Zone4 and Summit Systems have completed integration with a new chip system by Tag Heuer.  This active chip system provides highly accurate timing and a promised competitive pricing model compared to other active chips on the market.  As well, Zone4 has launched a new Live Internet results feature which enables instantaneous automated live results on even dialup or tethered cell phone connections.  And to fully take advantage of these live internet results, Zone4 has added a mobile accessible results system at http://m.zone4.ca so results can be checked within seconds via any web enabled mobile device such as a blackberry, iphone, or regular cell phone browser.  See the live demonstration of this powerful combination performed yesterday at the Canmore Nordic Centre.

The Live Internet Results feature is a major step forward at it meets all the requirements I had set out for it which were:
    a) Absolute minimal bandwidth.  Zone4's syncing architecture is transmitting the information to the Zone4 server in it's most raw and minimalist form possible and so bandwidth is being measured in bytes, not kb.  This should allow it to work well on tethered cell phones in remote locations, and certainly on dialup.
    b) Results and traffic viewing those results all happen on the Zone4 server so no affect on the race program or connection to the race site.
    c) The feature is totally automated and runs in a side panel, not interfering with the regular timing experience.
    d) It picks up and transmits all types of changes to the race file including, category, racer, as well as of course timing and results updates.
    e) It reports back some minor stats from the server and allows you to pause/resume as well as trigger the updates manually if you want more fine tune control.

More features will be added to the live viewable results to allow better tracking for coaches and better access for mobile users, but as of now, the system is working very well with standard speeds of 5 seconds from racer passing to viewable online.