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Nike and Microsoft Team for Fitness App on Xbox

June 5, 2012 by

The connected athlete just got a bit more connected today as Nike has entered into a partnership with Microsoft that will see the development of games for the Microsoft Xbox that uses the Nike+ technology.

The alliance was announced at the E3 show in Hollywood and the first program to be developed will be called Nike+ Kinect Training and the target date for release will be this year’s holiday season. And it will be exclusively available on Microsoft’s Xbox platform. It is currently estimated that there are 67 million Xboxes worldwide.

The program will connect users wearing shoes or a wristband that has Nike+ technology. Using the Kinect camera in the Xbox a user goes through a set of physical tests and the data is recorded and a personalized workout program is generated.

Then activity is recorded over a month and a reevaluation is made. As a user makes progress in getting in better shape the program evolves to raise the bar on their workouts. The program is capable of providing real time feedback to help keep workouts in line with goals.

Multiple users can share a video and work out at the same time by using the Xbox network. You forgot to work out? No problem as you can set it up to send reminders to your phone (apparently only if it is a Windows Phone).

The effort is expected to help expand the Nike brand, and as part of that effort the program will feature the ability to integrate with Facebook so that a user can share results on the social network.

In other Xbox news Microsoft has released a software program that enables tablets and smartphones to connect to the Xbox console and allows them to be used as a second screen. Called Smart Glass it can be used on devices powered both by Microsoft’s Windows family as well as operating systems from rivals such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Microsoft, Nike

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Tablets and Tradeshows

June 4, 2012 by

With the growth of apps that can read and transmit data files such as contact lists improved security is becoming increasingly important. A new security app has come on the scene from mobile security developer SentrySP that seeks to prevent your smartphone from giving away your personal information.

The company’s SentrySp InSight app tracks all operational transmissions from a smartphone it is installed on and looks for transmissions that have the characteristics of an unauthorized transmission, and when it finds one it alerts the owner.

Steve Jobs to speak at trial
Quotes from the late Steve Jobs that were given to biographer Walter Isaacson will be allowed in a patent trial between Apple and Motorola, Chicago Federal Judge Richard Posner has ruled. The book had some pretty strong quotes about the lawsuit and it will be interesting to see how they are used in the trial.

A good look at Facebook’s rise
While the continued poor performance of Facebook’s stock is a source of a steady stream of articles and OP-ED pieces, Nielsen’s takes a different path and has a nice piece on the rise of the social media giant and how far and strong its reach is today.

Among the tidbits in the article are some very interesting facts. It passed Myspace as top social network site in January 2009 and by March 20012 it had 152 million unique U.S. visitors representing two out of three Americans that were online during that time.

Apple wins standards battle
It looks like Apple will emerge victorious in setting the requirements for the next generation SIM that is called the nano-SIM. The new standard is expected to be 40% smaller than the current SIM card design that is popular in mobile devices such as digital cameras and smartphones.

Apple beat rivals Nokia, Research in Motion and Motorola Mobility which had submitted a rival standard to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to get the standard approved. Officially called fourth form factor (4FF) it will be backwardly compatible with existing SIM card designs.

Judge rules Java API’s not copyrightable
In what could be one of the last gasps of the Oracle vs Google battle over Java patents and copyrights; the judge overseeing the case, William Alsup, has thrown out Oracle’s claim that the Java APIs that were used in Android by Google were copyrightable.

Application program interfaces are what allow one piece of code or software to talk to another and this portion of the ruling has been of great concern to the software industry because it has been widely assumed that these were available to all. Oracle has said that it will appeal this decision which concerned 37 APIs.

Big month for conferences
Expect an interesting parade of news this week from the variety of major trade shows and conferences occurring around the globe in the next two weeks. In Taipei there will be the Computex show that is expected to provide a first look at some of the Windows 8 tablets from a variety of hardware developers.

Apple will see Tim Cook take center stage for the first time as Apple’s CEO at its World Wide Developer Conference that will be held in San Francisco from June 11-15. New iPhones or iPads in the wings? Last but not least there is the E3 show down in Los Angeles where the gaming industry will be rolling out some of the next generation offerings and updates on current ones.

