or being awed by the pageantry of pre-race ceremonies.
The cool part is a selection of written submissions and photos from fans will be published in the 2008 Indianapolis 500 Official Program that will be sold at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the Month of May. This is a great way to give back to the fans that have supported the 500 over the years.
This is a small piece to what we will be working with fans to create as we evolve in the social media space.
Click here to post your story
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Danica Fastest At Open Test. Online has a tough start.
Danica topped the speed chart today at the Homestead Open Test just edging out Ryan Briscoe. It was a busy few days to say the least.
First, the video streaming of the Unification conference. We had just two days to put it together and get it ready. Even though I have done live events hundreds of times, testing is still critical because of all the variables. Connectivity, video lines, audio, etc... makes things complicated so testing the day before is important.
We went with the laptop encoding solution instead of the rack mounted equipment. We needed to be portable because this was a last minute deal. The feed we picked up in Indy was coming in from Homestead Florida over satellite.
The only issue we had was the audio came in hot and I didn't have a mixer to adjust it. Everything else went off with no problem. I am more impressed with the ease of use of the laptop.
We had over 128,547 total minutes viewed and the average time spent watching was 31 minutes. This again shows people will spend time watching content they are interested in.
After the press conference we had to turn to the live timing and scoring application. This is where things went down hill quickly. We maxed out our application license within an hour. We did not anticipate that much traffic. We spent the night dusting off the old application and bringing it out. We were still able to get the new version tested with the help of users at TrackForum. At the end of the second day, we had most of the issues worked out.
The next test will come next Monday at Sebring. There won't be any video streaming but the live T&S application will be tested again. This time it will be the full blown race mode version.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Indy Car Series Homestead Open Test
We are ready for the Indy Car Series Homestead Open Test. From a development standpoint, this will be our first time to test our new applications in a live environment. These include:
New Live T&S in Flash -- This will be our biggest test. It has been built from the ground up. Zach Crowe did a great job developing this piece. He will be using a wireless Spring Card to send the data. As you know, bandwidth is the challenge with any wireless card on a continuous basis. Sometimes you live or die by those cards.
Live Video -- There won't be live video of cars on track at the Open Test.
indy500.com -- We will be trying something new this year. The Indy 500 site will follow the Indy Car Series this year. Check out the site for updates.
Some of our staff will fly out on Wed and have only a few short hours to set up and get everything ready to go. It will be an interesting week.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Live T&S w/ Data
Here is a sample of the Live T&S with data. It is from the Miami 100 Pro Series race.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
indycar.com Live T&S application
The new IndyCar Live T&S system has completed the last phase of updates. It will be rolled out next week for the Open Test at Homestead.
This version will be Flash driven. In the past, we used an HTML version that would refresh every 15 seconds or so. We did it this way so it would be compatible with most browsers. The obvious problem is the data was delayed and at times would appear odd.
The new Flash version will give real time data. You will also be able to choose Lap Times. This is a significant upgrade over previous version. We will continue to update it throughout the year.
The back end infrastructure will consist of using multiple Flash servers at a CDN. This will increase response time and allow us to expand when needed.
Friday, February 15, 2008
New Additons
We went live with a couple more additions to the MotoGP site. The biggest one is the User system. This will evolve into an important tool for users and we grow the number of applications on the site.
User management system – Fans can register to create an account. Right now a registered user has the ability to Edit Email & Password, Information, Options and Avatar. You also get to view your submitted Designs and Photos. This is also where you will Tag your submissions.
RSS Feeds – Along with News we now have Design It Latest Additions, Bikes and Helmets.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Design It Tag Clouds
Tomorrow we will be adding a Tag Cloud feature to the Design It section. I always find it interesting when we can pull information from the users and display it. Tag Clouds are a unique and interesting way to highlight user information.
In the Design It section http://www.redbullindianapolisgp.com/community/designit/ , the Cloud shows what users add to their designs. Honda, NKG, JRF, Motul, Yamaha and Red Bull are companies of interest for them. This starts to bring awareness to these brands and speaks volumes about these companies. Not only are users spending time with these brands (this has to be the dream of every brand) but these brands are being displayed to millions of onlookers. This comes at no cost to the companies.
We will be adding clouds to different sections of the website and it will be important to understand what the users are telling us.
Hopefully this cloud concept will grow and produce even more appealing information over the next few months.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Danica in SI Swimsuit edition
We posted the latest SI Swimsuit edition photo of Danica on indycar.com.
You can also enter a chance to win an Autographed swimsuit edition poster. http://www.indycar.com/swimsuit/index.php?id=hp
I am sure this will get plenty of traffic. Good luck.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Networks NBC and Fox Put to the Test
Some bad storms this week knocked out the power and a a couple of shows didn't record on the DVR. No big deal I thought. I enjoyed watching network shows on the internet so I will catch up online (or so I thought).
I was stunned to realize how clueless Fox and especially NBC are in the days of online distribution. First lets check out NBC. I wanted to catch up on a reality show called The Biggest Loser that airs on NBC. My first reaction was to go check out hulu.com since I have watched shows on there before. Hulu had a list of exclusive clips, excerpts and interviews but not the show. Pointless filler I thought so I went to nbcdirect.com. This service had by far the most potential of anything out there but to my amazement it has turned into a joke. NBCdirect seems to have all of the Jay Leno or Conan OBrian shows you could ever want along with American Gladiator. Are you kidding me? Next I went back to NBC.com to see what maybe they had. Ahhhh, there it was. But wait.... That navigation sure seems to be a mother just to watch the show. Then it hits me. They broke it up into these ridiculous small clips and don't even show the whole thing. What a freaking joke! Doesn't NBC realize this is a reality show which has a shelf life of about 2 weeks then nobody cares about it anymore? Why are they making it so difficult to get to and watch? What a ridiculous experience NBC. NBC seemed to have an edge going into the end of the year but now they seem like a joke. Not sure how you keep viewers.
