When I first arrived in Australia, one person in our office had a modem that I could borrow to send emails. And we were a cutting edge publishing company.
In desperation in the days before realplayer I used to keep in touch with UK sport by streaming internet radio through the hi-fi and tape shows onto compact cassettes to listen to in the car. I even once "watched" a 6 Nations game by pressing refresh for 80 minutes on a web page on Gwlad. And when was all this? Frighteningly, only a tad more than 10 years ago.
10 years. Realplayer! How we have changed.
It's Tuesday night in Sydney and Oli Bell has been on air on the excellent Sky Racing World talking excitedly about Royal Ascot for an hour now and the first race is still two hours away. In the meantime the twittersphere is chatting away. The Duff is looking for prices on Star Witness (and rightly pointing out the ridiculous offer of $3.50 from the TAB) and a number of equally educated horse people are tweeting tips. Every race tonight and all week is on live. With a choice of channels! And this gadget on my lap has just helped me read the excellent coverage on the Sporting Life for free, in full colour. To cop it all, Betfair have sent me a free copy of Timeform!
Life for the sit at home punter has really never been so good.
Doesn't make finding winners any easier though...
