You are here: Home / Archives for Apple

Friday Grab Bag: Lots of NFL News and New iPhone 5 Next Week?

September 7, 2012 by

iPhone 5?

If you are a betting person it looks like a safe bet would be that Apple will be taking the wraps off of its next generation iPhone, the so-called iPhone 5. The company has started sending out press invites for an event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on that date.

Originally it was believed that Apple would also introduce its next generation iPad at the same event but it now appears that the company will host a different event within the next month to launch that product.

Intel takes another shot at ARM
Intel has long coveted the handheld processor market but has been pretty well shut out of it by market leader ARM and its allies. Next week at its annual Intel Developer Forum the company is expected to fire its latest salvo in its battle.

It is expected to unveil a chip code-named Haswell that has been designed as a solution for developers that are seeking an ultra power-efficient chip, according to C/net. The company is seeking to make inroads in both the tablet and smartphone space with the processor, which is not expected until the second half of 2013.

Earn Rewards for Activity on NFL.com
Are you always reading articles and commenting on them at the NFL.com web site? Well now you can earn rewards for doing just that as the NFL Digital Media has launched a program entitled NFL Fans Reward.

Reading and commenting are not the only ways to earn rewards as a number of other activities are included including watching video or participating in what it calls Drives. The rewards are in the form of virtual coins that can be redeemed at the NFL.com Rewards store.

Does Fantasy Football really cost employers $5.6 B?
That at least is the result of a study by Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas which made its estimation based on how much time employees spend on managing their fantasy rosters and general goofing off related to the fantasy team.

The report estimates that there are 22.3 million employees engaged in fantasy football and you can go to their site to see the overall math. I know reports like this come out each spring during March Madness and they tend to get rebutted by other studies that show that employees simply switch topics that they goof off on as the year progresses. So take the report with a grain of salt.

New smartphone rollouts from Nokia, Motorola beat Apple to the market
It used to be that hardware developers looked at the calendar and set their next product rollout based on the age of their current offerings as well as where the year is in relation to top selling season. Now it seems that the goal is to beat a rival to making waves with an announcement.

This week Nokia debuted a few new Windows 8 phones while Motorola Mobility unleashed 3 new phones, it’s first under Google. Why this week you ask? Apple is expected to release the new iPhone next week and they wanted to beat it to the punch. Of course Samsung seems to release products when it wants to and its Galaxy IIIS has already sold 20 million units.

Newbie to Twitter and want to follow the NFL? No problem!
Twitter has kindly provided a guide at its Blog for users that want to follow the NFL on Twitter. You would really have t be new to Twitter to not already know how to use the features but still it is a good idea because I know several people that have signed up for the service and then seem paralyzed when called on to use it.

Sports Illustrated takes the guessing out of NFL football broadcasting
The nice people at Sports Illustrated have taken the time to pour over all of the broadcasting teams, including personnel additions and subtractions, and made all of that information available in a nice little piece that can be found here.

I am not sure if the broadcasting teams are listed in order of how big a game that they will be broadcasting but I suspect that the top teams head each list. Also does ESPN really believe that we need two hosts, six analysts, seven reporters and a features person for its pregame show? Sometimes more is not better. And am I the only person that thinks with each passing season Jon Gruden looks more and more like Roger Goodell?

Speaking of Football, How cheap is your NFL team?
Profootballtalk ran a nice little piece showing how much each team in the NFL is under the salary cap. I was surprised at some of the results but expected a few teams that were in the top ten. Take a look and see why your team does not have a shut down corner.

Then hop over to ESPN and see how your teams’ ticket rices compare to the rest of the league. I was surprised that the NY Jets have not taken over the top spot in this area. Average cost is $78.38 and the average cost of a beer is $7.28.

Big 12 to sign $2.6 billion TV deal
The Big 12 is about to finalize broadcasting deals with ESPN and Fox Sports that will result in a $2.6 billion over the next 13 years, or approximately $200 million a year. Even for college that is real money!

