A huge congratulations to Mark Cavendish on winning the Tour de France's green jersey. That's the colour worn by the leader in the Tour's points competition, which is the race's most consistent high-finisher.
I watched more coverage of the Tour de France this year than ever before. It might be because I've been cycling more (myself) this year, but it's probably got more to do with ITV's superb coverage on TV and online.
The online coverage had a quick user registration process - literally just the email address. The benefit of the registration was twofold:
- Users could watch the coverage(!)
- Users received an email when coverage started the next day
The second advantage was very refreshing - literally receiving an email when "the Tour" started each day, and then I received notification when the entire Tour highlights was on TV and the Internet.
Websites that require registration for no apparent reason other than untargeted 'spam' email could learn a lot from ITV. The only piece of feedback to ITV for their online coverage is to increase the quality by increasing the video bitrate. I don't mind the adverts because I understand they are paying for the content in the first place.
