November 3, 2004

The Vendee Globe on your mobile phone

small_MD-I127955[1].jpgEllen McArthur's boat is packed with mobile technology to keep fans up-to-date with its progress in the Vendee Globe round-the-world yacht race which starts on Sunday.

The Offshore Challenges boat has been fitted out with four webcams and a satellite broadband system which sends all the latest information back to Offshore Challenges' control centre. From there it is reformatted for the various iTAGG services (which also provides the Good Pub Guide and an other service enabling club goers to by-pass the queue by sending an SMS.)

Steve Procter, CEO at iTAGG, told The Register: "I'm surprised by how much people will pay for quite poor content. Compared to three or four pounds for a ringtone paying less than a pound for a picture of a sporting celebrity seems reasonable."

Images of big events during the race could be on the handset of users in France and the UK within minutes. They can send an SMS to receive the latest news by reply, sign up to a subscription service, access a Wap site or download a Java application to keep them updated all the time.