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CBS and Lowe’s Team for March Madness Cube Contest

March 9, 2012 by

Do you have one of those so-called Super Fans in your office? You know the type- they always come in with a hangdog expression when their team loses a game. Some are one sports fans but most almost always include support for the NCAA March Madness Tournament.

Now all of their years adding team pennants, photos of their favorite coaches and pinning up headlines from newspapers talking about epic wins can pay off due to an event from CBSSports.com and Lowe’s.

They have launched an event called March Madness Cube Mania for the 2012 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship that rewards a few select fans with the most rabid cubicle. The event runs from now until March 25th and calls for fans to decorate their cubes with their favorite teams’ colors and logos.

Once the decorations are finished all a fan has to do is take a tasteful photo of the cube and post it at the CBS Sports page on Facebook (Facebook/CBSSports).

In addition fans are encourage to share the images over social media such as Facebook and Twitter and to try and get their friends to vote. It would be good to ensure your friends are rooting for your teams first — or at least open to bribes.

The images will be sorted in a variety of manners including by most popular, teams represented and participating companies. After the closing day for submitting photos, March 25th, the polls open and will remain open from March 26 to March 30, 2012.

Three winners will be selected by a combination of public votes, and judging by the Social Media department at CBSSports.com based on originality and creativity. Grand prize winner’s photo will be announced on March 31, 2012 during The Final Four Show on CBS and receive a $300 gift card to Lowe’s. Two secondary winners will receive $150 Lowe’s gift cards.

In addition the grand prize winning photo will be announced on CBS during The Final Four Show prior to the Men’s Final Four semifinal games on March 31, 2012 so your efforts will receive a brief national note. So as they used to say in Chicago ‘Vote early and vote often!’

Filed Under: CBS Sports, Facebook, NCAA Hoops Tagged With: , ,

Friday Grab Bag: London Olympics will be on YouTube

March 9, 2012 by

YouTube and NBC to team on Summer Olympics
NBC will be taking advantage of YouTube’s huge online popularity to help drive traffic to NBC’s home page during the upcoming Summer Olympics in a move that looks to benefit both players according to reports from Sports Business Daily.

The deal calls for YouTube to promote NBCOlympics.com on its home page and to direct visitors to live and highlight videos of the London Games. YouTube will be providing the player that users will need to view the video.

For YouTube it is a further step up into the big leagues as it is replacing Microsoft’s MSN portal as the player of choice. MSN had the 2008 and 2010 Olympics. For NBC it gains a huge presence on the Internet.

According to comScores Media Matrix NBC Sports is currently 6th for the US audience online with 14.7 million unique visitors in February 2012. While it will undoubtedly get a huge boost regardless of any deal due to the Olympics it still trails market leader Yahoo Sports by a significant amount- Yahoo with 50 million users.

US to insist on digital app security?
“Oops your data was stolen again-my bad” may not be the correct response to all of the constant leaking of data from smartphones and other devices. At least one US Senator, Charles Schumer, has taken up the call and has asked the FTC to see if the manner that Google and Apple are running their operating systems violates users’ privacy.

While not a big fan of government intervention I have to agree with this statement from him about apps that steal data- “beyond what a reasonable user understands himself to be consenting to when he allows an app to access data on the phone for purposes of the app’s functionality.”

He is asking that the government agency to force smartphone developers to add safeguards that require expressed consent before allowing access to personal information. It seems that more than these two are guilty and usually all we get are crocodile tears from them when caught. I wonder if this FTC effort will get out of the noise stage?

Apple drops Google Maps
Apple has dropped support for Google Maps in its iPhoto for iOS technology. The move is most likely partly caused by the company’s lawsuits against Google and leading Android users and Google’s fighting back via lawsuits filed my Motorola Mobility, soon to be a part of Google.

However Apple has also purchased mapping technology via its acquisitions of Placebase, Poly9, and C3 Technologies. Apple still offers Google in a number of other ways in its OS and platform offerings so be careful reading too much into this.

Is this a major win for Apple in its Patent battles?
A Google and Motorola Mobility have been ordered by Circuit Judge Richard Posner to disclose details of the development of the Android operating system to rival Apple as part of Apple’s ongoing patent lawsuit over the development of Android.

The case has been ongoing since 2010 and has resulted in a satellite of additional suits by all involved. This will probably add fuel to the fire but not clear if it will have a meaningful impact as there are a number of rumors that Apple may be looking to settle.

What are the best baseball books?
This is always a topic that incites my baseball loving friends- what are the best books on baseball? Well Jeff Polman is the latest to tackle the topic in a blog post found in the Huffington Post. He positions it as the 25 Baseball books that you would want if you were stranded on a desert island.

I really enjoyed the list but like most fans feel that there were favorites that he omitted, some that are worthy and at least one that is a favorite for immature reasons (Seasons in Hell). I do think that Ball Four cannot be omitted no matter what the reason. There is a good conversation on the topic ongoing at Baseball Think Factory at this time. Drop in and make yourself known.

E-Reader use continues to grow
According to a recent Harris poll the growth in e-reader ownership and usage portends good news for those in both markets. Just seven months ago 15% of Americans had one of these devices and now that number has almost doubled to 28%.
What is very good news for companies in this market is that the growth does not appear to be constrained to any one particular age segment with users in the ages 18-35 and 36-47 categories slightly ahead at 30% currently and that number just drops slightly to 28% among ages 67 and older and 24% of those in the 48-66 age category. Typical users read more than non-users as well.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Barnes & Noble, Baseball, Baseball Think Factory, Contests, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, Microsoft, Motorola, NBC Sports, Olympics, Yahoo, YouTube Tagged With: , , ,

Tablet or iPad + Wi-Fi = Mobile Sports Nirvana

March 8, 2012 by

One of the interesting features of the new Apple iPad it its inclusion of a 4G LTE communications chip, which will let the device connect directly with the high-speed wireless networks now being built by Verizon Wireless and AT&T in the U.S. While that’s great news for tablet users who want more power on the go, for mobile sports fans a Wi-Fi connection is going to remain the wireless link of choice going forward.

Why? Because data rates for 4G LTE are still too high to make cellular-only usage an option, especially if you want to give the tablet a regular full-game workout. There’s no set way yet to measure exactly how much cellular data you use when you are viewing live video because the answer depends on a lot of variables, including video resolution rate, your distance from the nearest cell tower, and the strength of the signal. But the bottom line for sports fans is that if you want to use the tablet exclusively for sports consumption, the smart move is to find a Wi-Fi signal whenever you can.

And since more stadiums are now putting Wi-Fi inside, bringing your tablet or iPad to the game is going to become as much a no-brainer as “buying peanuts on the outside,” to coin a phrase you hear outside Wrigley. Within the next few years we are guessing that most teams will start to implement some kind of “stadium app,” which delivers custom content and in-stadium-only goodies like multiple camera angles or replays. The old days of people wringing their hands over whether or not devices should be at games are over. The new future is folks bringing a tablet or iPad and taking it out to watch an occasional memorable replay, or to look up stats. Or to order a cold one, and have it waiting at an express window.

On the couch, the tablet is going to become as ubiquitous as the remote — hell, it might even replace the remote at some point in the future when cable providers like Comcast get their act together. Though the live streaming of the Super Bowl this year wasn’t a tremendous experience, we are betting that this year’s Masters coverage online will really move the ball forward when it comes to having a complementary viewing option. And the tablet format — big enough screen to be exciting, small enough to carry around easily — is just going to keep getting bigger, with or without a 4G LTE connection.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apple, AT&T, Super Bowl, Tablets, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Video Streaming Tagged With: , , , , ,

ESPN: Online Audience for College Hoops Soaring — Now Just Wait Until the iPad 3 Arrives!

March 7, 2012 by

Even before the new Apple iPad arrived to save humanity and burn through wireless data plans, ESPN said that people watching college hoops on small screens this season set new records, with 1.6 billion total minutes and 283 million visits across the worldwide leader’s various online entities, representing increases of 16 percent and 5 percent respectively compared to 2010-11.

While these stats aren’t really unexpected — I mean, what’s not to like about watching hoops on an iPad? — it is pretty amazing on one hand to consider that in just a few short years mobile devices like the iPhone, Android phones and the iPad and its imitators have become fixtures in the sports-audience landscape. Want more stats? The most-viewed game online this year, according to figures provided to us by ESPN, was the Duke-North Carolina game on Feb. 8, with 4.4 million online minutes generated across computers, smartphones and tablets.

ESPN called that event the “most watched college basketball game ever” for online, but we are betting that it gets quickly eclipsed sometime during the upcoming NCAA men’s tournament, when all those shiny new iPad 3s get turned on and tuned in.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, ESPN, ESPN3, NCAA Hoops, WatchESPN Tagged With: , , ,

Apple Delivers Latest iPad — 4G LTE Connectivity and Tremendous Resolutions are Hallmarks

March 7, 2012 by

Apple has taken the wraps off of its latest iPad, chock full of new features from a high end display to faster 4G connectivity as the company seeks to maintain its huge lead in the tablet market, a space that had languished for years until Apple’s entrance two years ago.

