You are here: Home / Archives for Paul Kapustka

Friday Grab Bag: Amazon Coins and a look at Sports Betting

February 8, 2013 by

Twitter has bought social media tracking company Bluefin Labs, a company that follows how much social media is talking about television shows. The TV analytics company has been in business since 2008 and has had a total of approximately $20 million in venture funding so far.

The reported cost was $100 million according to the New York Times, although Twitter did not release the information. Twitter executives said that they believe that Bluefin’s acquisition will open new ad opportunities for the company.

Amazon develops virtual currency for apps
Going where others have failed before Amazon is introducing Amazon Coins, virtual currency that can be used to purchase apps and will be used as real currency — that means you need to pay for them, although Amazon has not yet spelled out how that process will work.

The virtual currency market has left a trail of tears for developers that have tried to establish them. Failures include Microsoft’s Points, Facebook’s Facebook Credits and several attempts at stand alone currencies including Flooz.

Samsung launches new $100 million fund
Samsung has launched the $100 million Samsung Catalyst Fund, an investment effort that will taget companies seeking early stage or seed investment with an emphasis on mobility, security and mobile privacy among other areas.

At the same time Samsung is opening the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC) in Menlo Park, Calif. and plans to use it as a place where entrepreneurs can meet with executives from Samsung’s nine product divisions to develop products and ideas.

Microsoft talks Windows 8
Three months after Microsoft released its latest generation operating system Windows 8, the company is now providing some insight on how well the platform has been accepted by the industry in a posting at the Windows Blog.
In a Q&A at the blog Microsoft’s chief marketing officer Tami Reller revealed that the company sold 60 million licenses for the operating system, about the same as it had with Windows 7.

Tablets to emerge as major TV platform, research firm claims
The growing popularity of tablets has caused a slowdown in sales of PCs, and a recent study by The Diffusion Group shows that they will also become a stronger factor in the television viewing world as we go forward.

The group estimates that by 2017 television viewing on tablets will grow to 58 billion hours, with an estimated 65% of all US households according to TDG’s “Tablet Diffusion and Its Impact on Video Use – Forecasts and Recommendations” report.

A look at sports betting
Did you drop a dime on the Super Bowl last week? Then in all likelihood you were committing a crime, but then you probably already knew that. A nice piece in the New Yorker spells out what is the current state of sports betting and how appeals to a Federal law currently ongoing in New Jersey may change everything.

Filed Under: Twitter Tagged With: , , , ,

Cool New Web App for Getting PGA Scores: Live Interactive Course Map

February 7, 2013 by

PGA scoring map appThere’s a cool new way to get live scores from PGA Tournament events, which uses live data superimposed on a Google map to give you a graphic way to see who is playing on which hole, and what their current score is.

Built by a company called Earthvisionz from my old stomping grounds of Boulder, Colo., the app is already live on the web — go take a look at livemaps.pgatour.com to see how it works, since you will be able to figure it out faster than I can tell you about it. Basically, it’s a Google map of the course with live data that shows who is playing the hole, how far they’ve hit their shots, how far to the hole, etc. From what we can tell, it’s the PGA’s Shot Link info but put into a form that’s cooler to use than looking up and down a graphical list.

The only quibble I have right now is that you have to click on the bubble twice to get the full shot info like distance and score. (See screenshot below) But according to the press release from Earthvisionz the app is designed to do a lot more, including being able to see where you are on a course, and where important “amenities” like bathrooms and beer tents are located. (This would have been a great app to have at last year’s U.S. Open!) Since this looks like a web app it should be available to any device… let us know if you can’t see it on a particular device. Looks great from our desktop connection, I wonder how well it works on cellular. Anyone at the tourney this week, please let us know!

We will circle back next week with an interview with the Earthvisionz folks as time allows… but for now take a look and let us know what you think of the new app.

Screen shot 2013-02-07 at 11.48.24 AM

(Click on the image to the left to see what the app does when you click through the scoring bubbles)

Filed Under: Apps, Golf, PGA Tagged With: , , , , , ,

MLB Continues its Strong Digital Push with ‘Bases Coded’ Effort

February 7, 2013 by

bases

Baseball has been pushing forward aggressively for years in the digital arena, from some of the most popular mobile apps to a variety of programs and games that draw the attention of both serious and casual fans.

Now it has gone a step farther and is hosting a contest called ‘Bases Coded’ that will be seeking third-party developers, both professional and amateurs, to participate in its first ever tech challenge that will be starting in March.

While some of the specifics are still missing MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) made the announcement about the contest during a demo at the NY Tech Meetup and said that the contest was focused around MLB’s gaming initiative.

The effort is seeking teams of developers that can create interactive media projects and MLB will give the developers involved access to its private data API, a first for MLB. In addition the development teams will have access to MLBAM’s engineers, technologists and in house developers.

The programs will then be submitted during an Internet Week event held during May in New York to a panel of industry experts as well as a live audience. There will be prizes involved although MLBAm has yet to spell them out. Interested parties can register here.

For those that might be interested in just hearing about the effort they can always follow along on Twitter at @basescoded.

Filed Under: Major League Baseball Tagged With: ,

Watching Golf this Week: Celebs and Pros at AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am

February 7, 2013 by

Screen shot 2012-02-08 at 11.27.48 AMMaybe it’s because this tournament is somewhat local, but for me the PGA golf season doesn’t really “start” until the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, which this year starts today. Even though it is a fully regulation tour event, it also still feels like spring training to me, especially since the presence of celebrities, namely actors, singers and other sports heroes, makes it almost more of a party than golf.

