The 2015/16 Ghana Premier League (GPL) enters match week 10 this weekend with top of the fixture pile, the Super Clash between bitter rivals, Accra Hearts of Oak and Kumasi Asante Kotoko.
Watch Sportscrusader.com preview show of the GPL with the national chief drummer of the Ghana Black Stars, Joseph Langabell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVhs8liCtD0
FIFA president Gianni Infantino hopes the 2018 World Cup in Russia will be the first tournament where video referees help officials with “game-changing” decisions.
In March, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) said it would test technology over a two-year period to help with goals, red cards, mistaken identities and penalties.
That was set to start no later than the 2017-18 season but Infantino said testing would “start now and will take two years”.
The Swiss, who succeeded Sepp Blatter as boss of world football’s governing body in February, added: “This means that by March 2018 we will see if it works or not.
“I really hope that the World Cup in Russia will be the first World Cup where video refereeing is used to make refereeing maybe better.”
In the experiments, a video assistant referee will have access to video replays during matches and will either review an incident on request or communicate with the referee proactively about an incident that may have been missed by the officials on the field of play.
On a visit to Moscow, Infantino also said he had received assurances from the Russian government that the economic crisis engulfing the country would not affect preparations for the 2018 tournament.
Hawk-Eye to be used at Euro 2016
Meanwhile, UEFA has selected British company Hawk-Eye as the goal-line technology supplier for all matches at Euro 2016.
The camera-based system that is used in the Premier League was chosen ahead of Germany-based Goal Control, which was in operation at the 2014 World Cup.
European football’s governing body UEFA decided to introduce the technology in January after incidents where goals had not been given despite crossing the line.
Co-hosts Ukraine were denied such a goal against England at Euro 2012.
In contrast to the Premier League, Uefa has previously opted to use additional assistant referees in its competitions, including the Champions League, and will continue to use five officials at Euro 2016 in France.
“Goal-line technology and additional assistant referees complement each other perfectly,” UEFA’s chief refereeing officer Pierluigi Collina said.
Hawk-Eye, which uses seven cameras per goal, was chosen after a selection process in which all four FIFA-licensed goal-line technology providers were invited to provide information and submit commercial offers.
It was the first company to receive a FIFA goal-line technology license and, in addition to the Premier League, it is already used in the Bundesliga and Serie A as well as in the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada.
Credit: BBC
Facebook has stopped using Adobe’s Flash technology to show video across the entire social network.
Instead Facebook has developed a video player built around the widely used HTML5 technology.
Games on Facebook would still use Flash, it said, but it was looking into ways to change those too.
The site is one among many that have turned away from Flash. Many see it as a security problem because bugs in it are often exploited by cyber thieves.
Daniel Baulig, a front-end developer at Facebook, said the switch to HTML5 had helped the firm speed up the development of its video-handling system. HTML is the basic computer language underpinning the web.
In addition, he said, the HTML5 video player worked much better with accessibility tools such as screen readers that are used by people who do not see well.
Mr Baulig said it introduced the HTML5 player a while ago for a small number of Facebook members who kept their web browsers up-to-date. It did not launch all at once with HTML5 because testing revealed problems with the new player.
“We noticed that a lot of the older browsers would simply perform worse using the HTML5 player than they had with the old Flash player,” he said. “We saw more errors, longer loading times, and a generally worse experience.”
Facebook ran HTML5 and a Flash-based video player in parallel while it ironed out bugs. Now, the stability of the new video player has persuaded the social network to roll it out by default.
YouTube switched to a HTML5 based player in January 2015 and in September the BBC released an HTML5 version of its iPlayer catch-up TV service. Many other sites now offer alternatives to Adobe’s technology.
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BBC
