Philadelphia Eagles will test CrowdOptic’s Google Glass tech at Lincoln Financial Field

Indiana Pacers cheerleaders wearing Google Glass. Credit: Indiana Pacers.

Indiana Pacers cheerleaders wearing Google Glass. Credit: Indiana Pacers.

After successfully convincing several NBA teams to use its Google Glass infrastructure technology, San Francisco startup CrowdOptic has scored an NFL deal, with the Philadelphia Eagles agreeing to test the company’s wearable-device apps at their home stadium, Lincoln Financial Field.

According to a press release out today, CrowdOptic will work with the Eagles’ infrastructure provider, Extreme Networks, which brought high-quality Wi-Fi to the stadium last year.

So far, the CrowdOptic technology has been used by the NBA’s Indiana Pacers, Sacramento Kings and Orlando Magic to provide Google Glass views to stadium jumbotrons. While having such an intimate, new point of view is interesting, CrowdOptic’s technology actually goes much deeper than simple broadcast enhancement; it can also provide a “heat map” of what an aggregate of Google Glass wearers are looking at, a feature that has many possible future applications. However, it’s unclear how stadiums and arenas might eventually regulate or administer Google Glass wearing by fans, and whether or not fans will ever be able to “broadcast” their own Google Glass video views.

“We are looking forward to testing this technology and finding ways to incorporate it into our gameday presentation,” said Brian Papson, Eagles Vice President of Marketing, in a prepared statement. “Our goal is always to provide our fans with unique and behind-the-scenes perspectives through a variety of different sources and we’re excited about the potential of using Google Glass technology through CrowdOptic.”

Guest Post: How CrowdOptic is helping the Indiana Pacers and the NBA use Google Glass

Pacers GlassEditor’s note: The following post is by Jon Fisher, CEO of CrowdOptic, the San Francisco company whose technology is helping bring Google Glass views to NBA arenas. While there’s been a lot of talk about how this is happening Fisher explains the deployment in some more detail here. The feature is being used at Bankers Life Fieldhouse for today’s opening game in the Eastern Conference Finals.

By Jon Fisher, CrowdOptic

The Pacers deployed Google Glass in real time powered by CrowdOptic in every home game since it first launched against the Miami Heat on March 26, and are deploying against Miami Sunday and through the playoffs.

Former Pacer Rik Smits with Google Glass at Sunday's game.

Former Pacer Rik Smits with Google Glass at Sunday’s game.

The solution is a package of 11 Glass devices positioned at court level — worn by a variety of Pacers employees and fans (including celebrities) to contribute immersive points of view of the action. These views are seen on the arena’s Jumbotron and have included scenes like the referees deliberating from the point of view of the game announcer right in front of them. The Pacers run this solution completely on their own logistically; they hand out Glass units and the CrowdOptic software runs on a server and laptops with dashboards in the AV room and truck.

Closer images than anything else

With the Google Glass experience, fans see faces and lips move from a more immersive perspective than a traditional broadcast camera allows. And Glass isn’t simply a GoPro-like camera in these situations (Glass is a computer) as the Pacers can text through the Glass interface telling the Glass wearers when they’re broadcasting live and/or to look in a different direction if necessary to capture a desired angle using a GUI / radar interface. The Glass wearers can dynamically change their broadcasting quality (bit rate) to conserve battery life. And the Pacers just announced the capability that anyone wearing Glass in-stadium will be able to zoom into these POVs on demand and even the POVs of the Pacers’ own stadium cameras.

Jeff Van Gundy looks very Evil Empire with Google Glass on.

Jeff Van Gundy looks very Evil Empire with Google Glass on.

This is possible using CrowdOptic technology (including U.S. Patent 8,527,340) to understand when and where the Glass units are aimed in common so inferior views of the action can be discarded for quality thereby translating the noise from the 11 Glass units into manageable broadcast streams algorithmically. Glass units aimed in the same direction can also be merged using the same technology, enabling one wearer to inherit the view of another authorized wearer.

It’s this zoom capability that the Pacers announced yesterday that we think completely changes the game. Finally, CrowdOptic is the only company currently capable of broadcasting from multiple Glass units in high density simply because we were focusing on this difficult problem early. We convert the Glass Wi-Fi signal from 2.4 to 5.0 GHz frequencies, we have optimized our code for large live events and are integrated with Wi-Fi deployers SignalShare and soon Extreme Networks, and we even have a WiMAX solution.

Jon Fisher, CEO of CrowdOptic, is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, inventor, author and economic analyst. Earlier he co-founded and was CEO of Bharosa, an Oracle Corporation company, which produced the Oracle Adaptive Access Manager. Fisheris a named inventor on six U.S. and eight foreign patents, and three U.S. and 17 foreign patents pending. Fisher is a recipient of the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Of The Year award.

Nike looks to abandon at least part of wearable effort

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NikeFuel, one of the most widely know sports wearables may be headed to the recycle bin as the company has slashed the development team internally just as a large number of rivals are looking to enter the wearable space.

There are few facts yet in the situation as Nike has not yet released an official announcement about its moves but last Friday C/Net broke the news story saying that Nike had laid off as many as 55 people from the 70 person division that develops the FuelBand. Its Digital Sports arm will still employ approximately 150 people after the cuts.

It looks like not only the FuelBand but also its sportswatch and any other wearables that were on the drawing board are now on the chopping block. Nike confirmed to C/Net that a change in direction and layoffs were in the works but said that it would continue to support and sell the Nike+FuelBand SE for the foreseeable future.

However the move does not mean that Nike is leaving the space, or that the money and effort that went into its recently opened lab in San Francisco are going to waste, instead the company is shifting its focus to software, which as the core mission for its just opened lab.

Of course this opens the door for a whole new range of speculation. Will Nike, which has appeared to favor Apple and its platform, continue down this road and possibly be the supplier of the software to the expected Apple smartwatch? Apple has a long history of doing both its own hardware and software and while it has been happy to accept Nike support on the app side, is that what Nike wants?

Then it could focus more on Google, which is the largest mobile OS provider and has a major push in the wearable space. While Google Glass gets most of the attention that is really just the tip of the iceberg. Google recently announced its Android Wear project designed to expand the wearable space and with it use of the company’s operating system.

This will be an interesting trend to follow and could show the impact that the growing strength of Google is having on a wide range of market segments going forward.

Show me where to park, buy me a drink, let me see the game with friends: Using new technology to solve ‘old’ stadium problems

There was a lot of talk about new technology at the recent Stanford Graduate School of Business Sports Innovation conference, but what really caught my attention was conversations about how some smart people are planning to use new technologies to solve perennial fan pain points, like parking and concession issues, or just getting tickets close to friends who also want to see the game. I think using tech to conquer mundane problems is a great idea, and could be part of more common-sense plans that could do more to help sagging attendance than cooler ideas like video replays or Google Glass broadcasts at games.

Don’t get me wrong — I think it’s great when teams like the Indiana Pacers and the Orlando Magic push the envelope to do things like have Google Glass views shown on their arena big screens. But listening to the folks from the new ownership team at the Sacramento Kings as well as some other smart folks from the Pac-12 conference, the NBA and SAP at the April 8 conference at Stanford convinced me that we may be moving into an important second wave of stadium technology deployment, where we’re over the cool factor of the technology and are instead asking how it can be used to solve the kind of issues that keep people from buying tickets and attending games live.

To be sure, there are some table stakes to this game, and among most stadium professionals these days the need for ubiquitous connectivity inside arenas is a given. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is semi-famous in tech circles for his desire to have fans cheering instead of looking at their phones, but new Sacramento principal owner Vivek Ranadive said not having networks in stadiums is a Luddite kind of view.

“Young people are going to look at their phones 400 times a day, whether he [Cuban] likes it or not,” Ranadive is fond of saying. Ranadive, the CEO and chairman of data-management software giant TIBCO, is the new cool kid on the NBA owners block after swooping in to save the Kings from being shuttled back to Seattle. As an all-around smart guy who likes to accomplish things, Ranadive has lots of ideas for the league and his new toy. At the Stanford conference he talked about plans to make the Kings’ new stadium one of the most digitally advanced buildings anywhere; but what was refreshing to me was his and his team’s focus on the fan experience, something that bodes well for NBA fans in and around Sacramento.

Paint your face purple: Why fans are different

As the CEO of a multi-billion dollar public concern, Ranadive knows all about keeping customers happy. But fans, he said, are much different. “Fans will paint their face purple,” he told the Stanford audience. “They will evangelize, tell everyone else about [going to a game]. Other CEOs I know are dying to have fans.”

(They also might like to have a team owner who tweets selfies with cool people like Shaq.)

So how are Ranadive and the Kings looking to use tech to take care of those fans? Ben Gumpert, senior vice president of marketing and strategy for the Kings, told of some ideas as part of an in-depth panel discussion later in the day at the Stanford conference. Among the ideas where tech could make a kind of background difference: By providing traffic or parking information for fans en route to a game; by knowing when a fan is in the stadium, and maybe bringing by a free drink on that fan’s birthday. Or by using Google+ Hangouts to facilitate a pre-game fan interaction time.

“We’re looking at all the negatives [of coming to a game], like traffic, where do you park, what’s the most efficient way in to the building, is there a phone charger near your seat,” said Gumpert. “We want to be early adopters and have the smartest building, but we also see a lot of technology being behind the scenes.”

Surprise and delight

From a personal standpoint, I agree with the Kings’ philosophy — even though there is an exciting NBA team here in the Bay area, the “pain points” of having to trek out to Oakland to see a game live keep me on the couch every time. Parking, commuting to the stadium and ticket procurement are all things I haven’t explored and I’m guessing there’s no easy way to figure all that out. If the Kings’ plans work out, the team app will have a lot of that info, which I think is hugely more important than, say, making sure the app has video highlights or Instagram access to player pictures.

L to R: John Abbamondi, NBA; Ben Gumpert, Sacramento Kings; Ward Bullard, SAP; David Aufhauser, Pac-12 Networks

L to R: John Abbamondi, NBA; Ben Gumpert, Sacramento Kings; Ward Bullard, SAP; David Aufhauser, Pac-12 Networks

I mean — Google Glass views are cool. But I wonder about a stadium and team ownership that is all excited about Google Glass TV views, but leaves parking up to some dude with a sign and an orange flag. Or leaves concession purchases in the 1950s, with one person taking your order, going back to get your hot dog, and then making change. If there is a trend toward using technology to fix real problems, instead of deploying technology for technology’s sake, I’m all for it.

“There need to be more ‘surprise and delight’ experiences in stadiums,” said Ward Bullard, formerly head of sports for Google+ who is now headed to a job with the sports-app division at SAP. “Using technology to bring value back to the fan hasn’t been strong enough.”

David Aufhauser, vice president and general manager of digital media for Pac-12 Networks, said there are many potential ways to use technology to improve the fan experience, especially via specialized types of access — like free ticket upgrades or giving fans the ability to watch press conferences or meet players personally. Bullard and Aufhauser, part of the panel discussion, also talked about ideas like allowing groups of fans to dynamically move their seats to sit together, or to better keep the shared experience alive.

“Sports is still one of the things people come to physically,” Bullard said. There should be a way, Bullard said, to keep the “high of the tailgate” party intact as fans move into the stadium.

“You don’t see many selfies from the couch,” said Gumpert. “What we need to do is find out which fan experiences matter most, and leverage the mechanisms” to improve the fan experience.

“It is a people business,” said John Abbamondi, vice president of team marketing and business operations for the NBA, who suggested teams use CRM to know if a person in the building is up for a season-ticket renewal. “Or [maybe] it’s their birthday, and you greet them with a special drink,” Abbamondi said. “Make it personal. It is about the high-five, the thing that gets you off the couch, That shouldn’t be overlooked.”

Can the NBA’s stadium networks handle live Google Glass camera views?

STR coverThe news that NBA teams are now partnering with San Francisco’s CrowdOptic to deliver Google Glass views to stadium big screens is a pretty interesting development to contemplate, on the heels of our Stadium Tech Report for Q1 2014, which looks at wireless network deployments in NBA stadiums. Done in a team-approved, controlled fashion, a few Google Glass streams could be pretty interesting. But CrowdOptic’s capabilities, as I understand them, are much bigger, and could theoretically allow for fans to see what other fans are seeing, if both are wearing Google Glass. The question we have for that latter idea is: Can the stadium networks handle all that traffic?

A good place to start to figure out the answer to that question is by downloading our Stadium Tech Report for Q1 2014, available free right now from our site. The 35-page PDF report delivers a capsule profile of each and every NBA team and whether or not it has Wi-Fi and DAS services in its stadiums. In our research we found Wi-Fi to be almost universal, with 79 percent — or 23 of 29 NBA facilities — all having fan-facing Wi-Fi. There is also a DAS (Distributed Antenna System) for enhanced cellular in almost every arena, and the ones that don’t have it are either installing it now or plan to soon.

But can those networks handle a crowd of Google Glass wearers, all broadcasting video of their court views? A good question for the next report, maybe. But you’ll need to know what the current network deployment situation is first, so… DOWNLOAD THE REPORT!

Has CrowdOptic found its niche with Google Glass and the NBA?

Screen shot of Google Glass footage from Indiana Pacers practice. Credit: Indiana Pacers

Screen shot of Google Glass footage from Indiana Pacers practice. Credit: Indiana Pacers

While we’re still far away from knowing whether or not wearable devices will really take off, the integration of personal-view video into stadium situations seems like a quick win. And San Francisco-based CrowdOptic appears to be ready to benefit from the latter idea, as its technology is being used in a couple announced deployments where Google Glass is being used to bring interesting video looks to big-screen displays in NBA arenas.

Both the Indiana Pacers and the Sacramento Kings have been using Google Glass to bring “personal” video views to the big screens in their arenas recently. Though players haven’t yet worn Google Glass during an actual game, in Indianapolis the wearable technology and its built-in camera was used to provide video feeds from a practice, as well as game-day views from cheerleaders and from a courtside PA announcer’s seat.

CrowdOptic, which had previously developed a unique mobile-device triangulation technology (which it somewhat unsuccessfully tried to market as a security or analytics-gathering tool) has seemingly found a perfect fit with Google Glass. According to a partnership announcement made with Wi-Fi gear and software provider Extreme Networks last week, CrowdOptics’ technology is helping weed out the best views from the devices to produce a watchable video stream.

This paragraph from the CrowdOptic press release with the Pacers actually describes it pretty well:

Another Google Glass view from an Indiana Pacers practice. Credit: Indiana Pacers

Another Google Glass view from an Indiana Pacers practice. Credit: Indiana Pacers

“The experience will be powered by CrowdOptic, a software platform which analyzes the real-time Google Glass feeds and curates them by their subject matter and quality, exporting only the highest quality live footage to the scoreboard. CrowdOptic’s ability to analyze where mobile and wearable devices are aimed allows future opportunities, such as optimizing in-seat arena services or providing fans the option to control their own broadcast.”

According to a recent Fortune Business article, CrowdOptic is charging NBA teams $25,000 per deployment, but some of that arrangement may change with the new Extreme partnership. Some new deals with additional NBA teams are also expected to be announced soon.

What will really be interesting to watch from a stadium technology perspective is how Google Glass use, for both team-approved activities as well as casual fan use, will affect things like in-stadium networks. Though our recent Stadium Tech Report for Q1 2014 found that most NBA stadiums already have fan-facing Wi-Fi, few seem ready for advanced applications, especially high-bandwidth generating ones like streaming Google Glass videos. What’s also unclear is how NBA broadcast rights may or may not affect the ability of teams or fans to record or stream live action via technology like Google Glass. Add another item to the stadium IT department and team legal department to-do lists!

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