Almost! Last year was one of those years when the golf part came shining through, thanks to the Sunday head-to-head matchup between Phil and Tiger. It was great fun, though it won’t happen again this year since El Tigre is skipping Monterey this time around. Phil, fresh from his almost-59 last week in Phoenix, should be on form but picking a winner here is never easy given the three-course rotation for the first three days. And as I write this a very chilly rain has hit the Bay area (not sure if it’s wet down south in Monterey) so that weather can make it even more of a crapshoot. Still, with football finally over it’s time to start watching golf in earnest. And the scenery doesn’t get any better, so enjoy.

AT&T PEBBLE BEACH NATIONAL PRO-AM

(all times Eastern)
TV COVERAGE

Thursday, Feb. 7 — Golf Channel, 3 p.m. — 6 p.m.
Friday, Feb. 8 — Golf Channel, 3 p.m. — 6 p.m.
Saturday, Feb. 9 — Golf Channel, 1 p.m. — 2:30 p.m.; CBS, 3 p.m. — 6 p.m.
Sunday, Feb. 10 — Golf Channel, 1 p.m. — 2:30 p.m.; CBS, 3 p.m. — 6:30 p.m.

LIVE ONLINE COVERAGE

Thursday and Friday, Golf Channel coverage via PGATour.com and GolfChannel.com; Saturday and Sunday, CBS coverage at CBSSports.com. Right now only Comcast cable subscribers can watch live online video on weekdays.

RADIO
SIRIUS XM (Satellite) Thursday-Friday-Saturday, and 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. and 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday. The live broadcasts are also available to subscribers on the SiriusXM Internet Radio App and online at SiriusXM.com.

FACEBOOK
The tournament has its own Facebook page. Like it.

TOP TWITTER FEEDS TO FOLLOW

The AT&T Pro-Am 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?
If you haven’t seen Pebble Beach before… welcome to our planet, new overlords. Here is a link to more info on the three courses used — Pebble, Spyglass and Monterey Peninsula.

WHO WON THIS THING LAST TIME?
Phil! Or did you forget his face to face smackdown of Tiger?

Filed Under: AT&T, CBS Sports, Golf, Golf Channel, PGA Tagged With: , , , , , ,

U.S. Soccer Federation Delivers App and Digital Magazine

February 6, 2013 by

D6552CA33451415B8B0B2D934B79508F.ashx

If you are interested in tonight’s opening match of the Final Round of 2014 FIFA World Cup Qualifying that will have the U.S. team playing Honduras the U.S. Soccer Federation has just made it easier for you to stay abreast of the news.

The Federation has again expanded its digital presence, this time with a Facebook app as well as a new digital magazine called ‘Anthem’, with the first issue of the free publication now available online. The magazine is currently only available for iPad and iPhone users but an Android version is expected soon.

The interactive Facebook app, called Supporters XI, provides a different experience for users. They can select virtual lineups from Coach Jurgen Klinsmann’s roster of 24 players, putting them in one of 10 different formations, and can share their lineups with their friends.

There are also other methods to follow the team including the ability to watch matches online, including today’s versus Honduras by heading to on ussoccer.com’s MatchTracker, or you can follow the conversation on Twitter at @ussoccer. If you are interested in images from the match, and ones from the past you can check out the team’s Instagram page.

Tonight’s US/Honduras match is one of three CONCACAF regional qualifying matches being played today, the others being Jamaica at Mexico and Costa Rica at Panama. The second set of group games is scheduled for March 22, when the U.S. Soccer team will host Costa Rica.

For this qualifying round, which will run through October, each team will play 10 matches with the top three earning automatic advances to next year’s World Cup and the fourth place team going to a home and away qualifier against the first place team from the Oceania Football Confederation with the winner advancing to the World Cup.

Filed Under: iOS Tagged With: , , , , ,

Microsoft’s Surface Tablets about to gain Nokia as a Developer?

February 5, 2013 by

win8

After lukewarm at best acceptance of its first Windows tablets, the Windows RT line, Microsoft most likely has its collective fingers crossed for the pending release of the Windows Surface Pro line just a bit late this month.

Now it looks like it will have an additional ally to help it gain mind share and market share in the rapidly growing market segment as Nokia has indicated that the company is looking at and possibly reading offerings in that space.

Nokia’s chief executive officer Stephen Elop told the Australian Financial Review that while no formal decision has been made the company “We haven’t announced tablets at this point, but it is something we are clearly looking at very closely. We are studying very closely the market right now as Microsoft has introduced the Surface tablet, so we are trying to learn from that and understand what the right way to participate would be and at what point in time.”

While from reading the interview Elop is happy to provide hints he refuses to be nailed down definitively on the subject, but certainly seems to indicate that a tablet with Windows is in the company’s future. There have been reports in the past that Nokia has a tablet in the works but this is the closest that it has come to actually saying that it is looking seriously into this space.

The company had previously tied its future to Microsoft in the handset market where the once high flying Finnish company has hit upon bad times as it has seen its product sales and revenues hit a steep decline. It has abandoned older operating systems and become a leading Windows Phone developer. Now it appears that it will take an addition step in cementing its partnership with Microsoft by developing tablets.

Filed Under: Tablets Tagged With: , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »