Eight is a lucky number in China. The word for it — ba — sounds so close to the word for wealth that many people believe eight is a number that is linked to prosperity. So it is no surprise that the opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games were at 8:08:08 p.m. on 8/8/08.

The date was also special for Schematic. For the last 8 months a team of designers and developers has been working diligently with MSFT, NBC, Delta Tre (CMS), 2 CDNs (Limelight and Akamai), Omniture, DoubleClick, and multiple NBC constituents to bring the Olympic Silverlight video player into being. NBCOlympics.com is one of the most ambitious projects on the web and one of the largest Silverlight applications deployed today. You can see it right here.

And if you do check out that link, you won’t be alone: on Friday there were 70 million page views. On Saturday the site had 3.1 million video starts.

The NBC Olympics player will provide access to every moment of video of every event at the Beijing games; value-added features provide both context and control for users. The standard version of the player enables users to view on-demand and related video as well as athlete bios, sport-specific information and trivia. Schematic was completely responsible for creating the Enhanced experience. The enhanced video player provides near HD quality video and picture-in-picture capability; it also uses Silverlight’s transparency capabilities so users can simultaneously navigate through menus while watching an event onscreen. Users can also track the action and navigate via a continuous stream of broadcasters’ live expert commentary and play by play links. The standout feature is the “Live Video Control Room,” which allows viewers to select videos, configure the display and watch as many as four live video streams simultaneously.

But the real story is the Schematic team and the outstanding service the team provided our client. The team had to balance the marketing needs of MSFT, against the business goals of NBC (advertising) against the technical complexities of developing an application on an alpha then beta platform for content that was to be delivered on an infrastructure that was being built as we were developing. Schematic helped MSFT minimize the risk of such an ambitious, high-profile development. We were trusted consultants who weighed in on the features Silverlight needed to support, and we actually helped the MSFT team debug Silverlight.

Cross office collaboration was fantastic; it involved New York, Atlanta, Costa Rica and Los Angeles. We have a 6 month running Skype chat. Hopefully the team will not go into withdrawal after the project is over. Collaboration with other vendors was important as most of them did not have services set up for Silverlight and Schematic worked with them to define and develop the features necessary to support Silverlight. Travel was a necessity. Team members traveled to NYC, to Atlanta, to Redmond, and to Turin. Mix it up and do it again and then do it again. I don’t even know what that last trip to Turin was for, but Seth and Cory said it was necessary. The team went above and beyond to hit critical launch dates repeatedly–working with a team this talented and dedicated was a pleasure.

“Is Trevor anxious about something?” We’ll never have to ask that question again–we’ll just have to look at what he’s wearing. (Hint: hope it’s not a suit.) He and Nick Worth are featured in a great WSJ article today that dissects the “CEO Casual” look.  With a subtitle like “One Executive’s Views On Custom Shirts and Chest Hair,” how could you resist checking out the article in its entirety? The feature also includes a great video.

Enjoy!

Just a couple more days til the Beijing Olympics begin (08/08/08) and the world gets a look at the Silverlight video player that we helped develop in cooperation with Microsoft and NBC. The player is set to forever change the way fans experience the Olympic games, with  NBC streamling 2,200 hours of 25 events live and making just about all of the Games (around 4,000 hours) available through video archives for users across North America.

Understandably, we’re getting lots of great press, including high-profile articles in the following publications:

Investors Business Daily

Hollywood Reporter

Redmond Developer

Enjoy!

PS: And a big thank you to Matthew Rechs for being such a great company spokesman.

by Michael Driscoll, Senior Project Manager

It’s tee for two, or three, or more with PGATour’s new Custom Close Up View . . .

Our good friends at Turner Sports and PGATour.com launched a new feature yesterday for Live Shot Tracking called Custom Close Up. The enhancement allows users to track only the players they want to see through an entire tournament. If the full field has too many players to track, users can select their favorite golfers and follow them shot-for-shot using the application’s real time updates. Custom Close Up is available right now during the John Deere Classic tournament only at PGATour.com.

If you’re just catching up or want to know more about our PGATour.com Live Shot Tracking project, check out our posting from May 22.

The following press release hit the wires this morning. Congratulations to everyone involved in this amazing project!

***

Schematic Brings NBC’S Coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to Millions of Americans With Development of Silverlight-based Online Video
Channel for NBCOlympics.com on MSN

Coverage Debuts With Live Streaming of This Week’s Olympic Trials; NBC to Deliver 2,200 Hours of Live Action from Beijing Olympics, August 8-24, 2008

NEW YORK (JULY 2, 2008) Schematic, a WPP Digital company, announced today its development of the groundbreaking Web video player anchoring NBC’s online coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games on NBCOlympics.com on MSN.  The announcement was made today by Perkins Miller, Senior Vice President, Digital Media, NBC Sports and Olympics, and Trevor Kaufman, CEO of Schematic.  The player debuts this week with live, streaming coverage of the U.S. Olympic trials at NBCOlympics.com.

