UPDATED 17:02 EDT / FEBRUARY 17 2014

Round-Up: What APIs are transforming the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and the computing world

olympics-devopsA milestone event for the Social Media world was the 2012 London Summer Olympics. The 2012 Summer Olympics was the first that leveraged big data analytics in a major way to understand sentiment and reveal trends in real time.

Unsurprisingly, live coverage had generated reams of content during the games. This year Winter Olympics game at Sochi is no exception, but the technology has taken the game one step forward.

API technology is being leveraged in many ways during this year Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics as various companies are reaching out to developers by opening up much requested functionality within their APIs. Developers, athletes and users now have access to video streams, mobile cloud computing, schedules, results, and medal count information and much more.

Performance tracking using Internet of Things APIs

Applications themselves are getting more dynamic, and infrastructure is also getting more dynamic. Importantly enabling IT at the Olympic committee to assure quality web and mobile user experiences for users through connected devices.

By bolstering the delivery of high quality web and mobile experiences for the millions of Olympics fans across the world for London 2012 and Sochi 2014, SOASTA has been earned the trust of the Olympics for the next 10 years to serve as the application tester for the International Olympic Committee’s IT operations. SOASTA’s API driven dashboard displays real-time consolidated view of performance indicators that you choose to monitor. During the test, terabytes of data can be collected from the monitoring systems.

Wearable technology innovations like Google Glass are helping athletes boost their game plans by creating data while they train, allowing the athletes and coaches to pinpoint areas that need improvement. U.S. freestyle skier and Olympic favorite Patrick Deneen is using Coach’s Eye iPad app to check break down footage of his practice jumps, which will help Deneen to make instant technical adjustments. The app analyzes and breaks it down, frame by frame, in high resolution to get access to information.

The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) has launched a custom-built application developed by AT&T to help eliminate distractions for Team USA athletes, allowing them to focus on competing at the highest levels. The new API driven Team USA Guide app is helping America’s athletes manage planning and logistics by providing in-built components like calendar updates, maps and information such as athlete handbook, policies and procedures, and general information for Team USA delegation friends and family members.

“This is only the tip of the API iceberg,” says Sam Ramji, vice president of strategy for Apigee, the provider of API management software. “APIs are being used to transform how we view sporting events across the globe. Whether its telemetry data from a race car or shirts worn by athletes, the amount of open data that athletes, coaches and fans can access in real time is exploding by the day.”

olympics-logoSmart Beanies from Samsung

Samsung Electronics New Zealand is providing Smart Beanies and Galaxy Note 3 smartphones to New Zealand Olympic Winter athletes Jossi Wells and Anna Willcox to share their Olympic experiences with Kiwis across the globe.

The Samsung Smart Beanies Project is designed to stream exactly what skiers Jossi and Anna see as they progress through the games. The official Olympic Games phone for Sochi 2014 Galaxy Note 3 automatically tracks its athlete’s location, speed, heart rate, and even which way up they are through an API. The API also captures exciting moments with an onboard camera.

“Showing people what we’ve been training for, what we have to push our bodies to do, and all the complexities of our sport from our point of view is priceless,” said Jossi Wells, New Zealand slopestyle and halfpipe skier. “The best way to understand the challenges we face and how we’re putting it on the line for New Zealand is to see what we see. Samsung has enabled that.”

Samsung New Zealand, New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC), and the Samsung SportsFlow app broadcast the data generated by the athletes through social media streams. These include training footage, as well as exclusive behind the scenes sneak peeks captured in the Olympic Village by our athletes

“We know just how committed Kiwi sports fans are and we are proud to play a part in bringing the athletes and their supporters together. Jossi and Anna will be two of more than 2,500 athletes with Samsung smartphones at the Olympic Games. We wish them both well and can’t wait to share in their Olympic success,” said Mike Cornwell, Marketing Director, Samsung New Zealand.

API driven Data-led content

Omega, the official timekeeper of the game, is providing technology and personnel for the timing of hundreds of events during the event and the results are then interconnected via APIs. The APIs can measured one-millionth of a second, or a microsecond and the data is then shared by APIs with any number of media outlets.

The Press Association delivers the dynamic, multilingual content you need for the Winter Olympics using suite of API-driven Winter Olympic widgets. The widgets provide rich linked data, editorial, images, video and infographics covering all essential pre, live and post-Games data and text. The Association alone has generated 50 billion transactions.

Yahoo has built the YQL Web Service that enables applications to query, filter, and combine data from different sources across the Internet. YQL can access several types of datasources, including Yahoo web services, other web services, and web content in formats such as HTML, XML, RSS, and Atom to present customized data such as which countries have own highest number of gold for the past 20 years, customized report of game data etc.

Lastly, IFTTT has created a SMS service that lets you SMS to your phone when your country wins a Gold medal. The API service creates powerful connections with one simple statement. Users can grab all important Olympic scorecard data such as keep a simple spreadsheet of your country’s Olympic medal wins, or send me an email when new Olympic medal for country.


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