If you’re heading to the prestigious Wimbledon Tennis tournament this year, then IBM has created a must-have app for your iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 or Android handset. Dubbed IBM Seer, the app acts as you personal club guide, with a GPS-enabled grounds map which shows you where you are and where you want to be.
The really clever bit, though, is the augmented reality feature. Pointing your handset in the vague direction of nearby cheers or heartfelt groans, you’ll be able to pick the relevant court and click swiftly through to live video from the ongoing game. If you’re too polite for that, you can see the current scores at a glance. So even if you’re stuck languishing at Nobody v. Somebody on Court 19, you’ll be able to keep up with the real excitement on Centre Court.
It’s not just courts that count, though. There are toilets and food outlets highlighted as points of interest, too so you can plot the quickest route to strawberries and cream. Handily, you can check out which taxi rank has the smallest queue thanks to the live video feeds from each.
The BBC video feeds that will be available in the app won’t be accessible from outside the grounds – I see what you’re thinking, you’re thinking a sneaky bit of free Wimbledon action. No dice, buster. Not within the app, anyway – but there’s always live updates on the BBC News site, as well as iPlayer for catching up with the action.
The Seer application for iPhone and Android will be available in the relevant app stores in time for the tournament to begin – the action begins on Monday 21st June. If only we were going, sigh.
Check out the video below for some hands-on time with the app.
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