Friday am Australian Eastern Standard Time (all times quoted are based on EST).
PLEASE NOTE: Over the next few hours some main menu items (such as statistics) will be available but will be empty until we have something to put in that area.
It is a Friday morning and I have just been setting up my gear in a neat little booth right in
the centre of the action. And what an amazing place with 
(38,147 bytes /10:30am 17th March) water taxis to get you about
the Gold Coast - is a tourist paradise sitting on the lip of the Pacific Ocean. There are skyscraper hotels, sparkling clean sandy
beaches as far as the eye can see 
(36,978 bytes/10:45am 17th March) magnificent homes and broadwater and the ocean... clean, soft, blue and peaceful.
How did I get here? I drove here from my home in the magnificent heritage city of Ipswich this morning. Ipswich is 40 kilometres west of Brisbane and is the recognised leader in Australia to provide its community with access to the Global Highways. The journey took me about an hour along an 80km long freeway joining the two major population centres. The weather was, as always, great.
Here in the Indy Media Centre things are anything but peaceful. As I try to concentrate with a cup of cold tea in hand I find I am being hounded by reporters wanting to find out all about the Internet... (They really are nice people - but we will be keeping an eye on them in the "Heard in the Media Centre section").
Look out for us on your TV (ha! ha!) well you never know.. stranger things have happened.
Now here is the challenge - and I would ask that you bear with me over the weekend. We will be updating a range of files live as things occur over the weekend. Things are sure to go wrong***@?? from time to time as we are doing this live. If they don't I will post a picture of me doing a handstand on the Indy track (on Sunday night after the race) - don't worry this is an event that is unlikely to happen.
We will rectify any problems as soon as we can but would ask you to E-mail us on
gwb@gil.ipswichcity.qld.gov.au if you see a bug we don't pick up.
We will be there-
Remember your best source of all updates will be found under the During menu option:
"Summary of log updates made during the Indy Carnival weekend."
Use this as your key to updates that we make - and there will be many over the weekend. If you want to look at a main area like statistics; pictures or news use the option listed under the During the Indy icon. The time of the latest update will be posted at the top of the During the Indy main menu.
We have created links between the Before Icon and the During Icon so that you don't have to return to the Home Page to gain access. As this Home Page is large (memory wise) try to operate within the sub menu items of these sections. They will provide you with access to all the information updates and history.
For the techos -
I have two phone lines linked back to Global Info-Links (Ipswich City's Internet access provider).
One line provides a direct feed on the Indy information for the reporters here at the media centre.
The other line will be used to upload updates to the Indy program.
Documents are prepared in Microsoft Word converted under CU-HTML2 then cleaned up under HTML before they are added to the program. I have an instant Polaroid camera and hope to supplement my efforts by taking a lean on pics provided by some of the morass of journalists here. A Hewlett Packard flatbed ScanJetIIcx scanner will be used to prepare these pics prior to their inclusion in the updates. The scanner is linked to a 486 /50 tower IBM PC.
The map under the incidents section will be updated with Animator Pro on this machine.
All 256 colour pictures accessed in conjunction with thumbnail sketches will be provided in JPEG format to save space and time. (Unlike pics under BEFORE THE INDY).
For the marketers -
The interactive design will change shape and focus dynamically as the weekend progresses. We have no master plan or preset ideas. We will be using our experience in the area of computer based marketing to let the Indy Carnival program evolve in a manner befitting the moment... its going to be fun.
For the graphic designers -
We use about twelve different graphics programs for a range of special purposes from Npaint to Animator Pro, LView Pro to PhotoShop. The graphics are created on the run and follow the theme of "GOLD"; classic icons; easy to follow menus and a style that allows us to be creative on the run (very important when things happen live).
Return to during the Indy News Home Page.
