The NOS (public broadcaster in the Netherlands) is broadcasting an speed skating championship. Not only on television. They are also streaming it live on the web.

What is interesting about the website is that the NOS linked the time information to the website in addition to the video stream.

You’re watching the game and immediately you see extra information about the times and the context of these times compared to other ice skaters in the right column. This information stays visible until the game is over.

Watching something on the web is more fragmented. On a television we want a full screen experience, we don’t like it when so called screen-estate is traded for information (picture in picture). In web interfaces it’s the other way around. We don’t like a full screen experience. It takes away the feeling of control and interactivity.

We like separate windows with as much information as possible. The speed skating website is just doing this. It is starting to link real time data from a database to the web interface. And this is just the start of the things you can do with live data and streaming video.