World Cup coverage
For anybody that didn’t notice, the World Cup has gotten underway in Germany. (For those that haven’t heard – every 4 years there’s a world football championship (here in the US we call it soccer).) The US National team is scheduled to play the Czech Republic Monday (the US side is in a tough group this time around.) Anyway, currently Germany/Costa Rica are tied 1-1 and I just tried out Google’s World cup results search. Just searching for world cup at Google yields current match scores and gives info on what match is up next. I was impressed that the update was within about a minute of Costa Rica’s equalizer goal….
For those looking for other “tech angles” on the world cup, you might look at The World Cup vs. Hackers at zdnet Australia….. (Germany just scored again 2-1…) They’re of course, ramping up for heavy expected traffic to official sites, but they’re also expected mischief. In fact, SANS and other security outfits have warned to be suspicious of mail messages (virus generated) taking advantage of the “big news” of the world cup. Many times we see “Big news” events turned into a viral opportunity (the death of al-zarqawi may prompt interest in virus circles…) but, the world cup being a predictable news event is more likely to have a huge audience and therefore is a perfect target.
SO…. beware, be cautious and enjoy the matches.
Oh, and the Official Google Blog is talking about some of their tools for keeping tabs on the cup matches.