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Apple Makes Big iPad Education Push — Sports, Social Media, Hardware Developers to Benefit

January 19, 2012 by

Apple is returning to its roots with its new education push announced today, only this time there will be no floppy drive or large beige computers on students desks with a tangle of wires connecting everything, but rather tablets and wireless communications.

While this will most likely mean great news for education content developers as well as students, it will also be a boon for other markets as well, ranging from Wi-Fi equipment manufacturers and the entire world of sports and sport content development.

The news

Apple is back in the space, but this time as a supplier of educational material, primarily books. It has unveiled iBooks 2 for iPad, and claims that it will lead to a new type of textbook for students.

The key to iBooks 2, which is available in its own section at the iTune store, is that it will enable the creation of materials that will feature interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos and will provide an easy to use navigational system.

The company has already enlisted several educational publishers including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill and Pearson. Also teachers can create their own books for class using the iBooks Author tool.

For students the advantages are obvious, lighter backpacks since all of their text books can be carried in one small device. The cost, which Apple said will be in the $15 range for many books, will help with their expenses and they can be updated in real time to reflect current events or current ideas on a theme.

In addition to the iBooks 2 Apple has also released the iTunes U app that makes available a huge catalog of free educational materials, 20,000 educational apps as well as a wide variety of books that are used in school curriculum.

This is just the latest step from Apple in its effort to reestablish itself as one of the premier hardware and software players in the education market. It has been courting educators since it released the iPad. Apple has already seen a growing adoption of the iPad as a teaching tool in other areas including the NFL.

If Apple continues to gain share in the education field, as seems very likely at this point due to the poor showing by most of its rivals in the tablet business, this success will have far reaching implications for other companies as well.

Benefits for others

First and foremost it is most likely that the huge bulk of these iPads will only use Wi-Fi, since having two cellular bills is probably a bit much for the average student. I do not believe that most schools are prepared for a huge increase in the number of Wi-Fi users this will represent, as well as the huge increase in volume.

So hardware providers in a number of technologies from Wi-Fi hot spots to backhaul equipment providers will all see increased demand for their products

Secondly students will not just dedicate their time with the tablets to work. Aside from social media sports plays a huge role in many students’ lives. With ESPN, CBS Sports and others now streaming games a student can now be n the library and still watch the game.

The huge amount of options made available by the Australian Open for interaction with remote fans looks to be the wave of the future. Athletic, as well as theater and any other group on campus can now make interactive pitches to students as well as make video of past performances and streaming video of current games available on line.

This should lead to a demand for app and content developers to create interesting and informative programs that will grab and keep students attention. I expect that Amazon and Barnes & Noble to quickly follow suit since no one wants to leave such a huge and potentially lucrative market to Apple.

It will also spur the other Android tablet developers such as Samsung and Motorola to also develop solutions to get a piece of the pie. For customers this is great news because it will likely lead to price competition and a lowering of prices in an effort to grab market share.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, BCS, CBS Sports, ESPN, iPad, Live sports via mobile, Motorola, NFL, Samsung, Tablets Tagged With: ,

Bleacher Report Adds iPad Version of ‘Team Stream’ App to Address Growing Mobile Reader Base

January 19, 2012 by

A screen shot of the iPad version of the Team Stream app from Bleacher Report.


To better address the nearly 40 percent of its viewers who access its content via a mobile connection, Bleacher Report is launching an iPad version of its “Team Stream” app today, giving fans a better mobile viewing experience for the “stream” of news, Tweets, story links and other info that Team Stream helps them create.

Having a version of the app available for the Apple iPad will give Team Stream users a bigger screen to negotiate between articles and content items, and will also provide a “personalized dashboard” on the home screen with national-topic headlines as well as stories about the topics and teams selected by the user.

While the Team Stream app has gained its share of kudos and credits — if you’ve never used it, it’s incredibly simple and powerful, bringing you a mix of professional media content as well as athlete- and fan-generated content on the teams of your choice — what was more interesting to us at Mobile Sports Report was Bleacher Report’s claim that almost 40 percent of the site’s overall traffic is now coming from mobile connections, showing that sports fans are leading the way to content consumption on the go.

Here's what the smartphone version looks like.

“We really saw mobile happen in 2011,” said David Finocchio, co-Founder and vice president of content and product at Bleacher Report, in a phone interview. According to Finocchio, Bleacher Report — one of the top sports websites — started the year with just less than 10 percent of its traffic via mobile. By the end of the year that number was almost at 40 percent, making the “mobile future” something that was here, now.

Inside the mobile traffic number, Finocchio said readers using tablets “grew faster than any [device] segment, and it continues to grow faster.” That fact made development of an iPad version of Team Stream a no-brainer. Now fans who currently use the desktop or phone versions of Team Stream to compile tweets, stories and other info from around the web (curated by Bleacher Report editors) will have a larger screen mobile option, the better to watch video replays or view pictures.

Bleacher Report, which now claims 22 million monthly unique visitors and picked up $22 million in growth capital this past summer, is carving out its own space in the ever-expanding world of sports media with a unique focus, one that Team Stream helps deliver: Finding the best content, which is often local in origin, and then arranging it in one place to make it easy for fans to find.

“Right now it’s just too damn hard to go out and find all that information by yourself,” Finocchio said. “You should be able to go to one place.”

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, bleacherreport, Mobile sports pioneers, Twitter Tagged With: , , , ,

Australian Open 2012 Embraces Social Media

January 18, 2012 by

Do you miss the days of Evonne Goolagong and wooden rackets? Do you have no idea what the first sentence meant but like watching tennis and regret that the Australian Open is half a world away and so difficult to catch much of the action live?

Well the 2012 edition of the famed tournament has stepped up in the digital and social media space and presents a number of methods in which a fan can either catch live action or at least get a steady stream of comments and updates, easily and from a desktop or a mobile device.

As noted in Mashable this could be the most advanced use of social media in a tournament and that there is a wide variety of tournament sponsored avenues in which fans can follow the action, as well as comment on the action as it occurs. This has been a growing tradition at the tournament and one that others sports events can learn from as a tool to heighten fan engagement.

The official site has a range of tools that can meet fans needs on a variety of levels. Want to see video replays of highlights, player interviews or of the most popular players in action? They have that. Want to listen on the radio; there is a feature for that when the matches are being broadcast live.

There is a core feature called Fan Central that brings input from fans into the game. It contains what is called a ‘Social Leaderboard’ that contains a pool of 40 players that were selected due to their popularity. Fans can tweet about one of them using a hashtag that relates to their name, or ‘like’ content on australianopen.com that includes them and with every tweet or like they get points to rise in a leaderboard. You are not limited to just following these 40 as the site enables you to follow any player, popular or not.

The most active tweeters will have the opportunity to become ‘Fanbassadors’ that will be recognized on the tournaments official web site.

But it is not just fan twitters that are available. The tournament has staffed @AustralianOpen, a 24 Twitter feed. For the less serious, or more I guess, there is a feature for predicting outcomes as well as one that enables you to put captions onto photos. You can even submit a short film about the ‘Tennis Essence’ with the winner being played at the tournament.

Of course you can follow on Facebook, but if that is too static there are mobile apps for both Apple iPhones and Android based smartphones. There will also be the more traditional information you would expect-draws, schedules, how to get tickets and an overall event guide.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Athlete to Follow, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Mashable, Smartphone, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

Recon Instruments Lands $10 M in Venture Funding

January 17, 2012 by

Start-up sports analytic display company Recon Instruments recent product launch has helped it close a $10 million investment round that should help the company expand both in the sports field but also pioneer new markets.

The latest round features two investment firms, Vanedege Capital and Kopin Corp. that jointly funded the $10 million. Recon said that the money will help continue its product development. Vanedege is a new investment fund located in British Columbia while Kopin, with its voice-activated, wireless, hands-free Golden-i mobile computing headsets, ruggedized military imaging systems and other products looks much more like a future customer or partner of Recon.

The company was founded in 2006 by 4 MBA students from the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business in Vancouver and was initially funded by the founders, their friends and family, skiing enthusiast and a matching grant from the BC Innovation Council. It received bridge funding from Espresso Capital last year.

Recon’s core technology is called Micro Optics Display (MOD) and is designed for use in skiing goggles. It is an adjustable, color widescreen micro LCD that provides real-time information to the athlete such as speed, GPS location, jump airtime, vertical and total distance traveled, temperature, altitude and time, among other features.

There is a range of additional features for the devices ranging from tracking your friends to wireless connectivity to Android-powered smartphones and ability to access playlists.

A customer can either purchase integrated goggles or now buy a unit that can snap in and out of Recon-ready goggles and swapped out when needed. The company has several partners that make compliant goggles including Uvex, Alpina and Briko.

The display is controlled by a device that is strapped on the users arm and includes large buttons so that they can be easily used by owners wearing mittens with communications via Bluetooth connectivity. The company released its second generation products last Fall.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, Skiing

Garmin Connects Athletes with Ant +

January 17, 2012 by

Looking at the growing number of fitness devices available there is a thread that is increasingly running through all of them, they feature a low powered wireless technology called Ant + from Ant Wireless, that enables the athletes and others to get real time feedback from sensors such as heart rate monitors.

It is no real surprise that the technology has caught on in the market; it was designed specifically for this use by Dynastream Innovations to provide feedback from its power meters. When Garmin purchased the company in 2006 it took Ant + to a much wider market.

A look at Garmin products shows a strong presence of the technology, but it has also become firmly entrenched as a standard technology in a wide range of products from other developers in the sports market with support from an estimated 25 million devices.

The growing importance of the technology can be seen in one of its most recent partners, Sony Ericsson, which has a family of Ant + enabled phones including two that were announced earlier this month. Both the Xperia S and the Xperia ion will have native support for the wireless technology when they are released later in the first half of 2012.

Using one of these phones, which include a feature that enables the user to be always connected to the Internet a serious athlete can not only check their vital signs but have a remote trainer also get the data and so be in a position to provide important feedback. You can use Ant + with other phones but need a dongle.

At the recent CES show there was a range of fitness developers showing technology in the Ant + booth aside from Garmin. 4iiii, a developer of audio and display feedback systems incorporates it, no real surprise since 4iiii CEO Kip Fyfe was CEO of Dynastream when it developed the technology and sold it to Garmin.

Others in the fitness space that use the technology include Wahoo Fitness, Pioneer, Garmin, Nordic,CardioSport, and Fatigue Science to name a few partners.

Not just for sports
ANT+ has gained widespread adoption as the interoperable standard in ultra low power wireless communication in sports but also as a technology that is gaining ground in medical applications. It was recently adopted by Qualcomm Life’s 2net hub technology that is designed to provide wireless communications between medical devices.

There are other medical users such as Dexcom, a company that develops glucose monitoring systems and A&D Medical which develops wireless blood pressure monitors and other equipment. There are also companies developing games, bridges and hubs and other mobile applications that use the technology.

The technology is a 2.4GHz wireless network protocol and is used in wireless sensor networks that require low cost, low power, small form factor and flexibility such as being able to form ad hoc mesh networks. The devices that feature the technology have a small battery that can provide years of operational life.

It is interesting how well this, a privately developed technology has found acceptance while rival technologies such as ZigBee seemed to have struggle to find a niche, while offering much the same features.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, Cycling, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Smartphone, Sony Ericsson Tagged With: , , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Samsung’s Note a Tablet-Smartphone Hybrid

January 16, 2012 by

Microsoft Windows will soon have an app that enables Skype, hardly a stunner since Microsoft purchased the company last year. Still this will be good news for users of the popular VoIP technology, even if it is a bit later than originally promised, according to the Verge.

According to the report the first version will not be deeply integrated with the rest of the Windows Phone software but that future releases of the Skype app will be more tuned with future releases of the Windows Phone OS.

Huawei venture into high end smartphones
One of the more interesting corporate pushes at CES came from Huawei, with a range of products and technologies across the show. One of the products that caught my eye was its high end smartphone, the Ascend P1 S.

Touted as being the slimmest smartphone available and with a very clear and precise screen, if and when available it could be the next hot buy. While I only got a very brief demonstration of the device there are a number of good hands on pieces available to get a good evaluation of the product.

Tablet News

Samsung’s Galaxy Note-a bit of everything mobile?
Samsung introduced its Galaxy Note at the CES show and it’s kind of a tweener product, not clearly a phone for some and not clearly a tablet for others. The device has the largest display for a phone at 5.3-inches, or is I one of the smallest displays for a tablet?

It serves as a full smartphone, includes a camera and comes with a stylus for input but also has full touch capabilities. It has a memo app that allows for the taking of notes as in a paper and pen scenario but also has the capabilities to allow a user to annotate any image or screen capture.

Not sure yet how I feel about the product. It has a range of features that separate it from the everyday smartphone including advanced security programs but is its size going to be detrimental? Also if I use my tablet as an e-reader a great deal, is this a step down due to the smaller screen? A lot of unanswered questions and what segments of the market adopt it will be very interesting.

E-Readers spur book sales
Have you written the Great American Novel and yet no one has the vision to publish? A growing coterie of writers is going it alone, and some are finding a good deal of success. The Guardian has a nice piece on some who are doing quite well pushing books using tools from Kindle and other platforms.

It is not all tremendous reviews and instant fortune and the amount that you ear could be nothing or a very small sum, but it does show the impact the e-readers are having on the book business from two sides, publishing and consumption.

More iPad 3 rumors…
The latest rumors about the forthcoming iPad 3 is that it will have a quad core chip that should provide it with a nice performance boost as well as being compatible with LTE a wireless standard called long-term evolution that is just now starting to see widespread deployment by cellular carriers.

The resolution on the screen is expected to match that of the current generation of iPhones and that combined with the new processor is expected to ensure that videos and images are razor sharp. Rumors still have the expected delivery date sometime in March.

The usual legal issues…

Oracle vs Google spat sees trial delay
Ars Technica is reported that the case, originally expected to go to trial by March will now see another delay. The judge, William Alsup, has decided to wait until Oracle can propose a reasonable methodology for measuring damages.

As usual the fight is over patents; in this case one’s that Oracle claims it owns related to Java that is incorporated in the Android operating system’s custom Java runtime environment and compiler

The judge has been impatient with both parties as they have worked to deliver what he views as an appropriate methodology for the damage assessment and seems to have been very critical of Oracle’s most recent efforts. I bet this trial gets another delay.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, iPad, iPhone
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