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Archives for 2012

Grunts of the Week: Saints WR Nick Toon Talks About Team’s 1st Win

October 12, 2012 by

Our second installment of “Grunts of the Week,” video messages from NFL players courtesy of the new Gridiron Grunts app, which lets you hear from pro players via your phone. In the segment above Saints WR Nick Toon gives QB Drew Brees a shout-out after New Orleans’ first victory of the year.

Below, Chicago Bears safety Major Wright talks about having “a lot of juice, a lot of energy” as he heads early to practice, and shows off his Gator gear prior to Florida’s big win over LSU. Download the Gridiron Grunts app for more.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, NFL Tagged With: , , ,

The World Wingsuit League Jumps into Action backed by Red Bull China

October 11, 2012 by

While the news of a new sports league often seems like old news being just an imitation of an existing sports league, the World Wingsuit League, that leaps into being tomorrow in China’s Zhangjiajie National Forest Park seems assured of not being another knock off pro league.

The league is kicking off with the Tianmen Mountain Grand Prix Wingsuit Race where contestants will start the race by jumping off a 900-foot cliff, which you have to say is very different than how most sporting events begin.


The event is brought to us, not surprisingly, by Red Bull China, and will feature 16 athletes dressed in wingsuit who will not just leap off of a cliff but then complete a three quarter mile long obstacle course while flying. While maybe not quite the Red Bull Stratos experiment this looks like a real thrilling and exciting event.

They will fly around a course marker platform on the ground below that is roughly the size of a tennis court seconds after jumping, then swoop down the mountain and under the tramway cable finish line before opening their parachutes and landing at the mountain’s foot.

Just doing the jump once seems like an award winning feat and that is really just the start. There will be two rounds of two runs each with the first being an elimination round with all 16 wingsuit pilots, then a finals round with the top eight. Gold, silver and bronze medals will be awarded to the top finishers. In addition, the Grand Prix champion will earn $20,000, 2nd place will win $10,000 and 3rd place will take home $5,000 while the fastest time gets a trophy.

From the images posted at its Facebook page it looks like in the practice runs the athletes are diving into a fog bank. I am pretty sure that there is no way you could get me to do that. So far the fastest round in the qualifying rounds was by James Boole and his time was 23.83 seconds

I think this looks like a great event and one that I would be very happy to watch but unfortunately it looks like it will only be broadcast live in China. The WWL said that it is working hard to get a live streaming video of the events that will take place on the 13-14 of this month, but so far no news. You can follow the league on its Facebook page. It also has a YouTube channel but it does not say if that will have live video.

Filed Under: Facebook, Live Sports Video Consumption, Red Bull, World Wingsuit League, YouTube Tagged With: , , ,

Advanced Micro Devices Jumps into Tablet Space with Z-60

October 11, 2012 by

Advanced Micro Devices is staking its ground in the tablet space with the introduction earlier this week of the Z-60 Tablet chip as it seeks to become a player in this market as some of its traditional spaces such as desktop PCs continue to shrink.

The chip, also called Hondo, is the company’s latest attempt to establish itself in a market where devices either use a variant of an ARM chip such as the processors from Broadcom, Nvidia or Texas Instruments, develop their own processor like Apple and Samsung, or in growing numbers use Intel’s Atom processor family.

The Hondo chip is a low powered, 4.5 watt, dual core processor running at 1GGhz and the company has packed it with 80 integrated Radeon graphics processor cores, which will give tablets high-definition video and gaming capabilities. It will include support for DirectX 11 has the horsepower for high-definition 1080p displays.

The processor is expected to available later this month when Microsoft formally unveils its Windows 8 operating system for tablets and a host of hardware developers, including Microsoft, start selling or at least formally showing their tablets. Systems using these chips will only be able to run Windows 8 or Linux

Intel appears to have a lead in this race since its OEMs have already started showing finished products with Intel chips, however some of the documentation on developers sites does seem to indicate that they might also use AMD chips as well.

The competition should be good for customers since it could help drive the prices down on chips and that should lower overall systems prices. We can at least always hope.