Twitter to see $1 billion in ad revenue by 2014?
A report from Bloomberg News claims that Twitter expects to generate an estimated $1 billion in ad revenue by 2014, based on inside information from two sources. The article noted that this would mean that the site would have to grow at double the rate that many market analysts have predicted.

Reports from Pew and others have shown that Twitter has seen steady growth in the last year but nothing like this. The technology has an estimated 140 million users and earned $139.5 million last year.

Appsplit focuses on apps
We have written a good deal about crowd funding and Kickstarter in particular as a way that new products and ideas can get funding and a boost into the market, and idea of this type of funding is increasingly popular as new sites have arisen to play in the market.

One new one, at least to us, is AppSplit, which focuses just on apps. It has a front page that is similar to its rivals, showing a few efforts to get funding, where they stand and how many days left. There are seven platforms that a potential investor can browse; iOS, Mac, Web, Android, Windows and Windows Phone.

Ice Cream Sandwich not hot with Android crowd
A site called Android Developers is reporting that adoption of the Android 4.0 operating system, code named Ice Cream Sandwich, has been very slow among developers. Seven plus months after its release the platform has a paltry 7.1% market share.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Appsplit, Facebook, Lawsuit, Mashable, Smartphone, Startup, Tablets Tagged With: , , , ,

Major League Baseball’s Draft Starts Today

June 4, 2012 by

The ever popular Rule 4 Draft starts today. Not sure what that is? Well it is Major League Baseball’s draft of first year players from college and high school and will be an interesting 40 round affair that will occur over the next three days.

Teams pick in reverse order to standings and this year there are a few changes to the rules, based on the last Collective Barging Agreement between MLB and the players. Teams will have a ‘bonus pool’ and if they exceed that they will be taxed, and the tax rate increases quickly to 100% of the overage, with a simply 5% overage being taxed at 75%. Each team’s bonus pool is different.

Of more interest is the changing of the signing date. If a player is not signed they go back into the draft the following year. It has been moved up a month to July 13th, thus allowing players to play in the season they were drafted. Several players over the years have signed with less than two minutes left before they would go back in the draft.

The first five picks are owned by the Houston Astros, Minnesota Twins, Seattle Mariners, Baltimore Oriels and the Kansas City Royals respectively. For the full first round list look here. To watch the draft you can tune into the MLB Network starting at 7 pm ET, on June 5 and 6 the event starts at noon ET. It will also be live streamed at MLB.Com

Not surprising there is a number of sites that focus on the draft including MLB Draft Insider, Minor League Ball, Baseball America and a number of other informed and opinionated sites available. If you are looking for past information on the draft MLB a lot of that stored here.

Will MLB’s draft ever achieve the news worthiness and anticipation of the NFL’s and NBA’s? I doubt it. In those sports you see the impact, for better or worse, of the players in just a year’s time. With MLB the player often starts in the short season Single A level and then works their way up, skipping a level or two for players that really shine but aside from the very rare case of somebody like Stephen Strasburg.

Also players in high school and college baseball do not receive anywhere the notoriety and fame that the players in basketball and football do. Still the event is well worth watching so that you get an idea of where your team is looking and if they might one day shore up the week up the middle defense.

Filed Under: Baseball, Baseball America, Major League Baseball, MinorLeagueBall.com

Race Day in Dover as NASCAR Readies for FedEx 400

June 1, 2012 by

Some very interesting 3-peats last week. I guess technically they were not actual 3-peats but so what? In the Coca-Cola 600 Kasey Kahne won for the third time and it is clear that he really likes this race since on the tour he has only won 13 times. The list of other 3 time winners shows that he is in an impressive group with luminaries such as Dale Earnhardt, David Pearson and Buddy Baker among the six others that have accomplished the feat.

