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Wi-Fi Police Patrolling London Olympics For Pirate Hotspots

August 8, 2012 by

Is it a return to Lost In Space? It is a newfangled directional signal? Is it a metal detector or a antenna to attract signals from outer space?

In actuality, the odd-looking device and the guy carrying it around London and his colleagues comprise the London Olympics’ “Wi-Fi Police.”

Sadao Turner of Ryan Seacrest Productions tweeted this accompanying image of a member the enforcement corps carrying the bizarre detection device.

Wireless interference is a concern at the London Olympics. But BT, which runs approximately 1,500 paid Wi-Fi hotspots, is also part of the equation since it does not wish to lose income.

The Wi-Fi police will remain engaged throughout the remainder of the competition.

James Raia is a California-based journalist who writes about sports, travel and leisure. Visit his cycling site at tourdefrancelife.com

Filed Under: NBC Sports, Olympics, Twitter, Wi-Fi

Reuters’ Photographer Captures Iconic Olympic Image After Three Days’ Wait

August 7, 2012 by

Luke MacGregor, a photographer for Reuters, the international news service, didn’t capture an athlete in flight or a dramatic race finish. But after three days of trying, MacGregor captured among the most stunning images of the London Olympics.

Posting the details of his three-night mission near the Tower Bridge in London on his blog, the photographer perfectly captured the moon as the sixth Olympic ring.

Tower Bridge. Image © Luke MacGregor/Reuters

Using a smartphone application to properly gauge the rising of the moon, MacGregor details his quest to get the shot in a three-day diary, accompanied by three images.

In one first-day passage of his blog post, the photographer writes:

“Having planned to be in the ‘perfect’ spot on London Bridge with a good view of the Olympic Rings further up river and using the app information, I waited for the moon to rise.

“However the horizon itself was a little cloudy. When the moon eventually showed itself about 10 minutes after the app’s moonrise time it was off to the right hand side of the bridge. I hadn’t taken into account that the moon wouldn’t rise in a vertical line but would travel across the sky.”

Two days later, after calculating the changing exposure, the brightness of the moon and dealing with curious tourists in the line of his pending image, MacGregor got what he wanted. It’s an iconic image, a remembrance of the London Olympics far away from competition but as poignant as an event.

To read MacGregor’s blog in full and to view the three images, visit: Shooting The Moon
James Raia is a California-based journalist who writes about sports, business, travel and leisure. Visit his cycling site at tourdefrancelife.com

Filed Under: Apps, iPhone, Olympics, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

New Antenna Design Helps AT&T Improve Stadium, Event Cell Coverage

August 7, 2012 by

When it comes to cellular phone innovation, the things that immediately come to mind are the highly advertised advancements, like 4G networks and the latest handsets. But AT&T has turned to the often overlooked cell-tower antenna to find an innovative way to help improve cellular reception in crowded public places, like big outdoor events and sports stadiums.

According to an AT&T blog post as well as an interview with some of the team members behind the innovation, Ma Bell has found a way to significantly improve cellular reception in crowded spaces by by building a new antenna that splits a regular signal into five separate “beams.” By splitting one spectral signal into several smaller but more focused ones, AT&T says it can gain approximately a 5x increase throughput from each antenna, a big necessary jump when confronted by crowds of tens of thousands of smartphone users.

Without getting too deep into the physics, the multi-beam approach is roughly the equivalent of adding four new cell towers, without the added expense of having to site, install and maintain new antenna placements. Though there is a tradeoff of having a narrower range of coverage (since the multi-beam signals are smaller in geographic footprint than those from traditional antennas) that isn’t a problem inside stadiums or at events, where phone users don’t move too much. AT&T has produced a cartoony video that kind of explains the advancements, albeit in a great-for-AT&T way (see end of post for the video).

According to AT&T folks we talked to the antenna was developed jointly by AT&T and a “boutique” antenna manufacturer AT&T declined to identify. The need for a better-performing antenna came out of AT&T’s challenges of bringing cellular service to the crowds at the Coachella music festival in Southern California, an event that can attract up to 85,000 fans each day.

Though we don’t have a geekout photo to share with you, the AT&T folks we talked to said the antennas are already being rolled out to numerous big-event venues, including NFL stadiums in Nashville and Minneapolis, collegiate stadiums in Hawaii and North Carolina, as well as golf and tennis events. The antenna seems to be a valuable part of AT&T’s ongoing arsenal of tricks to improve wireless coverage overall, which includes DAS installations as well as expanded Wi-Fi. For cell users at big events, any and all advancements are welcome.

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

SF Giants Catcher Buster Posey Launches Own Mobile Game

August 7, 2012 by

Buster Bash

The Giants’ catcher Buster Posey has just entered the company of a rarified few, an athlete still in their prime who gets a video game with his name plastered all across the cover, as he has with the Buster Bash app available at Apple’s App store.

