Simon Scullion

Into Round Robin 2 we go, with the pressure building on the teams in mid-table to out a string of results together to try and make a stake for the 4th semi-final spot. i still don’t see any real danger to the big three teams, though the Kiwis will be starting to worry that they are some way behind Oracle’s consistency.

So my picks are:

Flight 1

• BMW ORACLE Racing - United Internet Team Germany
• Victory Challenge - Team Shosholoza
• Luna Rossa Challenge - China Team
• Emirates Team New Zealand - Mascalzone Latino - Capitalia Team
• Areva Challenge - +39 Challenge

Flight 2

• Team Shosholoza - United Internet Team Germany
• BMW ORACLE Racing - China Team
• Luna Rossa Challenge - Victory Challenge
• +39 Challenge - Desafío Español 2007
• Areva Challenge - Mascalzone Latino - Capitalia Team

Disclaimer: I know some matches in flight 1 were raced yesterday, but I have not seen the results prior to posting this!

The second week of the Louis Vuitton Cup gave us a much better spectacle, with fewer flights rescheduled, some good close racing and a couple of surprise results.

The rankings are starting to stabilise, with the three big teams at the top and Desafío Español in the final berth for the semi-finals. BMW Oracle Racing are no longer unbeaten, and the Kiwis Emirates Team New Zealand will be looking to improve their perfomances during the second round of matches.

Predictions RoundupWith the Round Robin 1 complete, my stats for the round are 42 correct picks from the 55 matches. Thats an average of 76%, or just under 4 out of every 5 matches per flight. Not bad if I say so myself! :-p

Some big matches today, particularly for the Spanish and Americans. Desafío will be looking to capitalise on the two wins earned yesterday and prove themselves real contenders against their direct rivals for the semi-finals. Emirates cannot afford many more slipups, and will be looking to claw back some points by halting Oracle’s unbeaten run in their second match, if the Spaniards haven’t already managed to register a big win in flight 10.

So, on to my picks:

Flight 10

• Luna Rossa Challenge    -    Mascalzone Latino - Capitalia Team
• Emirates Team New Zealand    -    Victory Challenge
• BMW ORACLE Racing    -    Desafío Español 2007
• +39 Challenge    -    China Team
• Areva Challenge    -    United Internet Team Germany

Flight 11

• +39 Challenge    -    United Internet Team Germany
• Team Shosholoza    -    Areva Challenge
• Mascalzone Latino - Capitalia Team    -    Victory Challenge
• Luna Rossa Challenge    -    Desafío Español 2007
• Emirates Team New Zealand    -    BMW ORACLE Racing

Following a perfect 10 yesterday, here are my picks for today’s flights 8 & 9:

Flight 8

• Victory Challenge - Areva Challenge
• BMW ORACLE Racing - +39 Challenge
• Desafío Español 2007 - United Internet Team Germany
• Mascalzone Latino – Capitalia Team - Team Shosholoza
• China Team - Emirates Team New Zealand

Flight 9

• BMW ORACLE Racing - Mascalzone Latino - Capitalia Team
• Desafío Español 2007 - Victory Challenge
• Emirates Team New Zealand - Luna Rossa Challenge
• Team Shosholoza - +39 Challenge
• Areva Challenge - China Team

The big match today sees Emirates Team New Zealand looking to secure an important win over Luna Rossa Challenge, which would give them a three point margin over the Italians, with one match in hand. BMW ORACLE Racing meanwhile, will be looking not to slip up and lose their unbeaten record against Mascalzone Latino.

Today flights 6 & 7 are planned, which gives us the possibility of some more interesting matches, following yesterday’s big win for the South Africans, and a bad day for Luna Rossa who lost both their matches.