The race was a great day overall for Hendrick Motorsports, which aside from Kahne had an additional 3 cars in the top 11. Filing out the top five was Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Greg Biffle and Brad Keselowski.
http://www.doverspeedway.com/

This Week
The FedEx 400 benefiting Autism Speaks will be run at the Dover International Speedway’s monster mile, touted as the world’s fastest one mile oval. Good news for fans that have visited the track’s web site, they now have a mobile app that seems to be speedier than the regular one.

Broadcast
June 3 12:30 pm ET on Fox

Sprint Cup Standings
1) Greg Biffle
2) Matt Kenseth -10
3) Denny Hamlin -16
4) Dale Earnhardt Jr. -18
5) Jimmie Johnson -48

Twitter Feeds
@NASCAR-Official NASCAR feed
@NationwideNNS-Nationwide Official Twitter
@NASCAR_NNS-NASCAR Nationwide feed
@NASCARONFOX-Fox Sports feed
@AllWaltrip-3 Time NASCAR Champ and Fox announcer
@PRNLive-Performance Racing Network
@EdHintonESPN-ESPN Columnist Ed Hinton
@nascarnowespn-ESPN2 NASCAR
@siriusxmnascar- Sirius XM:
@SPEED-Speed

Nationwide Series
Brad Keselowski skated to a nice win last week in Charlotte, leading the last 67 laps and praying that the gas he got when he fueled up with 73 laps to go would last-it did, making his caution lap decision not to pit pay off.
The top five was filled out by Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Elliott Sadler. Point’s leader Ricky Stenhouse had mechanical issues and finished 26th while one other widely watched driver, Dancia Patrick disappointed by starting 3rd but finishing 13th.

The 5-Hour Energy 200 is this weekend and they will be racing in just a little over 24 hours of posting this. It should be a fun race as speeds will be high and drivers should be raring to go on this interesting track.

Broadcast
June 2, 2 pm ET ESPN & WatchESPN

Nationwide Standings
1) Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
2) Elliott Sadler -13
3) Austin Dillon -28
4) Sam Hornish Jr. -57
5) Cole Whitt -94
5) Justin Allgaier -94

Indy 500
Congratulations to Dario Franchitti who won his third Indianapolis 500 in a very intense last lap battle with Takuma Sato, who ended up hitting the wall in a tremendous crash after their tires made contact with each other.

Filed Under: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Danica Patrick, Dover International Speedway, ESPN, Fox Sports, Greg Biffle, Indy 500, Kurt Busch, Live sports via mobile, NASCAR, Sam Hornish Jr. Tagged With: , ,

Friday Grab Bag: Too Many Penguin Texts? Free Wi-Fi for Intel.

June 1, 2012 by

Barry Bonds was interviewed last week and it seems that the former Pirates and Giants slugger is interested in taking a role in baseball. He met with Giants team executives about a role for himself with the squad.

Bonds has a personal service contract with the team that has apparently been inactive while he went through his trial and now that it’s behind him is looking for it to become active. I guess if Mark McGwire can return why not Bonds? I think sports reporters cringe at the idea.

The Patent Wars — A visual representation
The number of patent lawsuits seems to be increasing geometrically in the last few months as company after company either sues or countersues rivals. It has gotten so big that it is almost impossible to stay on top of all of the suits, lower and up court rulings along with alliances and patent sell-offs.

Now a site called Visual.ly has set it out in a graphic format that sets out the details much clearer. It shows who is selling patents to whom, and how many. It shows the back and forth suits between players such as Microsoft and Motorola. Head over and see if you can figure it out.

Technicolor seeks to enforce 40,000 patents
Remember Technicolor? You still occasionally see its logo on older movies, particularly many of the early classics that were filmed in color. Well the company has apparently been working to enforce a range of patents that it owns and its prime target appears to be mobile devices such as handhelds and smartphones.

The company said that the patents are in areas such as video, audio and optics and it has a team of 220 people that are dissecting products to see if and how they might violate its patents. The licensing division at the company represents a growing revenue and profit stream.

The Mariners erupt for lots of runs — and Twitter fans celebrate
I know from experience that it is always hard to stay positive about your favorite baseball team when they are playing poorly and it looks like it will be a very long season of poor play and lots of losses. The Mariner fans have seen their team flounder a bit but it certainly rose to the occasion when the Texas Rangers came to town this week.

Two high scoring games by the team, with one final score more closely resembling a football score had the teams’ fans sharing their enjoyment on Twitter. I do not follow the team on Twitter but was surprised to see the results when MLB pointed it out and directed users over to its Twitter Hub, a site I had previously missed. Interesting place.

Intel/Devicescape a Boon to Mobile Devices Owners with Intel Inside
Intel has reached a deal with a company called Devicescape that will enable users of ultrabooks and tablets that are using select Intel technology to gain free access to a network of 7 million public Wi-Fi spots. Using a feature called ‘enhanced connectivity’ that is in some Intel-powered devices a use can connect to Devicescape’s Curated Virtual Network (CVN).

The CVN has the ability to update a wide range of apps such as Facebook, email and Twitter on the device even if that device is in sleep mode. It even has the ability to log in to select networks that require that.

Cisco claims 2.5 web connections for each person on earth by 2016
In an annual survey conducted by Cisco Systems it predicted that by 2016 the number of Internet connections in the world would grow to 18.9 billion, a growth that is being driven by the demand and deployment of mobile devices.

The survey said that last year there was a mere 10.3 billion connections and that the biggest traffic growth would come from India, Brazil and South Africa. Sounds like a good time to be a networking company.

Pittsburgh Penguins abuse fan via Text
A fan is suing the Pittsburg Penguins hockey team over disregarding the terms of an agreement that he signed with the team and claims that it is sending him too many text messages. The agreement limits the team to three text messages a week and in the first week it sent 5 and the following week 4. He is seeking class action suit status and wants unspecified damages. The horror, the horror.

Twitter use slowly growing, survey says
The Pew Internet & American Life Project takes a look at Twitter use and finds that its adoption rate is stable and slowly growing, from 11% of US adults last May 2011 to 15% one year later. The study found that daily usage had increased to 8% of Internet users.

The biggest growth area, probably not too surprising, was in younger Internet users, in the 18-24 year old space, which tripled in the last year.

Google files antitrust complaint against Microsoft/Nokia
Google is claiming in an antitrust complaint that Microsoft and Windows phone ally Nokia use of patents has been done in such a way as to disrupt Google’s Android business. The complaint, filed with the European Commission, claims that the two plaintiffs, and others, are conspiring to enforce their patents in relation to smartphones and then splitting the resulting revenue.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, Cisco, Google, Lawsuit, Microsoft, Smartphone, Twitter Tagged With: , , , ,

Get Ready for the PGA Cell Phone Backlash — After the Mickelson Memorial Incident

May 31, 2012 by

You don’t have to be a website called Mobile Sports Report to see this storm brewing: The reported bad cell-phone behavior that might have led to Phil Mickelson’s withdrawl from the Memorial Thursday is almost certain to cause a cell phone backlash from the PGA Tour.

Though phones didn’t used to be allowed at tour events — and special tourneys like the U.S. Open (run by the USGA) are pretty damn clear that you can’t even think of bringing a phone or a camera phone on the shuttle bus, much less at the course — many other tour stops are now allowing or even encouraging folks to bring their mobile devices. Check out what went on at the recent HP Byron Nelson tourney down in Texas, where some savvy social media folks turned the knobs up to 11, based on a lot of on-course fan-phone interaction.

Great for marketing. But is it good for the game? It’s clear the “talent” doesn’t think so. And they’re not going to stay quiet about it.

Phil himself is probably too nice and too media-savvy to come right out and say bad things about fans — patrons — whatever you call folks at a golf tournament — but new Masters champion Bubba Watson has no such restraining bolt, and told anyone who was listening that people taking pictures with cell phones was the main reason why Phil got Phed up (and shot his way to a 79).