Now the game does not have the elegance or complexity of EA’s Madden 13, but then a game that is designed to play on Apple’s iOS devices such as the iPhone and iPad cannot really support that type of subtle game playing. Instead think of the more mainstream, easy to play and hopefully addictive games that populate the top 10 lists or games in the iOS market, or even in the Android space as well.

The game also does not have sophisticated animation but rather a very cartoon approach, but it is also simple and fun to play. Its basic premise is to follow Buster’s rise from a kid playing in his backyard in Leesburg, Ga. to his current position with the Giants in MLB.

As you play you can earn sunflower seeds that can be used to buy equipment and power-ups as you move from his early wiffle ball and tennis ball hitting days to where he faces major league pitching. In all there are five levels of play and participants swipe the screen as they attempt to hit the ball out of the park.

An interesting aspect of the game is that it will be primarily promoted via social media, according to a piece in Mashable. Info on the app has already been posted on Posey’s Facebook page, which has 325,000 followers and on Twitter, where he is followed by 50,000. Then the apps have their own Twitter and Facebook pages as well and will alert fans to upgrades and rewards that can be earned playing the game.

The free app seems to be hitting it off with his fans, which have already given it a 4 ½ star rating on iTunes, where it has only been available since Monday. I expect this is just the start of a trend in this area as popular athletes in baseball and elsewhere will likely see this as an extension of promoting themselves, and I can see a few of the attempts as being rather funny. How about a T.O. app?

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Athlete to Follow, Baseball, Buster Posey, Contests, iOS, iPhone, Major League Baseball, San Francisco Giants Tagged With: , ,

PlayerLync expands its iPad playbooks to College

August 7, 2012 by

PlayerLync, a app developer that has captured five National Football League teams as customers for its electronic playbook app that runs on Apple’s iPad has now made the leap to college football with Stanford University using the technology for its players.

The school announced that it has ditched traditional paper notebook playbooks, which can often run to 500 pages and need to be reprinted on a weekly basis, in favor of PlayerLync’s tablet-based offering.

The move to iPad appears to bring significant advantages to the school. Aside from eliminating the need to print out new playbooks to match each opponent, the platform allows coaches a great deal of flexibility in customizing the playbooks for individual players as well as team units.

The technology permits coaches to prioritize plays and keep them at the front of the playbook so that players understand the importance of the selected plays. Other areas of customization include by opponent, situation, role and player, both home and opponent.

Overall the technology can show plays, formations, route trees and can display them in a chalkboard or audio/video mode, with the ability to toggle back and forth between the two modes.

Aside from the playbook aspect of the technology it also brings a range of other features into a unified, networked solution as well. It features a calendar that can be customized by an individual and shared throughout an organization.

The NFL has been moving ahead with using tablet-based playbooks, with at least nine teams having announced that they will be using them in the upcoming season. PlayeLync is the developer for 5 of these teams while a number of MLB teams are also starting to use tablets in a variety of areas including for scouting purposes.

The opening up of the college ranks presents a great new market for the company, as the number of Division A schools alone dwarfs the opportunity that the NFL presents. Once in a school it seems likely that the technology will find its way to others ports such as basketball, so PlayerLync has opened a huge new market for its products.

Filed Under: Apple, iOS, iPad, Major League Baseball, NBC Sports, NCAA Football, NFL, PlayerLync Tagged With: , , ,

Bleacher Report Sold to Turner Sports

August 6, 2012 by

The rich get richer as Turner Broadcasting Systems has purchased Bleacher Report, a six year old sports news web site in a deal that has been estimated at being valued between $170 million and $200 million according to Forbes. Bleacher Report was founded in 2006 by four friends, Bryan Goldberg, Dave Finocchio, Zander Freund and Dave Nemetz. Three are still at the company but Freund left in 2009.

Turner said that it will use Bleacher Report as an additional outlet for its sports programming including highlight videos and breaking news. Turner has a vast spread of sports content and this will enabled to expand the scope of fans that it can reach.

Looking at different analytic tools shows that the site gets approximately 10 million unique viewers a month, although the total number of visitors including repeat, is significantly higher. Combine that with the other Turner properties that include the web sites for the NBA, NCAA and the PGA as well as a relationship with NASCAR as well means more potential upside for Bleacher Report.

Forbes points out that the new viewers that the deal brings in will nicely replace an almost identical number that it lost when Sports Illustrated bolted for a new corporate parent to host its web pages. Bleacher Report is also attractive because of its reach to mobile device users; according to the company thanks to innovations like its Team Stream app (which aggregates sports content from all over, not just from B/R writers) it was getting more than 40 percent of its audience through a mobile connection, a number that has likely since grown.

The merging of print and broadcast media with on-line and digital is getting more common it seems. The recent announcement of the creation of Sports on Earth site by Major League Baseball Advanced Media and USA Today being a very recent example of this trend.

Filed Under: bleacherreport, Major League Baseball, Sports Illustrated, Turner Sports, USA Today Tagged With: ,
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