Here are my predictions again, winners in bold as always:

Flight 6

• China Team - Desafío Español 2007
• Team Shosholoza - Emirates Team New Zealand
• Areva Challenge - Luna Rossa Challenge
• United Internet Team Germany - Mascalzone Latino - Capitalia Team
• +39 Challenge - Victory Challenge

Flight 7

• BMW ORACLE Racing - Areva Challenge
• Luna Rossa Challenge - +39 Challenge
• United Internet Team Germany - Emirates Team New Zealand
• Mascalzone Latino – Capitalia Team - China Team
• Desafío Español 2007 - Team Shosholoza

Team Shosholoza will be looking to build on their progress so far, on another challenging day for them with matches against the Kiwis and Spanish. Both should win, but we have seen enough from Shosholoza to know that they are capable of putting in the performances to beat the big teams, and won’t be taken lightly by either of their opponents today. Luna Rossa will be looking to recover from yesterday’s disappointment, whilst Emirates Team New Zealand will be hoping to see themselves back at the top of the table this evening.

All this providing we get some wind in Valencia!

According to the beeb, it looks like Blackberry (RIM) are going to open up and make their applications run on Windows Mobile 6 devices.

An interesting one to follow, as up until now, the hardware and software has been tied together, much like Apple Macs and the Mac OSX operating system.

Update: Here is RIMs press release on the subject.

Yet another day without wind!

So, flights 4 & 5 planned for today. We’ll see.

My predictions are here

Jake has an interesting post over on Codestore about managing large numbers of Domino based blogs.

The client is a university with about 20,000 students. They want to give each student the ability to blog.

He is asking for input regarding scalability and the use of one large database versus a large number of individual databases. This sounds like a cool project, and is something I have thought about a bit in the past. Personally I agree with the consensus and go the route of individual databases, building an admin tool and landing page as a front end.

However, reading Jake’s entry got me thinking to Lotus Connections, and it was a comment that Warren left that prompted me to write this post. The line in particular I’m referring to is:

“(and a whole lot better than Lotus Connections…)”

Now, I haven’t seen much on Connections yet, but it sounds like a cool product, and I imagine that IBM would be looking at the situation Jake raises as the ideal use scenario. Certainly for the blogging and community modules. I would expect that the blog functionality be pretty capable, including the ability to mark posts as private, and certainly managable for the admins.

Am I mistaken? Why would I rule out Connections in this kind of situation? I’d be interested to hear any thoughts on this, and the level of feature parity between Connections and the Domino blog template.

Today sees flights 4 and 5 rescheduled as yesterday only saw flight 3 completed due to lack of wind yet again.

If we get some racing today, there are a few interesting matches. In flight 4, the big match is between the Spanish and Italians, both who’ll be hoping to make the semis. In flight 5 we see the big teams clashing with Luna Rossa Challenge taking on BMW ORACLE Racing. Desafío Español 2007 have a big day, and will be going all out to register an important victory against the Kiwis this afternoon.

So here is a repost of my picks (winners in bold):

Flight 4

• United Internet Team Germany - China Team
• Team Shosholoza - Luna Rossa Challenge
• Victory Challenge - BMW ORACLE Racing
• Areva Challenge - Emirates Team New Zealand
• Desafío Español 2007 - Mascalzone Latino - Capitalia Team

Flight 5

• China Team - Team Shosholoza
• Emirates Team New Zealand - Desafío Español 2007
• Victory Challenge - United Internet Team Germany
• Luna Rossa Challenge - BMW ORACLE Racing
• +39 Challenge - Mascalzone Latino - Capitalia Team

The first week of the Louis Vuitton Cup has seen a lot of waiting, some interesting results, and already a big upset with Mascalzone Latino beating Emirates Team New Zealand in the first flight back on Friday.

The table is looking more or less as I would have expected, though with the leaders in a diferent order. With only three flights raced for all but three teams, only Ellison’s BMW Oracle Racing and the Italians Mascalzone Latino and Luna Rossa are unbeaten.

I think United Internet Team Germany will be diappointed with how their campaign has started and maybe have under-achieved during the first week. On the other hand, Mascalzone Latino and Victory Challenge will both be very happy to have got wins in all their races so far.

 Predictions Roundup

My predictions for Flights 1 & 2 weren’t too good, I only managed to pick 6 out of 10, with flight one particularly bad, I only got 2 correct!

Flight 3, like flight 2 was better, getting 4 of the 5 correct.

So, so far I’m at 66% (10/15). I’m happy with that for now!