World Cup Kicks Off With Great Web Coverage

…they will dedicate plenty of talk time to a 1-0 baseball game that took twice as long to play as the soccer match and heap praise on the pitchers.

Give Dan Patrick a rest starting today, and head over to the web for your World Cup fix. Since Germany has the audacity to be five hours ahead of the US in time zones, the 6 PM kickoff in Munich between Germany and Costa Rica starts at 1 PM here. That’s ok because the web is your friend.

World Cup coverage online starts with Yahoo, the host of the official World Cup site. The site offers news, inside features, and all the results and standings through the final game on July 9th.

Yahoo’s coverage extends to the mobile platform. Users of advanced phones can sign up for Mobile Matchcast, and receive match information, schedules, photos, and live match commentary on those devices.

There is also a mobile portal for browsing World Cup information from the phone. For people who want to follow a team or group play, Yahoo offers free SMS alerts to track all of the US matches or all of the matches in Group E, for example.

Google may pummel Yahoo regularly in online search share, but for once the mighty GOOG isn’t the ultimate destination for a class of online users. That doesn’t mean they will pass up a chance to take part in the fun.

Google and Nike have opened up their Joga site to all Google account holders who want to sign up for it. The soccer-focused site aims at the niche of fans who will be greatly excited for the next few weeks without caring a bit for the NBA playoffs, the Stanley Cup, the MLB All-Star Game, or the WNBA.

The main Google search will return World Cup scores when searching for a favorite player or team, according to Manu Rekhi, Product Manager, on the official Google Blog. There are new gadgets available for the Personalized Homepage, including a World Cup info module.

Google Desktop should have a World Cup gadget soon (clock’s ticking, Googlers.) On the mobile side, texting a team name to Google (46645) will return the team’s scores and schedules.

Even though ESPN’s chattering radio personalities don’t have much enthusiasm for the World Cup, the mothership’s website has a dedicated section already seat up to cover the event. For instance, they are on top of the Michael Ballack story, in noting that Germany’s captain will play in the opener today despite having been ruled out due to injury 24 hours prior.

If the mobile phone will be your only resource for World Cup information, 4INFO and Opera have options for feeding your World Cup needs, as the two companies co-promote their World Cup services.

4INFO (44636) offers information by SMS. Users can text “World Cup” to 4INFO to get all the daily scores. There are also options for texting team names or group names for those scores, or “schedule” plus the team name or “standing” plus the team name to retrieve that information.

Opera has a World Cup version of its Mini browser available at mini.opera.com/goal/ that can be installed on devices with a WAP browser. Also, desktop users of Opera 9 beta 2 can grab the World Cup Widget to keep track of scores, news, and group standings.

Let the games begin!

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

4Info scored an agreement with Gannett that will see the publisher distribute placements of 4Info service information in USA Today’s sections and across the numerous newspaper and broadcast companies Gannett owns, 4Info announced.

In October 2005, USA Today carried 4Info’s shortcode on the front of the sports and weather pages. Each section informed readers how to send a text message to 4Info for instant access to team scores, local forecasts, and other information.

4Info’s services are free to users, though the wireless provider may charge various fees and/or charges for text messaging.

This new partnership promises a much broader scope for 4Info. Gannett ranks as a leading international operator of newspapers; USA Today is America’s largest-selling daily.

Gannett publishes over a thousand non-daily publications in the US, as well as newspapers and other publications in the U.K. through its Newsquest subsidiary.

“Bringing aboard a strategic partner with the heft of Gannett, as well as its national distribution capability, is a fabulous step for us,” 4Info CEO Pankaj Shah said in a statement. “Constant touch with consumers via Gannett, and the resulting huge mobile audience, means high value for advertisers and other partners.”

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

I heard from Danit Ross at Zeno Group today; she mentioned a few new offerings made available from 4INFO, a provider of SMS search and other services. Users can text 4INFO (44636) to perform a search on a query, or utilize other functions.

The 25th Anniversary of the CMJ Music Marathon, taking place in New York in September, will have 4INFO providing a mobile event guide. With so many acts performing in a number of venues over the Marathon’s four days, this sounds like a very useful feature (and means not having to tote around a printed guide so you can leave it in the back of a cab.)

4INFO now supports WAP 2.0 capable mobile browsers; its mobile web search service can be reached from small screen browsers at http://wap.4INFO.net. Yellow Pages and driving directions can be found there along with other services. Later in August, the company plans to debut a Mobile Content Search, to help find music and other media from the handset.

And, 4INFO and JiWire have inked an agreement that makes JiWire’s directory of Wi-Fi hotspots in the US searchable via the 4INFO service.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.

4INFO will use the investment to accelerate the company’s growth, enhance product development and expand sales and marketing efforts. The company’s mobile search service allows consumers to find information — local directory, movie times, sports scores, stock quotes, weather, flight information and more — for free and quickly using their mobile phones. The service works with all major wireless carriers, including Verizon, Cingular and SprintPCS.

Mobile Search Hot Now
The mobile search scene has been gaining momentum over the last few months with FAST Search and Transfer launching their mSearch solution, O’Reilly declaring 2005 the year of mobile search, Google Mobile launching, Yahoo Mobile kicking off last year and numerous smaller and less noticeable (yet) outfits out there waiting in the wings. This latest injection of cash into a startup with a dodgy name but some neat looking technology will likely only the the tip of the iceberg.

“The mobile market continues to expand rapidly and the demand for information `on the go’ is exploding,” said Andreas Stavropoulos, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “4INFO has an impressive search service that delivers on the promise of fast and accurate results to mobile phones everywhere.”

Good luck to them, full press release here.

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