I’m going to quote the entire report by AP’s Rusty Miller (which we found on the PGA’s site) because it highlights the big, bad point: Apparently a LOT of people were using their cell-phone cameras whenever they pleased, golfers backswings be damned:

DUBLIN, Ohio — Everyone has seen a golfer swivel and angrily stare at a news photographer who accidentally clicked a shutter during a swing.

Now imagine what it’s like when there are 10,000 or even 40,000 people on a golf course, all with cell phones that take pictures.

With a huge gallery following the marquee matchup of Phil Mickelson, Rickie Fowler and Bubba Watson in Thursday’s first round of the Memorial, the continual distraction of fans with cell phones may have played a role in Mickelson’s withdrawal from the tournament.

“It took Phil out of his game,” Watson said of the continual clicks and snaps of cell phone-camera shutters. “Phil’s a great player and a great champion and it just took him out of his game. It’s sad. It’s sad that cell phones can make or break a championship.”

Mickelson said the reason he was going home in the wake of a frustrating round of 7-over 79 was because he was tired after a recent trip to Italy and France to celebrate wife Amy’s 40th birthday.

“There were a few phones out there,” Fowler said with a laugh. “There were a few times when we had to back off and reset. You could see Phil was a little fatigued and was having trouble blocking it out a bit.”

Mickelson made the turn at 1 over before struggling. Fowler shot a 71 and Watson, who won the Masters last month, had a 75.

Watson blamed a PGA Tour rule which permits fans to have cell phones on the course — if they are on vibrate and are only used in specified areas.

“Yeah, it was bad. But it’s been pretty bad ever since they made that rule,” Watson said. “When they make these marquee pairings, more people are going to follow them and more people want to take pictures. So it makes it very difficult. Ever since they made that rule that cell phones are allowed, it’s just not fun playing.”

Whoa. On one level you might be tempted to say, get a grip, Bubba. You (and Phil) are playing a game for millions of dollars of someone else’s money… and a cell phone noise is making your life miserable? I mean — baseball players have to hit a ball that is coming at them at 100 mph, not one that is lying still on the grass. And they don’t mind the noise. So… why should golfers have or expect complete silence, when they are playing in a very public arena?

Originally this was my argument on this matter — I think if you try to ban phones again you may end up with nobody at golf tournaments other than the Masters… and maybe the U.S. Open. But I think you also have to recognize tradition and what golf is all about. There’s a certain tranquility that most every golfer expects and loves when they are playing themselves. You don’t have to be Bubba to be pissed off at someone talking on a cell phone on a golf course. So in that sense Bubba is more like the rest of us than some pampered star. So I am admittedly confused now over whether I think the players have grown Colin Montgomerie ears, or whether your average fan is a self-important jerk like the people I see texting while they are driving on the freeway. Maybe, some of both.

Our favorite golf blogger/Tweeter Stephanie Wei was following up on this with cascaded Tweets and a good recap post — basically saying that for some reason there were just a lot of jerks on the phones Thursday. She also believed (like several other golf writers) that Mickelson’s withdrawl was done to make a point — that cell phones shouldn’t be allowed near the field of play. Phil is getting some roasting for his move — basically golf purists here, saying that you don’t WD because you are mad and playing poorly — but Wei makes a great point by saying that even at fan fiesta tourneys like the Waste Management in Phoenix the fans are smarter in how they use their phones. Anyone from Ohio who wants to weigh in here, feel free.

What I expect is that by sometime on Friday we will hear from the PGA loud and clear about how anyone seen using a cell phone in other than “designated areas” is going to be ushered off the grounds. And I’m not sure how I feel about that, other than that this is pretty obviously a clash of the magnitude of the topic as to why we started this site: Technology, especially mobile technology, is crashing into sports in ways nobody really imagined. How does it get solved? That’s the story for tomorrow, the day after, and the day after. Stay tuned on this bat channel, because we’ll be covering it. Maybe via our phones or tablets.

(Some of Stephanie’s Tweets embedded below)

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, AT&T, BlackBerry, Facebook, Golf, PGA, Twitter Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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