Filed Under: Apple, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Nvidia, Samsung, Surface, Tablets, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , , , ,

Watching Golf This Week: Frys.com Open, aka Golf, Silicon Valley Style

October 11, 2012 by

If you aren’t from the San Francisco/San Jose area you may not know who or what Fry’s Electronics is, or why there’s a PGA Tour stop sponsored by something that sounds like a McDonald’s snack. If you do live here, of course, you know all about Fry’s, as the chain of stores is legendary for having been the place where you could buy all the stuff you needed to build your own PC, right down to the individual microprocessors — as well as big bags of Fritos. Chips and chips at Fry’s.

Now everyone hear hardly ever talks about Fry’s anymore, since the stores have kind of devolved into a sort of catch-all low-end cross between a Best Buy (there are washers, dryers and ranges in the back of the Palo Alto store), a music and video store and a place where you can buy all kinds of electronics, cell phones, headsets, and geeky stuff too. Apple stores have long since replaced Fry’s as the places where cool kids hang out. But the Fry’s family still has the bucks to put its name on a PGA Tour stop, so — welcome, pro golfers and the Fall Season. We’re happy to have you. And next year the Frys.com open will be the official tour opener, so this isn’t just some fill-in date. It’s a tourney with Silicon Valley-style growth in mind.

Mobile Sports Report its own busy self will do its best to get down to the course this weekend — thanks to the tourney and the PGA we have a press pass waiting — but if you have cable of course you can watch coverage on the Golf Channel, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern Thursday through Sunday. This tourney has some notable names here too, including British Open champ Ernie Els (whose main sponsor SAP is big in Silicon Valley, so to Frys.com Ernie will go) and Nicolas “play what’s in your pants” Colsaerts, who is probably a lock pick for Masters pools next spring given his lights-out play in the opening round of the Ryder Cup. The Frys.com will also see U.S. Captain Davis “Blame Me” Love III playing, alongside vet Vijay Singh. And John Daly! Here’s a list of tee times.

FRYS.COM OPEN

(all times Eastern)
TV COVERAGE

Thursday, Oct. 11 — Golf Channel, 4 p.m. — 7 p.m.
Friday, Oct. 12 — Golf Channel, 4 p.m. — 7 p.m.
Saturday, Oct. 13 — Golf Channel, 4 p.m. — 7 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 14 — Golf Channel, 4 p.m. — 7 p.m.

RADIO
SIRIUS XM (Satellite)
1 p.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday-Sunday. The live broadcasts are also available to subscribers on the SiriusXM Internet Radio App and online at SiriusXM.com.

FACEBOOK PAGE
C’mon, Facebook headquarters are just up 101 in Menlo Park! Of course the Frys.com Open has a Facebook page.

TOP TWITTER FEEDS TO FOLLOW

The Frys.com Open Twitter feed.
Geoff Shackelford — well known golf writer. If you’re not following Geoff you are missing the online boat.
Golf Channel — official Golf Channel feed
@PGATOUR — official PGA Twitter feed
@StephanieWei — great golf writer who is a Twitter fiend.
Doug Ferguson is the lead golf writer for AP. Good Twitter insights that often aren’t part of your wire-service lead.

WHAT’S THE COURSE LIKE?
Here’s the deets on the CordeValle course, a classic Robert Trent Jones Jr. track through the oak-studded hills of southern Silicon Valley. (It’s actually south of San Jose.) The club is known mainly as a private refuge for many Silicon Valley uber-rich CEOs. What’s less known is that Santa Clara Valley (the real name of the area) has a bunch of fun wineries, nothing as world-class as Napa or Sonoma but many worth checking out if you are visiting. Two places we like are Thomas Kruse and Kirigin Cellars.

WHO WON THIS THING LAST TIME?
Bryce Molder.

Filed Under: Facebook, Golf, Golf Channel, PGA, Ryder Cup Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Red Bull Stratos Jump: Will Conditions Ever Be Right?

