IBM augments the reality of Wimbledon again with Seer 2010
If you're attending Wimbledon this year you'll be able to enjoy a new augmented experience, courtesy of IBM's Seer 2010 application.
The Seer application uses Augmented Reality to offer up location specific video streams, three Wimbledon Radio feeds, live match data and scores, weather, map and camera views of your location, and more.
There's a whole lot more features embedded in this year's Seer app, and it's available for both iPhone and Android, for free. If you're not sporting an iPhone or Android-based device, you can still enjoy a mobile friendly experience at m.wimbledon.org.
I love the fact that IBM is enhancing the in-venue experience but I was also hoping that I could have that in-venue experience from my couch. I understand that this is all about augmented reality, but what would be great is if I could be sitting anywhere in the world, and be just one touch away from multiple matches, real-time stats, and just about everything else that the app is offering. Of course, there is a mountain of services being offering up at Wimbledon.org, but you need to be sitting in front of a computer to consumer it all. The folks not attending the event will still be able to consumer via their mobile device, but that won't feature any live videos.
As for in-venue, you can't get much better than this app. According to the demo video below, you can walk by an event, hear some cheering, point your phone in that direction and instantly see a live stream! That's definitely one cool way of experiencing an event. You can also see what vendors are offering and even the queue sizes.
This is all great stuff but I have to wonder what kind of bandwidth we're talking about. Live event streaming consumes a tremendous amount, and offering up live streams to anyone with an iPhone or Android device will definitely take a hit on the infrastructure.
We'll have to see what the post event wrap-ups say about the true experience, but for now it's great to see true innovation coming to Wimbledon.
You can watch a video demonstration of the 2010 IBM Seer app below.