Time traces

Fans at the new Yankee Stadium will have an “immersive” video experience in which 1,100 high-definition screens will keep them glued to the game even when they are not at their seats.

Such was the promise this week from Cisco and the New York Yankees as they discussed the $15 million to $16 million technology infrastructure and potential for the fan experience at the stadium, slated to open in April 2009.

From a Yankees widget on their mobile phone or PDA, fans will be able to view the game from different angle around the stadium, launch instant replays, access statistics specific to the game situation, and interact with other fans in a community of shared interest, Yankees and Cisco officials said.

“This is where high-tech is going,” Cisco CEO John Chambers said during the press conference. “We’re changing the fan experience. Video is the key word here.”

Added Hal Steinbrenner, co-chairman of the Yankees, “We’re working on fan amenities which will be second to none. The fan experience is of utmost importance to us. They will be amazed at a lot of the things available to them.”

There will be no TVs in the new Yankee Stadium, just 1,100 high-definition IPTV monitors that will provide various views, angles and information on the game — before, during and after — with content pushed to the monitors as appropriate. Along with the live game broadcast, monitors will be capable of simultaneously providing up-to-date sports scores, Yankees trivia, news and weather from a single viewing screen.

At the conclusions of games, these monitors will let the Yankees the direct patrons to the nearest exits and provide traffic information. In the event of an emergency, all stadium monitors can be mobilized to display evacuation instructions.

On non-game days, these same monitors can be used to display customized content and information for special events such as conferences, weddings and other group activities.

The infrastructure will be “completely wireless, top to bottom;” players will have touch screen computers at their lockers; and Cisco’s high-definition TelePresence virtual conferencing system will be installed at a library in the Bronx to allow students to interact with Yankee players.

“Yankee Stadium will be in a constant state-of-the-artness,” said Yankee Chief Operating Officer Lonn Trost in a statement that would make Yogi Berra proud.

Cisco officials say the stadium will be the most technologically advanced stadium in the country, if not the world. They said Cisco technology is used in 60% of the sporting venues in North America, including the new Cisco Field being built in Fremont, Calif. 

Fans in luxury suites can view the game from different angles by manipulating the touch screen of Cisco IP phones (compare unified communications products) in those suites. They will also be able to order concessions and Yankees merchandise for delivery to the suite.

Over time, fans will be able order food from their seats through their mobile phones, and high-definition screens on the exterior of the stadium will show what’s going on inside, Cisco officials said.

Cisco and the Yankees began discussions two and a half years ago on the technological infrastructure and application for the  stadium, which is replacing the venerable, 85-year-old “House the Ruth Built.”

“We had to have the best capabilities” in fan amenities at the new ballpark,” Trost said. “We had to step up and allow the fan experience to be improved.”

“This is the front edge of what sports and entertainment will be like” in the future, Cisco’s Chambers said. Like Star Trek…that’s where we’re going to go. This will change all of sports.”

Cisco said it is in active discussions with other sports franchises about upgrading their stadium fan experience with similar capabilities.

One of my initial thoughts after hearing about the iPhone 3G was, “Hmmm, I wonder how the enterprise is going to keep this device out of the office.” Last year, the checklist of reasons why IT shouldn’t support it was pretty long, but Apple appears to have seen the lists and solved lots of these items.

First on the list was support for Exchange. The initial iPhone couldn’t do it easily (you could, technically, access corporate e-mail if you used the Safari browser and went through the Outlook Web client), but the new version supports it “out of the box.” I’m assuming that many of the major functions that mobile users are going to want from Exchange will work on the iPhone 3G. E-mail, of course, but calendars and contacts will also be synchronized over-the-air.

Other enterprise features on the new iPhone include VPN support (Cisco IPSec supported) and wireless security for the Wi-Fi connection (including WPA2 Enterprise and 802.1x authentication). The release of the iPhone SDK (Apple claims more than 250,000 downloads since the beginning of the year) means that enterprise applications (especially commercial enterprise apps) will be able to be ported to the iPhone

There are still some small items that may cause an enterprise to take note. There’s still no user-replaceable battery, so mobile workers who experience a battery failure have to figure out a way to get Apple (or AT&T) to replace it. The same goes for memory – while 8GB and 16GB seem like enough space, there’s no way to add additional memory. The lack of physical keys on the device may be an issue for users who love typing on their BlackBerry, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see an attachable keyboard at some point, either from Apple or an accessories vendor.

And despite the “half the price, twice the speed” mantra from Apple, when you add in the data plan from AT&T, which increased the data plans for the 3G network by about $10 per month, the costs for owning a new iPhone are about the same as the old one. But you get the new features and the faster network, so I’m not so sure that argument holds up. The $45 per month for the right to connect an iPhone to Exchange e-mail might be the last objection from IT, it seems that AT&T is sticking it to business users. But most enterprises probably won’t object to this since it’s a cost of doing business for them, and it’s not much more than what BlackBerry and other corporate e-mail services cost.

It seems to me that if there are any remaining objections by IT regarding the iPhone, they would seem to be personal opinions about Apple, or AT&T, rather than the technical features.

When I tried the iPhone last year, I loved a lot of the “personal” features that transformed mobile devices. With this year’s version, I have a feeling I’ll love the “business” features as well. We’ll see what happens in about a month, when the