Created using Microsoft Silverlight 2, the video player will deliver 2,200 hours of live, streaming coverage from NBC to millions of Americans with an unprecedented level of picture quality, interactive features and user control. As the largest Web event ever, the player will also allow visitors to NBCOlympics.com on MSN to access over 3,000 hours of on-demand video, including full-event replays, highlights and interviews.

Tapped by NBC Universal and Microsoft for its expertise in implementing the latest technologies and success in creating award-winning user interfaces for the world’s largest brands, Schematic’s player for NBCOlympics.com on MSN represents the highest-profile deployment of Microsoft Silverlight 2. All of the content will be available free-of-charge and the video player will feature more than a dozen live video streams at peak times to ensure that fans will be able to watch their favorite athletes go for gold in 25 Olympic sports.

“Fans are going to be truly amazed at both the quality of the live video and the comprehensive menu of sports available for viewing,” said Trevor Kaufman, CEO of Schematic. “We believe that Silverlight’s powerful and distinctive capabilities were critical in enabling us to build such a fluid and satisfying user experience. At Schematic, we are very pleased to have been entrusted by NBC and Microsoft to create this transformation of their Olympics coverage.”

The interface is designed to be simple to use and is packed with a broad range of helpful tools. Fans can watch up to four live streams from the same event at once. The picture-in-picture feature lets fans watch a program displayed in inset windows while another program is displayed on the full screen. Fans can view and navigate via an expert commentary displayed over the video. They can also access rich meta data such as results and athlete information while they’re watching,  plus they can receive alerts to ensure they catch their favorite events live. Additionally, the player features multiple bit rate (MBR), which automatically matches the quality of the video to the user’s connection speed.

“It’s our goal to deliver the best Olympics experience to the broadest audience,” said Perkins Miller, Senior Vice President, Digital Media, NBC Sports and Olympics. “We turned to Microsoft and Schematic to help us design a dynamic and rich viewing experience for NBCOlympics.com on MSN.”

“NBCOlympics.com on MSN is an unprecedented example of the power and possibility to break out of the traditional television box,” said Steve Sklepowich, group product manager, Silverlight media, Microsoft Corp. “The team at Schematic did an impressive job harnessing the features of Silverlight to provide a truly interactive, hi-def experience that puts the viewer in control of the content.”

About NBC Olympics
NBC, “America’s Olympic Network,” owns the exclusive U.S. media rights to the Olympic Games, television’s most powerful property, through 2012, which includes Beijing in 2008, Vancouver in 2010 and London in 2012. From August 8-24, 2008 NBC Universal will present an unprecedented 3,600 hours of coverage, highlighted by NBC in primetime with live swimming, gymnastics and beach volleyball. In August 2004, 203 million viewers watched as the networks of NBC Universal–NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Bravo, Telemundo, and NBC’s HD affiliates–offered a then record 1,210 hours of Olympic coverage from Athens. For additional information, go to NBCOlympics.com, a year-round destination for fans of Olympic sports, featuring news, Beijing previews, athlete features, expert blogs, photos, Olympic video from the NBC archives and social tools enabling users to build communities around their favorite sports, post comments and blogs.

About Schematic
Schematic, a WPP Digital company, deploys and develops solutions for the Web, mobile devices, television, digital environments and emerging platforms. Schematic offers complete strategic, creative, marketing and technology services to Fortune 1000 companies, including Disney, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Condé Nast and Turner. For more information, please visit http://www.schematic.com

Product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

It’s a great interview that highlights our ingenuity and our status as one of Microsoft’s top partners–congratulations and thanks, Jonathan! Read the whole thing here.

According to Sony Ericsson, the campaign ($15 million over three years)  is the “single largest commitment to promote the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour players” in the history of the tour. It will include TV, print, digital and viral advertising, and will gather momentum stateside around the US Open in August. More info here.

Kurt is appearing as part of an industry panel on information sharing and protection within the context of cyber security.

For more information, go here.

Schematic’s New York office recently developed an animated :30 spot for Fountain House, a professional self-help program for men and women recovering from mental illness. Fountain House, founded in 1948 and located on West 47th Street, pioneered the “clubhouse” model, which is recognized worldwide as one of the most successful models for rehabilitation.

To honor Fountain House’s 60th anniversary, Panasonic donated time on its AstroVision billboard. The video will run twice an hour throughout June at :19 and :48 minutes after the hour. For you non-New Yorkers, check it out on the Times Square Cam. . . and look for the Schematic logo in the lower left corner.

Schematic’s Chief Strategy Officer, Kurt Kratchman, will be speaking at the 2008 nextMEDIA conference in Banff, Alberta, on Saturday, June 7. The session, entitled “Brilliant Ideas You Need to Know About Now! - Digital Distribution for the Next Generation,” will feature Kurt’s discussion with Jeff Barr, Senior Web Services Evangelist at Amazon.com, about cloud computing. Kurt will also appear on Monday, June 9, as part of the “Digital Heavy Hitters” panel that opens the 2008 Banff World Television Festival.

More on nextMEDIA here.

More on the Banff World Television Festival here.