With typical panache Apple did not give the latest offering in its iPad family a name such as iPad 3 or iPad HD as had been expected but rather called it the iPad all day as the company laid out the newest features in its latest offering.

The iPad is powered by an A5X quad core processor, similar to what powered the iPad 2 and the iPhone but which has been modified to better run high end graphics. It will need that graphics power with the Retina display that enables 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution. To give you an idea of how this compares to earlier models, this is 4x the number of pixels in the iPad 2.

It includes a 5MP iSight camera that has the ability to capture 1080HD video and the iPad can play back 1080p video. There is also a second, much lower end rear facing camera that has 0 .3MP capability for video chat.

Two of Apple’s carrier partners, AT&T and Verizon will be selling 4G LTE versions of the iPad but no word yet if its third iPhone partner, Sprint will sell one when its network is up to that level. The coverage now available includes support for HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA, so that both CDMA and GSM iPad users have the ability to easily roam internationally.

Apple did not port Siri, its voice technology so popular on its iPhones to the iPad but the device does support diction and note taking verbally. Apple claims that a user should be able to get 10 hours of battery life.

The new iPad Wi-Fi models will be available in black or white on Friday, March 16 for $499 for the 16GB model, $599 for the 32GB model and $699 for the 64GB model. iPad Wi-Fi + 4G for either AT&T or Verizon will be available for $629 for the 16GB model, $729 for the 32GB model and $829 for the 64GB model. In addition Apple has cut ithe price of its existing iPad 2, which will now start $399.

As Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO took center stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco he received a very different reception that the late Steve Jobs did just about two years ago when he debuted the original iPad.

Hard to remember now the cynicism and disdain that the original was greeted with. Remember all of the bad iPad jokes? People claiming that they could see no real use for them? Now flash forward a bit more than two years and market researchers are claiming there is a pent up demand for this product.

Apple now refers to this as the post-PC world and well they should. Cook said that the company sold 172 million post-PC products which accounted for 76% of the company’s revenue.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apple, Apps, AT&T, iPad, iPhone, Sprint, Tablets, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: ,

March Madness coming to a Tablet or Smartphone near you

March 7, 2012 by

Selection Sunday is just a few days away and the day after is National Bracket Day (sadly not a day off where I work), two important days as fans prepare for the annual March Madness; the NCAA Basketball Tournaments are upon us!

There are of course a wide range of viewing options available for a fan, starting with calling in sick and staying home, but for many that will not be a viable option, but what is an option is to buy into March Madness Live- formerly March Madness on Demand and watch the game anywhere, on tablet, phones or computers.

The goal of this program, launched by the NCAA, Turner Sports and CBS Sports is to make available for viewing every minute of all the games in the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship Tournament.

Viewing options will range from smartphones, both Apple iOS and Android powered, as well as iPod Touch and iPads as well as broadcast the games on-line so that viewers in an office can catch the action.

While a quick glance online the day of games will tell a fan that is staying home what is on and where, the online and mobile world is a little different, and has a price tag attached as well.

The Turner Sports Interactive produced NCAA March Madness Live is a suite of live products that are designed for those without the luxury of watching from home or the local watering hole. Starting today, Wed. March 7, it will make available to subscribers access across multiple screens and devices including online, iPad, iPhone and iPod touch app and, for the first time, on Android phones, all for $3.99.

Even if you have the ability to watch at home you can subscribe and stream a version, an alternate games, over Wi-Fi. Live video is not all a user will gain. The app also features video highlights from games, game alerts and a radio option from Westwood One/Dial Global Radio Network, for all 67 games.

The app will feature live streaming video of every broadcast for the 2012 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship as they are televised by TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV, starting with the NCAA Basketball Selection Show on Sunday, March 11, and continuing through the Men’s Final Four and National Championship Game from New Orleans on March 31 and April 2.

For years I have seen articles written around this time of year cited some massive number as the amount of productivity that American businesses lose due to the NCAA Tournament. Most of them I just discount because people simply shift their goof off/idle time at work from one area to another rather than cease work. This year it could be different!

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, CBS Sports, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, NCAA Hoops, Smartphone, Tablets, truTV, Turner Sports, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Video Streaming Tagged With:
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