Filed Under: Apple, Big Ten Network, ESPN, Fox Sports, Intel, iOS, Live sports via mobile, NFL, NFL Network, Sports Illustrated Tagged With: , , ,

Amazon refreshes Kindle Fire as More Competition Looms

September 6, 2012 by

Amazon's Kindle Firebuy generic priligy

nleft size-medium wp-image-7434″ />

Amazon has come back to the market with its second generation Kindle Fire as well as its lowered prices and enhanced the performance of existing Kindle models. Declaring that the company has decided to go big, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took the stage today to introduce a pair of new Kindle Fire tablets called the Kindle Fire HD including an 8.9-inch device that caught many by surprise. There is also a 7-inch version.

The latest device appears to have something for everybody with enhanced e-mail that will appeal to business users, the ability to limit screen time that will make parents happy and a faster device and wireless capabilities that everyone will like.

The screen on the Kindle Fire HD has a 1920 x 1200 resolution and Amazon has eliminated the air gap in the new Laminated Touch Sensor display, a move that it said will eliminate glare by 25%. The tablet will be powered by a Texas Instruments 4470 OMAP processor.

The company has adopted a MIMO (multiple input-multiple output) dual antenna structure in the devices that help with providing a stronger, faster Wi-Fi signal, operating in the 5GHz band. A key advantages that even with the higher speeds it does not use additional battery power. Amazon said that this is 41% faster that the new iPad.

Additional hardware features a front facing camera and dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus. The storage will start at 16GB, with Amazon saying that 8GB, common in most rival offerings, just would not work with high definition.

There is a range of new software features including Whispersync for voice that enables you to listen to a book and then later start up reading where you were last listening. There is also a version for games so that you can continue on from where you stopped in a game.

For users that view movies on their tablets there is now a feature called X-Ray for Movies that was developed in a partnership with IMDB that allows you to freeze a scene and the app will tell you who is currently on screen. If needed it can go into a great deal of additional detail.

For the corporate user it has an enhanced e-mail that will enable a very tight integration with Microsoft Exchange. There is also a feature called Kindle FreeTime that lets you set screen time limits for kids with different settings for movies and reading.

The entry level price for the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD will be $199 while the 8.9-inch model will start at $299 and a 4G LTE version will have a $499 sticker price. The first model is expected in the next few weeks but the higher end models will not be available unit late November.

Another new offering from the company is its slim and light Kindle Paperwhite, a 7.5-ounch 9.1 mm thick e-reader that will include a front lit display with user changeable fonts and a higher resolution display. Its base price will be $119 while a 3G version will have a $179 price tag. The company reduced its Kindle from $199 to $159 with more memory and a faster processor, available on September 14.

The company first delivered the Kindle Fire last fall and it was one of the hottest products gifts of the holiday season, topping the sales charts at Amazon in its first weeks. However a bevy of competitors have darkened the sheen of the product. Amazon estimates that it now has 22% of the tablet market in the United States.

Barnes & Noble are fighting to get share with its Nook but the bigger competition has come from market leader Apple and its iPad lineup and newcomer Google with its Nexus 7 offering. In the near future we will see a host of tablets based on the two versions of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system

We are already seeing hardware OEM’s such as Lenovo, Acer, Asus and Hewlett-Packard release advance information about next generation tablets as well as new hardware developer Microsoft with its Surface platform. Intel claims that at least 20 tablets will be using its chips in future releases, and it is not the market leader in this space.

That is a reason why Apple’s and Samsung’s offerings cost significantly more; they are looking for profits off of their hardware. Amazon’s Bezos talked about how customers want services not gadgets and that hardware is a service. He noted that most of its rivals in the tablet space have failed because they do not realize this. He said that Amazon does not expect to make money from its hardware but from the content it sells. Despite this he claims that it is not a razor/razor blade situation. However there are dangers to this approach as pointed out here at CNBC.

Amazon has really raised the bar on features and performance with the Kindle Fire HD and it will be very interesting to see how the competition reacts. With Apple’s new iPad expected soon, it will probably be the first to face a drect comparison, followed by the Windows 8 tablets.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Android, Apple, Apps, Asus, Barnes & Noble, Dell, Google, Intel, iOS, iPad, Kindle, Lenovo, Microsoft, Nook, Samsung, Surface, Tablets, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

National Football Foundation Debuts Website, Mobile Applications

September 5, 2012 by

The National Football Foundation (NFF) and XOS Digital Inc. have jointly announced a new website and corresponding mobile and tablet applications to provide fans with multiple access points to NFF content in various formats. Among other tasks, the NFF runs the College Football Hall of Fame.

The new website, www.footballfoundation.org, marks the completion of the NFF Digital Network and is managed by XOS Digital, which serves more than 300 sports organizations with myriad technology solutions.

The foundation’s official website offers exclusive video content and original programming and connects to multiple digital platforms, including a dedicated NFF OnDemand store, Smart TV content, YouTube channel and mobile applications.

The NFF OnDemand store features DVD and Blu-ray content as well as classic college football documentaries, available for purchase for the first time. Fans can access this exclusive video content through a digital account where they can select videos to watch online and access them for viewing on tablet and mobile devices.

Every NFF event will be streamed live on all compatible platforms, including the NFF Annual Awards Dinner, the Annual Enshrinement Show, and the annual announcement of FBS inductees into the College Football Hall of Fame. Fans can download the official NFF mobile application for free, and the official NFF tablet application for $4.99.

The NFF Digital Network also features an originally produced video series, This Week in College Football History, which highlights a memorable historic football event each week throughout the football season. All NFF historic content and original productions are accessible though the XOS College Sports Smart TV channel.

For more information, visit www.footballfoundation.org or www.xosdigital.com.

James Raia is an editor and publisher in Sacramento, California. Visit his site: www.tourdefrancelife.com

Filed Under: Android, Apple, BCS, Live sports via mobile Tagged With: ,

Yes, You Can Watch Cowboys vs. Giants on your Phone Tonight; But it Will Cost You $5 per Month

September 5, 2012 by

To answer the most pressing mobile sports question today: Yes, the Cowboys-Giants NFL Season Opener will be available live via the NFLMobile app (8:30 p.m. ET start), but you will need a Verizon phone to watch it, and be prepared to pay the $5 per month unadvertised fee that goes along with live action via the app this season.

I’ve been giving the folks at Verizon Wireless a bunch of grief on Twitter today mainly because the $5 per month charge isn’t found anywhere in the advertising or promotional material for the app. Last year the NFLMobile app was pretty much free for anyone who purchased a new Verizon 4G LTE phone and a 2-year contract, but this year the free live video lunch is over and Verizon will extract $5 from your pocket per month.

Let me say right here that I don’t think 5 bucks per month is an extravagant charge, since the app is pretty good — it will give you RedZone on Sunday afternoons, plus live viewing of games on Sunday nights, Monday nights and Thursday nights. My guess is that live mobile viewing will cost a lot more in the future, if and when the NFL puts an MLB.com package in place as it looks like they are moving to do. Nothing is announced yet, so stay tuned. And if you have a Verizon phone, though $5 a month sounds bad now it will probably be the lowest amount you will ever pay for live football in the seasons to come.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apple, Apps, NFL, NFL Mobile, NFL Network, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Bleacher Report adds Group Interaction Feature to Team Stream App

September 5, 2012 by

The popular Team Stream app from sports site Bleacher Report is getting more interactive, with the release of a new version that adds the ability for people to share their sports-team preferences with friends. Available initially only for the iPhone version of Team Stream, the “groups” feature will let fans share not only news but opinions with each other, bringing Team Stream into the field of smack-talk/interactive sports apps like PlayUp and others.

Bleacher Report, which was recently acquired by Turner Sports for approximately $180 million, claims to have 1 million users of its Team Stream app, which brings a constant “stream” of sports news, opinions, tweets and other content from the Web and organizes it by team for easy consumption. By adding an interactive feature Bleacher Report is seeking to keep fans embedded in Team Stream longer, instead of having to leave it to share opinions or news with friends who share the same team interests.

Fan interaction is hardly a new feature on the web, as sharing opinions and sports news seems to be one of the bigger things happening on Twitter these days. And standalone apps like PlayUp have already found big crowds of fans who want to set up or join sports-specific, game-specific or team-specific “rooms” or other online gathering places to interact. Team Stream, which has been focused on providing news and other content, is coming at the sharing equation from another direction, but one that seems to make sense as sharing apps like PlayUp have recently started adding news feeds to their feature set.

“We’ve found that most sports fans have small but distinct groups of friends they talk to about their favorite sports or teams, but still lack a simple way of sharing and reacting to news with them,” said David Finocchio, Chief Content and Product Officer at Bleacher Report, in a press release. “This version of Team Stream fills that void by providing a more efficient way for fans to quickly share the latest on their teams with the right group of friends and then react together.”

According to Bleacher Report, the new feature allows users to “easily add their friends to a group and share their favorite stories with them. Friends can open the group, read the shared stories and easily reply to the group all from their phones.” From an outside perspective the feature might also act as a good recruiting tool for B/R, allowing current Team Stream users to introduce the app to friends who might not have heard of it before. According to Bleacher Report the new 2.0 version of the Team Stream app will be developed for the Android and iPad versions of the app sometime in the future, but is only available now for the iPhone.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, bleacherreport, iPhone, Social Media, Sports Social Media, Turner Sports Tagged With: , , , , ,

SportsPicker Challenge Provides Cyber Bragging Rights with Real World Prizes

September 5, 2012 by

SportsPicker

Want to show that you know your stuff about the upcoming NFL season, or possibly on one of the other major sports ranging from NBA, MLB to MLS and EUFA Championship soccer to your Facebook friends?

Well the SportsPicker Challenge, developed by OHK Labs might just be the app that you have been looking for as it not only covers those sports but also others such as NCAA basketball and football among others.

Everybody has friends that like to brag about how well they pick winners in sporting contests but a little digging often shows that they tend to do so without taking the odds into consideration, something that would have made the task considerably harder. And that is one feature that sets the app apart from others.

Users select the sport that you want to follow and make predictions about how a week’s slate of games is going to turn out, using the odds that have been established for that event. The apps scoring system takes the odds into account so that a victory by the favored team earns 100 points, and underdog team wins earn between 125 and 200 points, depending on the odds of winning.

The importance of the points is due to the apps challenge periods that feature prizes. The nice thing about the prizes is that they are real ones and not a cyber award that only is usable on the app. The company is offering gift cards from a variety of companies including Amazon, Sports Authority, Best Buy and others.

In addition, for the opening week of the NFL (which starts tonight) three fans will win an EA Sports Madden 13 for picking the most winners in the opening week of the season. The OHK has said that it plans to have approximately $10,000 in prizes. Users do not have to participate in sponsored events. They can get friends to join and compete with them via your own challenges.

There s no cost to play and fans have two options; they can play on Facebook or via their iPhone using a free app available at Apple’s iTunes store. It has just emerged from beta testing in time for the start of Football.

There are a growing number of apps that do some of what SportsPicker Challenge does, but as far as I know none use the odds as part of the equation. There are plenty of apps that allow for bragging rights and even some that have prizes, but as far as I have seen the prizes are mostly cyber ones- points for contests and to get extra privileges. This is the one of first that has real world prizes, something I think that fans can appreciate as much as bragging rights.

There are single sports ones that provide prizes including the cool $1 million that the NFL is now offering but that is a fantasy league and so really a horse of a different color. PickMoto is also a one sports play, at least currently.

zp8497586rq
Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Baseball, Facebook, iOS, iPhone, Major League Baseball, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, NFL, NHL, SportsPicker Challenge Tagged With: , , , , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »