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Archives for January 2012

Super Cellular Battle: Verizon Adds DAS, Sprint Calls on the COWs

January 18, 2012 by

Portable cellular tower on light truck -- aka a "COLT." Credit: Verizon Wireless

In addition to the football game, there’s a cellular supremacy battle going on in advance of the NFL’s Super Bowl on Feb. 5, as wireless providers are bringing in extra technology to make sure all their customers’ calls go through on the big day in Indianapolis.

The cellular conundrum facing sporting events is old hat to readers of Mobile Sports Report, who know about the bandwidth challenges when 70,000 of your closest friends show up on Sunday and all try to post to Facebook at the same time. For the Super Bowl in Indy’s Lucas Oil Stadium Verizon Wireless has the inside lead, by installing a Distributed Antenna System (DAS), basically a bunch of small cellular antennas hung inside the building to provide better reception. AT&T put a DAS in the Superdome ahead of the BCS championship, and has put DAS installs in other stadiums like Cowboys Stadium in Dallas.

There’s an excellent walk-through with geek-heavy pictures about the Verizon updates in this post by theGadgets blog, which apparently is local to the Hoosier locale. Verizon is also installing public Wi-Fi networks inside both the stadium and the nearby convention center, and will improve outside coverage by bringing in COWs, aka Cell towers On Wheels — mobile antennas that beef up coverage. Verizon notes that Indianapolis is one of its 4G LTE coverage areas, so customers with access to Verizon’s newer faster network will have 4G access at the game, all the better to watch the mobile stream of the Super Bowl via the NFL Mobile app, only available from Verizon.

Also calling in the COWs is competitor Sprint Nextel, which according to a press release out today will drive in two COWs for the stadium, two at the Super Bowl village and one more at the University of Indianapolis (the NFC practice facility). Sprint also says it has “added capacity to 21 CDMA [3G wireless] sites and seven iDEN [push to talk] sites around downtown and surrounding area hotels, including a major capacity upgrade inside the stadium.”

We are still waiting for an official AT&T response but you can bet Ma Bell will also be beefing up its cellular arsenal in advance of the Feb. 5 game day. All good news for connected fans who want to stay linked while they’re at the big game.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, BCS, NFL, NFL Mobile, Sprint, Super Bowl, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , , ,

Australian Open 2012 Embraces Social Media

January 18, 2012 by

Do you miss the days of Evonne Goolagong and wooden rackets? Do you have no idea what the first sentence meant but like watching tennis and regret that the Australian Open is half a world away and so difficult to catch much of the action live?

Well the 2012 edition of the famed tournament has stepped up in the digital and social media space and presents a number of methods in which a fan can either catch live action or at least get a steady stream of comments and updates, easily and from a desktop or a mobile device.

As noted in Mashable this could be the most advanced use of social media in a tournament and that there is a wide variety of tournament sponsored avenues in which fans can follow the action, as well as comment on the action as it occurs. This has been a growing tradition at the tournament and one that others sports events can learn from as a tool to heighten fan engagement.

The official site has a range of tools that can meet fans needs on a variety of levels. Want to see video replays of highlights, player interviews or of the most popular players in action? They have that. Want to listen on the radio; there is a feature for that when the matches are being broadcast live.

There is a core feature called Fan Central that brings input from fans into the game. It contains what is called a ‘Social Leaderboard’ that contains a pool of 40 players that were selected due to their popularity. Fans can tweet about one of them using a hashtag that relates to their name, or ‘like’ content on australianopen.com that includes them and with every tweet or like they get points to rise in a leaderboard. You are not limited to just following these 40 as the site enables you to follow any player, popular or not.

The most active tweeters will have the opportunity to become ‘Fanbassadors’ that will be recognized on the tournaments official web site.

But it is not just fan twitters that are available. The tournament has staffed @AustralianOpen, a 24 Twitter feed. For the less serious, or more I guess, there is a feature for predicting outcomes as well as one that enables you to put captions onto photos. You can even submit a short film about the ‘Tennis Essence’ with the winner being played at the tournament.

Of course you can follow on Facebook, but if that is too static there are mobile apps for both Apple iPhones and Android based smartphones. There will also be the more traditional information you would expect-draws, schedules, how to get tickets and an overall event guide.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Athlete to Follow, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Mashable, Smartphone, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

Lexus Partners with NBC on NFL Hashtag Twitter Game

January 17, 2012 by

Count Lexus as one of the first major brands to dive into the sports social media gaming space, as the luxury auto maker has partnered with NBC Sports to produce a game that allows sports fans interact with sports trivia and win prizes during the NFL Playoffs.

Called TweetDrive Engineered by Lexus, the promotion is essentially a “social media activation tool,” according to an AutoGuide report. Sports fan register with Twitter, follow the game during NBC broadcasts of NFL football games and tweet answers to trivia questions to #LexusTweetDrive. Each correct answer delivers yards toward a touchdown, and each touchdown enters fans into a drawing for two tickets to a 2012 NBC Sports sporting event.

The move is significant because it marks the expansion of brand advertising during sporting events into social media tie-ins. Super Bowl XLVI on February 5 will mark the first time Lexus has advertised during the NFL Championship game, and that it felt the necessity to include a Twitter tie-in is likely to be matched by other brands in the years to come. That means a growing number of consumers will not only be watching the game at parties in coming years, but interaction with a smart phones or tablet during the game will become a standard practice.

Lexus Vice President of Marketing Brian Smith announced the program.

“TweetDrive Engineered by Lexus offers a unique way to challenge sports fans to put their knowledge about football and social media to the test,” Smith said. “There is a lot of excitement about football this time of year and Lexus is pleased to join in the action through this program.”

In engineering the campaign, Smith moved quickly to put Lexus out front of social media promotion tied to Super Bowl commercials. He was named Lexus’ marketing chief in September after Toyota hired former Lexus executive Dave Nordstrom to head its social media strategies, according to a Lexus Enthusiast report.

Lexus VP of Marketing Brian Smith breaks new ground with social media campaign during Super Bowl

Filed Under: Mobile sports pioneers, NBC Sports Tagged With: , , ,

Recon Instruments Lands $10 M in Venture Funding

January 17, 2012 by

Start-up sports analytic display company Recon Instruments recent product launch has helped it close a $10 million investment round that should help the company expand both in the sports field but also pioneer new markets.

The latest round features two investment firms, Vanedege Capital and Kopin Corp. that jointly funded the $10 million. Recon said that the money will help continue its product development. Vanedege is a new investment fund located in British Columbia while Kopin, with its voice-activated, wireless, hands-free Golden-i mobile computing headsets, ruggedized military imaging systems and other products looks much more like a future customer or partner of Recon.

The company was founded in 2006 by 4 MBA students from the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business in Vancouver and was initially funded by the founders, their friends and family, skiing enthusiast and a matching grant from the BC Innovation Council. It received bridge funding from Espresso Capital last year.

Recon’s core technology is called Micro Optics Display (MOD) and is designed for use in skiing goggles. It is an adjustable, color widescreen micro LCD that provides real-time information to the athlete such as speed, GPS location, jump airtime, vertical and total distance traveled, temperature, altitude and time, among other features.

There is a range of additional features for the devices ranging from tracking your friends to wireless connectivity to Android-powered smartphones and ability to access playlists.

A customer can either purchase integrated goggles or now buy a unit that can snap in and out of Recon-ready goggles and swapped out when needed. The company has several partners that make compliant goggles including Uvex, Alpina and Briko.

The display is controlled by a device that is strapped on the users arm and includes large buttons so that they can be easily used by owners wearing mittens with communications via Bluetooth connectivity. The company released its second generation products last Fall.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, Skiing

Garmin Connects Athletes with Ant +

January 17, 2012 by

Looking at the growing number of fitness devices available there is a thread that is increasingly running through all of them, they feature a low powered wireless technology called Ant + from Ant Wireless, that enables the athletes and others to get real time feedback from sensors such as heart rate monitors.

It is no real surprise that the technology has caught on in the market; it was designed specifically for this use by Dynastream Innovations to provide feedback from its power meters. When Garmin purchased the company in 2006 it took Ant + to a much wider market.

A look at Garmin products shows a strong presence of the technology, but it has also become firmly entrenched as a standard technology in a wide range of products from other developers in the sports market with support from an estimated 25 million devices.

The growing importance of the technology can be seen in one of its most recent partners, Sony Ericsson, which has a family of Ant + enabled phones including two that were announced earlier this month. Both the Xperia S and the Xperia ion will have native support for the wireless technology when they are released later in the first half of 2012.

Using one of these phones, which include a feature that enables the user to be always connected to the Internet a serious athlete can not only check their vital signs but have a remote trainer also get the data and so be in a position to provide important feedback. You can use Ant + with other phones but need a dongle.

At the recent CES show there was a range of fitness developers showing technology in the Ant + booth aside from Garmin. 4iiii, a developer of audio and display feedback systems incorporates it, no real surprise since 4iiii CEO Kip Fyfe was CEO of Dynastream when it developed the technology and sold it to Garmin.

Others in the fitness space that use the technology include Wahoo Fitness, Pioneer, Garmin, Nordic,CardioSport, and Fatigue Science to name a few partners.

Not just for sports
ANT+ has gained widespread adoption as the interoperable standard in ultra low power wireless communication in sports but also as a technology that is gaining ground in medical applications. It was recently adopted by Qualcomm Life’s 2net hub technology that is designed to provide wireless communications between medical devices.

There are other medical users such as Dexcom, a company that develops glucose monitoring systems and A&D Medical which develops wireless blood pressure monitors and other equipment. There are also companies developing games, bridges and hubs and other mobile applications that use the technology.

The technology is a 2.4GHz wireless network protocol and is used in wireless sensor networks that require low cost, low power, small form factor and flexibility such as being able to form ad hoc mesh networks. The devices that feature the technology have a small battery that can provide years of operational life.

It is interesting how well this, a privately developed technology has found acceptance while rival technologies such as ZigBee seemed to have struggle to find a niche, while offering much the same features.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, Cycling, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Smartphone, Sony Ericsson Tagged With: , , ,

StatSmack Provides Legitimate Breakthrough in Sports Social Media

January 17, 2012 by

StatSheet has launched something simple, and simply ingenious, to the sports social media public.

Called StatSmack, and available online, through App Store and Android Market, the service allows sports fans to select their favorite team and an opponent from drop-down boxes, and access statistics that will make their tweets more relevant, edgier, and cutting.

Why StatSmack is a Big Deal

This is a legitimate breakthrough in sports social media.

Today, whether following a twitter stream or a game space for social media interaction, you’ll notice that the majority of people are not that creative when it comes to what they share.

During a New England Patriots versus New York Giants game, it would not be surprising to see 70 percent or more of all tweets saying nothing more than “Go Patriots” or “Go Giants,”  for example.

StatSmack pulls information from wide and various sources to give people edgy perspective, and ideas about what they might tweet about. It uses artificial intelligence to scour the Internet for statistics to construct the tweets, which can range from traditional sports statistics, to average heights and weights of players to city crime statistics.

StatSmack in Action

Using StatSmack, here are some of the 15 tweets a Giants fan could get online, on their smart phone or on their tablet:

Allow me to direct you to the scoreboard. Last time they played, the Giants beat the Patriots by 4 points (Nov. 6, 2011).

The giants sacks leader (Jason Pierre Paul w/16.5) is better than the Patriots sacks leader (Mark Anderson w/10.0)

More people watch the Giants than the Patriots (TV market rank: #1 versus #7)

A Patriots fan would get 32 smacks in a display that looks like this:

 StatSmack in Social Media

StatSmack has implications for sports social media in many ways.

Today, such companies as GiveMojo are creating game spaces out of Twitter streams. In those scenarios, tweet volume and the quality of tweets are counted and refereed, with teams competing during games to see which team outscores the other. StatSmack is an important new tool for those applications because it provides fodder for fans who otherwise might be stymied to come up with original things to say.

Automated Insights CEO Robbie Allen

In addition, StatSmack breaks new ground by landing what many other companies are still trying to reel in — sponsorship.

According to StatSheet founder and CEO Robbie Allen, a deal with a large financial services company has been signed to provide promoted smacks as part of the service. It marks one of the first times a sports social innovation has been quick to monetize, and could signal that other companies will have an easier time landing financial support in 2012.

“It worked out that we found the right sponsor at the right time,” Allen said, while declining to name the company because the deal has not been formally announced. “The big advantage for us that’s very difficult for other media companies to match is that we can embed the sponsor in the content.”

Media Company on the Rise

StatSheet’s release of StatSmack marks the continued rise of a media company to be reckoned with in years to come.

Part of Automated Insights, StatSheet uses artificial intelligence to transform publicly available statistics into articles, summaries and headlines in real time. Focused today on NCAA college basketball, Major League Baseball and the National Football League, StatSheet transforms the information into comprehensive coverage of individual teams, tailored to the fan’s point of view.

Venture funded to the tune of $5.3 million, Automated Insights has the potential to compete and partner with big media, including the ability to takes its automated approach to data collection to such sectors as financial services, according to an earlier Mobile Sports Report article.

 

Filed Under: Automated Insights, Sports Social Media, StatSheet
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