Today Asahi newspaper announced that it will be using mobile technology in its coverage of this year’s Tokyo Marathon. The company will use IC chips and GPS enabled phones to provide location information of participants for its special mobile site.

Each runner will have an IC chip embedded in their vest and escort vehicles will carry GPS enabled mobile phones. The escort vehicles will use the phones to transmit the runners’ locations back to a server and the results will be displayed as a map on the Asahi mobile sports site.

The marathon will be held on the 19^th of September and access to the Asahi mobile site is charged at a monthly rate of 105 yen.

# posted by Jan Kuczynski @ 12:38 pm