Olympic fanmail kicks off
Summary Description IBM has launched the official site for sending encouragement to athletes.
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Roullas Top10 Simon Vandore

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Editorial InformationArticle Location
Article Topic Internet
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Story Group 000730
Post Date 24/07/2000 05:08 PM Status Posted Entered by Simon Vandore on 24/07/2000 01:43 PM


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Introduction
Australian athletes have welcomed the official Olympic FanMail site, launched today by IBM, which will store messages of support sent to competitors by the public.

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"Let's bring down the system!" shouted swimming coach Lawrie Lawrence, encouraging sports fans to overload the FanMail servers with 'e-cheering'.
Director of IBM’s Olympic Project office, Rory Mack, predicted the site would generate a million messages from around the world. Lawrence said he believes Australians alone would send that number.
Messages of up to 50 words can be typed into the site's online form and immediately posted to individiual competitors or entire teams. An email address can be included, meaning athletes will be able to respond directly to their supporters. A huge cybercafe known as the Surf Shack will be available to competitors in the Olympic village, while a floating equivalent at Cockle Bay in Sydney's Darling Harbour will be open to the public.
Athletes will be able to design and update their own Web pages using templates developed by IBM. Visitors to the FanMail site are able to search for these by country, sport, and competitor name.
Though the site operates in English only, it is aimed at supporters and competitors all around the world. Interpreters capable of translating 28 languages will be on hand to help athletes understand messages not written in their native tongue. Mack said a filtering system had been developed to make sure the FanMail site was not used to threaten or discourage athletes -- posts containing words such as 'bomb' would be automatically censored.
Lawrence and world junior champion hurdler Jana Pittman sent the system's first message of encouragement, aimed at all athletes in the Australian team.
"Aerodynamically the bumblebee cannot fly," typed Pittman, "But it does not know this so it keeps on flying anyway . . . fly on to your personal best."
At both the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and the 1998 Nagano Winter Games, the Surf Shack was one of the most popular places in the Olympic village. About 90% of Nagano athletes read their FanMail messages and nearly 70% built home pages, and about 300,000 messages were sent by supporters in 126 countries.
"We really do appreciate it and it does inspire us to do great things," basketballer Andrew Gaze said.


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Bulletin SummaryOlympic fanmail kicks off
Australian athletes have welcomed the official Olympic FanMail site, launched today by IBM, which will store messages of support sent to competitors by the public. "Let's bring down the system!" shouted swimming coach Lawrie Lawrence, encouraging sports fans to overload the FanMail servers with 'e-cheering'. Director of IBM’s Olympic Project office, Rory Mack, predicted the site would generate a million messages from around the world. Lawrence said he believed Australians alone would send that number.

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Olympic fanmail kicks off

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