Recent posts in my Cycling Category
July 29, 2007
A tour of Tour De France news sites - Général Classement
Over the last week, as the Tour De France has been reaching its drug-tainted climax, I have been reviewing online sites for the depth, quality and usability of their coverage. I've looked at the offical LeTour.fr site, the Yahoo! / Eurosport portal, The Guardian and The Telegraph, France 24 and BBC Sport. I've also looked at sites like CNN, The Independent and The Times where I expected to find in-depth coverage but didn't. Unlike today's finish on the Champs-Élysées, when...
July 28, 2007
A tour of Tour De France news sites - Abandons: CNN, The Times and The Independent
Since my exposure to live coverage of the Tour De France in Greece has been restricted to occasionally popping down to a nearby bar which shows Eurosport on satellite, I've mostly been following the now drugs-tainted 2007 edition on the internet. This week I've been reviewing the sites that I have been using, and have so far looked at the official site, state and semi-state broadcasters France 24 and The BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and Eurosport's online partnership with...
July 27, 2007
A tour of Tour De France news sites - Étape 6: The Telegraph
I've mostly been following the Tour De France this year via the internet, and so during this week I've been reviewing a variety of news sites for the depth, quality and usability of their online converage. So far I've looked at the offical LeTour.fr site, the new Eurosport / Yahoo! sport portal, The Guardian, France 24 and BBC Sport. The Telegraph has been promoting their coverage online using Google AdWords to sidetrack people searching for "Tour De France" The race...
July 26, 2007
A tour of Tour De France news sites - Étape 5: Eurosport / Yahoo!
Like the majority of cycling fans, I have been watching this week's events in the Tour De France unfold with dismay. Most other weeks, someone claiming to be from ETA letting bombs off on the route would be a major story, but yesterday with the expulsion of yellow jersey wearer Michael Rasmussen and the exclusion of the Cofidis team, that hardly seemed to matter. Of course, there is an argument that says that out of the couple of hundred...
July 25, 2007
A tour of Tour De France news sites - Étape 4: The Guardian
Whilst the Tour De France has been taking place over the last couple of weeks I have mostly been following it online - whether it has been good news or bad - and so this week I have been reviewing a variety of the sites I have visted to assess the quality, depth and usability of their coverage. So far I've looked at the offical LeTour.fr site, France 24 and BBC Sport. I have also been following the 2007 Tour...
A tour of Tour De France news sites - Étape 3: France 24
Sadly it seems that again this year it will be events off the road that dominate the headlines about the Tour De France. The blood doping allegations against Alexandre Vinokourov may have briefly made him the world's most famous Kazakhstani, even over Borat, but they are yet another blow to the reputation of cycling's most prestigous event. Over the course of this week I have been reviewing online news sites for the usability, depth, and quality of their Tour De...
July 24, 2007
A tour of Tour De France news sites - Étape 2: BBC Sport
With limited access to watching the Tour De France on television in Greece, I've been restricted to using the internet to follow cycling's biggest annual event. As I've done so, I've been reviewing the sites I've been visiting for the features they offer, the depth of their coverage and their usability. So far I've looked at LeTour.fr, the official site of the Tour De France. The BBC's Cycling coverage falls under their 'Other Sports' section, and it is obvious that...
July 23, 2007
A tour of Tour De France news sites - Étape 1: LeTour.fr
This week I'm looking at the usability, depth and quality of news coverage of the Tour De France on the internet. The obvious place to start my tour of Tour De France website coverage, is with the official site of the race itself - letour.fr. The site comes in four languages (English, German and Spanish as well as the obvious) During the course of a stage, the homepage turns into one giant web dashboard of stats, facts, figures and news....
A tour of Tour De France news sites - Prologue
I first got interested in watching the Tour De France purely and simply because of Kraftwerk. They originally had a hit single about the race during the early 1980s. Then, rather out of the blue, they released their first album of brand new material for nearly 20 years in 2003, the cycling themed 'Tour De France Soundtracks'. A couple of weeks before it was released you could listen to the album via streaming on the BBC's Music site, and I...
July 9, 2007
Rarer than hen's teeth - No football on the BBC Sport homepage
A bit of a sporting collectors item over the weekend on the BBC Sport website homepage. Thanks to the incredible array of global sporting events going on - most of which seemed to be taking place in England for some reason - there wasn't room for any football stories at all on the homepage on Saturday afternoon. With the F1 Grand Prix at Silverstone, England in action against the Windies in the cricket, the climax of Wimbledon, and the once-in-a-generation...
September 4, 2005
Tour Of Britain Stage 6 - London
This afternoon I headed in to town to watch the sixth and final stage of this year's Tour Of Britain race. It isn't, to be honest, a massive event in the cycling calender, since it clashes with the more prestigious Vuelta a España, but top teams like CSC and T-Mobile still had a presence today. The stage was a circular route running along Whitehall towards Trafalgar Square, before turning towards the Thames, hanging a right along the Embankment, and then...
August 20, 2005
The Bike Shed at Walthamstow Central
So I think I've given up on my ambition to be cycling to work by the start of September - it is 22km each way, and apart from the physical issue of whether I can do it or not, I can't work out when I would either get to write currybetdotnet or drink beer. Plus there is the issue of whether I would actually have the energy left to do any work after a 22k cycle first thing in the...
July 18, 2005
So That's Cycling Over For A Bit Then
Yesterday I beat my time to do the circuit round my bit of Walthamstow on my bike by four minutes. This morning I cycled to the station for the first time as part of my commute to work. This evening I went home on the bus holding what was left of the lock that had failed to stop my bike being stolen from Walthamstow Central. *sigh*...
May 16, 2005
Two wheels good, four wheels bad
So this weekend the wife and I bought ourselves bicycles. We'd been thinking about it for a while, specifically to get practice for hiring bikes when we are abroad, and getting more exercise, and chiefly (on my part anyway) since Kraftwerk made an album all about the joy of cycling (so it must be good). [1] We bought them from a small cycling shop called Everything Cycling on Forest Road, which was quite an experience. The somewhat singular owner doesn't...