NBC wasn't the only show affected. I really enjoy watching House on Fox. I started the process over again. Went to Hulu.com. Yes! Found it.....but...wait. The last updated show was over two episodes ago. Nooooooo. Did the online programmers go on strike with the writers? Then I went to fox.com only to experience the same disappointment.
A word to the networks. There is no excuse in this day and age to 'hide' your programs from viewers. There are plenty of choices out there. I hope the advertisers realize this and move on as well.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Brickyard Crossing Golf Blog
Brickyard Crossing PGA Head Professional Jeff Schroeder is blogging from the PGA Winter Championships sponsored by Taylor Made-Adidas in Port St. Lucie, Fla. He is playing in the tournament with friend and former Champions Tour standout Larry Ziegler.
It is great to have Jeff talk write about his experience at the tournament so we can share it with everybody. Check out his Blog at http://www.brickyardcrossing.com/
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Stats
With the official launch of the site on Wednesday, we can now start looking at the stats. It is always interesting to use the stats to help grow the site. I will need a few weeks of good data to start getting a better picture of how to use them effectively but Google Analytics does a great job on giving a wide variety of stats.
Visitors from 115 countries/territories have already visited the site. For all you techies, here are some stats:
Browsers
IE 79%
FF 15%
OS
Windows 94%
Macintosh 5%
Screen Resolutions
1024x768 45%
1280x1024 15%
Flash Version
9.0 69%
9.0 r28 7%
Monday, February 4, 2008
Blogging coming to MotoGP site
Tomorrow we will be using WordPress as our Blogging system for the Red Bull Indianapolis Moto GP site. WordPress currently has the best features for us to incorporate into our site.
The initially blogging will be by a few select individuals. Once we get that in place we will open it up to our fans.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
MotoGP Fan Photo
You don't see this cross the infamous Yard of Bricks often. It is fun checking out photos submitted by fans.
Friday, February 1, 2008
User Registration Dev
We are a few weeks out from completing the User Registration application for all of the IMS sites. It will first be rolled out with the MotoGP site.
Connecting it in with Design It, Comments and Fan Photo will be in the first roll out.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Killer Bike Designs
Some great artists have created killer designs on the Design It section: http://www.redbullindianapolisgp.com/community/designit/view/latest
Hans Karke, Tricky, BrianP and Tim Crist have created some of the best designs out there. I hope to see more from these guys and many others.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
redbullindianapolisgp.com Social media site – Step 1
The first step in the creation of the new Red Bull Indianapolis Moto GP site has been completed. We are really excited with the initial response for the site and connecting with the fans.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Homepage Development
The finishing touches to the homepage are being put in place. We are tweaking some Flash issues on the cover and should have those resolved today.
We will be working over the weekend in order to meet our Monday rollout.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Smaller Indiana Social Network
I have been talking to the people at a social networking site called Smaller Indiana. It has great potential and I hope it keeps growing. I have already been talking with company leaders about various projects. It was good to see a couple of old friends I haven't seen in some time.
It will be interesting to see if this group can have an impact on the growth of technical companies in Indiana. It will be interesting to see what resources can be provided by the group.
The first task for me is to see how we can work together growing the MotoGP social networking site.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Submit Your Motorcycle Photos App.
We are in the beta stage of the Fan Photo section for the new MotoGP site. Users will be encouraged to submit photos of their bikes and photos of motorcycle events they have attended.
After the photo has been submitted, fans will be able to rate, comment, tag these photos. These photos will be used as ‘lead’ photo images and compliment other stories throughout the websites.
At this time we are still behind schedule but still hope to have the site up next week.Thursday, January 10, 2008
MotoGP Bikes -- You Design It
We are putting the finishing touches on the MotoGP Design It section. This section is for users to download templates and create their own designs based on their favorite products. Once they are done, they will upload them and we will display their design.
We have been reaching out to designers to see if there was any interest. Already 5 designers have let us know they would be supplying designs so we can kick off this section with some nice designs. Users will be able to rate, comment and sort the designs. We will also offer best ratings by month.
The categories will be Bikes, Helmets and Misc for now. Once users start submitting new ideas we will create categories for them.
This has been wildly successful on the indycar.com site and we will be taking it to the next level on the IMS sites.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
MotoGP Social Network Site to be Launched
Development of a MotoGP social network is to be launched in two weeks. We have been constructing a place where motorcycle fans can come and share their experiences with others. Here is a breakdown of some social elements we will roll out in the first round.Saturday, January 5, 2008
Employment Opportunity
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway web sites continue to grow at an extraordinary pace. 2008 will be our biggest year yet. The
Responsibilities:
Administer all Web servers including, but not limited to, software upgrades, patches and security. Work with development team to determine upgrade and future capacity needs for all servers. Maintain a high level of server availability through support provided during off-hours and weekends. Plan and implement a comprehensive security plan for all servers. Assist development team in maintenance, testing and creation of new Web-based applications and sites.
Skills, Education and/or Experience Desired:
High integrity and confidentiality. Enthusiasm for and commitment to the company, the Vision,
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Great Sports Sites
What makes a great sports site? It is a website created and run by the very League that runs the sport. Most sporting websites have been outsourced to various companies. Those companies focus only on how much money they can make off the fans. That is a formula for failure.
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