October 11, 2012 by

If there ever was a deflating event it was Tuesday’s non-launch of the Red Bull Stratos experiment, which purports to use a big balloon to lift daredevil Felix Baumgartner some 20 miles into the sky, a height from which he will attempt the highest free fall ever.

But after being scrubbed Monday the Red Bull crew tried to get Baumgartner off the ground Tuesday — but after some limp inflating of the balloon high winds perked up and the whole thing was called off. Apparently the gusts also twisted the balloon enough to make it structurally unsure, as Red Bull said in a blog post:

As we inflated the balloon and got Felix into the capsule at about 11:42 we experienced gust of wind …that took us to above 22 knots at the peak of the balloon, that caused a spinnaker effect on the balloon billowing, which twists the balloon in the launch arm, the integrity of the balloon at that point is really unknown and unacceptable to use for manned flight because we were not sure what would happen as we launched.”

According to another blog post Wednesday there are some real complicated weather parameters that all need to fall into place for the launch to take place, leading us to wonder if this thing is ever going to happen — or if it ever really was in the first place. There’s a lot of interest in this stunt, as evidenced by the numbers of viewers on the live YouTube channel — which at one point hovered near the one million mark, which has got to be a YouTube record even though nothing was happening.

The non-cynic in us sees the immense amount of marketing money Red Bull has put into this effort and says, yeah, they really plan to do this. And apparently there is a second balloon at the ready, so another launch attempt is possible. But the jaded side of us says — you need to have perfectly still weather in the desert in the fall? Good luck with that. Stay tuned to the Red Bull Stratos page for more launch updates, the site says now that the launch is re-scheduled for 7 a.m. Mountain time this Sunday but this may be one of those things like the Maverick’s surf contest, where they wait for months for big waves that might not happen. We’ll keep watching, so stay tuned here at MSR for the latest when we see it on the Red Bull site.

Filed Under: Outdoor Activities, Red Bull Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: Ruckus Files for IPO, Qualcomm Stadium Gets DAS

October 10, 2012 by

It’s about as far from a whisper as you can get, but in the Wi-Fi world the big news of the week was Wi-Fi vendor Ruckus Wireless filing for a $100 million IPO last Friday. As you’ve read here earlier Ruckus is heavily involved with the growing market for big-space Wi-Fi (like stadiums, racetracks and other event areas) and with healthy revenues ($120 million in 2011) the long-rumored move became a reality with the SEC Filing that makes for such good hard-data reading.

The part we like the best in Ruckus’ S-1 is this bit about how big the market is getting for what Ruckus calls its “carrier class” Wi-Fi products:

According to Infonetics, the market for Wi-Fi networking solutions for carriers is expected to grow from $296 million in 2011 to $2.8 billion in 2016, representing a 57% compound annual growth rate. According to Gartner, the market for Wi-Fi networking solutions for enterprises is expected to grow from $3.4 billion in 2011 to $6.9 billion in 2016, representing a 15% compound annual growth rate. Carrier-class Wi-Fi addresses the needs of both of these markets.

Stadium and sports deployments probably fall somewhere in the middle of those markets, since many such deals are being done as partnerships between enterprises (teams) and carriers. But the good news for vendors like Ruckus is, there’s no getting away from the need for Wi-Fi. And the gear needs to be better than earlier technology to handle the needs of big events.

Qualcomm Stadium Gets AT&T DAS; N.Carolina State, U of Kentucky also get upgrades

We’ve always found it more than a bit ironic that Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, namesake of the chip giant, didn’t have any Wi-Fi to speak of and from what we heard, it had bad cell coverage too. That should change going forward at least a little bit thanks to a new DAS (Distributed Antenna System) deployment AT&T has installed at the home of the Chargers, which will bring AT&T’s new 4G LTE network to football fans in SoCal.

AT&T is also putting some cellular upgrades into college stadiums, including N.C. State’s Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh, N.C., which is getting some of the cool new multi-beam antennas. The University of Kentucky’s Commonwealth Stadium in Lexington, Ky., is also getting an upgrade via an AT&T DAS, so SEC fans should be able to get their mobile game on better while cheering on the Wildcats.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, NFL, SEC, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , ,
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