Twicket was a village cricket match. It was shown live on the Internet. It could be watched form anywhere on the world. That happened on Easter Monday, 25 April 2011. The organisers did that to show that very fast broadband is useful. Very fast broadband helps community groups to upload content to the web. The organisers says Twicket was the first village cricket match ever to be streamed online.
Twicket is a made up word. The "Tw" is from Twitter. The "icket" is from Cricket.
There were reports about Twicket on BBC television news, on BBC Radio London, on TalkSport, and on Radio New Zealand.
It was written about by "The Guardian", and "Metro".
It was mentioned on Twitter by Stephen Fry, the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones and Jonathan Agnew. Agnew is the BBC's cricket correspondent.
John Popham is a consultant. He decided to show Twicket online after seeing two comments on Twitter. In the first comment, Dan Slee said he wanted to see news about his a local village cricket team on Twitter.
Then, Chris Conder mentioned that she was testing a new 30Mbps, symmetrical internet connection. "Symmetrical internet" means that the upload speed is as fast as the download speed. Conder lives in a village called Wray. Wray is in Lancashire, England. The connection was installed in Wray by Lancaster University Wray is one of only three villages in the UK to have a symmetrical community network.
Conder told Popham that a special cricket match was going to be played in Wray. The match was part of the village’s Scarecrow Festival. The Scarecrow Festival happens every year. The match was between Wray and a team called "The Rest of the World".
Popham said:
I'm confident we can do this, because the village Wi-Fi has a 30Mbps upload speed ... It's a bit of fun, but it has a serious purpose too. The serious side is to demonstrate that it can be done, it possible to live broadcast events like this using relatively cheap equipment and a good internet connection. It will also demonstrate the importance of good internet connectivity in rural areas, and the need for fast connections if we are to realise the aspiration to use the internet to enable more people to produce their own content.
The match was 20 overs per side. This is called the Twenty20 format. There was an extra rule that said that any batsman who scored 20 runs had to retire. Wray won the toss. They decided to bowl first. After 20 overs, The Rest of the World had scored 69 runs and lost 5 wickets. That meant that Wray needed 70 runs off 20 overs. Wray managed to do that. Their final runs were a six. Wray won in their eleventh over. They won by 8 wickets.
After the cricket match, there was a tug o'war contest. It was also streamed live. The rest of the world won. Interviews with some of the cricket players and other people were also shown on the internet.
The event was streamed on a website called Bambuser. Technical support was provided by a company from Birmingham called Aquila TV. Aquila used two Sony Z1 cameras and a DSR 350 camera. The most people watching at once was 2,733.
A separate sound-only commentary was broadcast on-line, by Radio Youthology. Radio Youthology are also from Birmingham. 1,780 people listened to the Radio Youthology commentary. That was Radio Youthology's biggest audience ever.
A BBC North West television news crew also went to the match. They made a short film. It was broadcast the same evening.
The hashtag for the event was #twicket. It was trending on Twitter just before the end of the match.
Dustin Brown
Dustin James Brown (born November 4, 1984 in Ithaca, New York) is an NHL ice hockey right winger that plays for the Los Angeles Kings where he is the current team captain. He was picked by the Kings with the 13th overall pick in the 2003 NHL Entry Draft. He also played in the OHL with the Guelph Storm.
He was on the Team USA's men's ice hockey team in the 2010 Winter Olympics where they won the silver medal.
Mexican War of Independence
The Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821) was a war between the people of Mexico and the Spanish colonial government. It started on 16 September 1810 since Mexican-born Spaniards ("criollo people"), Mestizos and Amerindians wanted their independence from Spain.
The idea of Mexican independence went back to the years after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. Martín Cortés led a revolt against the Spanish government.
After the failed in 1799, the War of Independence really started with the Grito de Dolores in 1810. Spain was busy fighting for its independence against the invading First French Empire during the Peninsular War and most of Latin America revolted.
Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, was a Mexican priest and a member of a group of educated "Criollos" in Querétaro. They met in "tertulias" (salons) and decided in 1810 that a revolt against the colonial government was needed because Napoleon I had replaced the King of Spain with a French foreigner. Hidalgo worked closely with Ignacio de Allende, a nobleman with military training, for a battle in December 1810.
They were betrayed by a member of the group. Hidalgo turned to his parishioners in the town of Dolores. Around 6:00 a.m. on September 16, 1810, he declared independence from the Spanish crown and war against the government in what was known as the "Grito de Dolores". The revolutionary army decided to fight for independence and marched on to Guanajuato, which was a major colonial mining center that was governed by Spaniards and criollos.
There, the leaders of the "Citizens' Army," which was poorly organized, locked themselves in the granary and killed most of the Spaniards and Criollos who were there. That included high-ranking nobles and supporters of the fight for independence, which caused Hidalgo and Allende to fight with each other.
Allende no longer wanted to fight alongside Hidalgo and left with his soldiers.
On October 30, Hidalgo's army fought the Spanish resistance at the Battle of Monte de las Cruces and won.
In January 1811, Spanish forces fought the Battle of the Bridge of Calderón and won. That made the rebels flee towards the United States-Mexican border, where they hoped to escape, but they were caught by the Spanish Army.
Hidalgo and what was left of his army were caught in the state of Coahuila at the Wells of Baján. He had a trial done by the Spanish Inquisition on 30 July 1811 and was executed.
After Hidalgo's death of Father Hidalgo, the leadership of the revolutionary army was taken over by José María Morelos. Under his leadership, the cities of Oaxaca and Acapulco were taken. In 1813, the Congress of Chilpancingo had its first meeting. On 6 November, the Congress signed the first official document of independence, known as the Solemn Act of the Declaration of Independence of Northern America.
A long war followed at the Siege of Cuautla. In 1815, Morelos was caught by Spanish colonial authorities. He was put on trial and executed for treason in San Cristóbal Ecatepec on 22 December.
By the early 1820s, the independence movement was close to collapsing. Two of its main leaders had been executed, and the rebels could not easily fight the well-organized Spanish military. Also, many of the most influential criollos did not care any more. The violence of the unorganized army of Hidalgo and Morelos was not liked. The Mexicans wanted a better and less bloody way to get their independence.
In December 1820, Viceroy Juan Ruiz de Apodaca sent a force led by a royalist criollo officer, Colonel Agustín de Iturbide, to fight in Oaxaca. Iturbide was famous for the way in which he went after the rebels during the early independence struggle.