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Can CBSSports.com Become the iTunes for Fantasy Sports?

January 16, 2012 by

In a move expected to be announced at this week’s Fantasy Sports Conference in Las Vegas, CBSSports.com is going to open up its fantasy sports game infrastructure to independent developers, in an effort to perhaps become the iTunes of fantasy sports.

Reported by the Sports Business Journal Daily, CBSSports.com’s move is a bold one in the largely secular world of fantasy sports, where almost every provider has traditionally tried to keep customers to itself. Unfortunately for fantasy players that often means that if you play in different leagues on different platforms you must maintain separate lists of teams, passwords and logins, an especially tough task if you are trying to access your league info on a mobile device.

Theoretically, by opening up its fantasy infrastructure CBSSports.com could build an iTunes-like ecosystem where third-party developers could create applications that blend the CBSSports.com player environment either with new over-the-top apps (like ones that allow fantasy players to talk smack to each other) or with apps that might let a player access teams from different fantasy platforms in one place. Just like under iTunes, developers will share revenue with CBSSports.com on a 70-30 split, with 70 percent of associated revenue going to developers and 30 percent back to CBSSports.com.

MSR favorite developers Bloomberg Sports and StatSheet are part of the first wave of CBSSports.com partners, according to the SBJD report. Here’s a money quote from Bloomberg head honcho Bill Squadron:

“This effort by CBS connects directly with the vision for fantasy that we also have,” said Bill Squadron, head of Bloomberg Sports. Bloomberg will enhance its Front Office fantasy baseball and Decision Maker fantasy football applications using the CBSSports.com fantasy data. “Having this level of deep integration is going to be very helpful.”

Here’s the Wall Street Journal take on the announcement.

Filed Under: Apps, Bloomberg Sports, CBS Sports, STAT.US, StatSheet Tagged With: ,

Friday Grab Bag: Bud is Back!

January 13, 2012 by

Selig has two year extension in the works-I assume it is guaranteed

The Good people at HardballTalk, among others, are reporting that MLB Commissioner Allan “Bud” Selig will sign a two year extension to remain at the helm of the sports. The deal is expected to be announced at the owners meeting taking place in Az. this week.

It comes as no surprise that he is staying there, who wants to give up an $18.4 million annual salary. I imagine he will dedicate the next two years to keeping players salaries down. Did anyone really think that he planned to retire?

Microsoft notches another win in its patent push
Microsoft and LG Electronics have signed a broad cross patent licensing agreement that gives LG coverage for Microsoft patents for LG’s lineup of devices that run Android or Chrome operating systems.

Included will be LG’s phones, tablets as well as other current and emerging consumer electronic devices. This is the 11th company that has entered into this type of licensing agreement with Microsoft and others include Samsung, Acer and HTC.

Apple gets egg on face, store after iPhone cancellation
After an abrupt announcement that the store would not be selling Apple’s iPhone 4S on the first day of availability in Beijing, the large crowd that had formed outside one of Apple’s stores in China became unruly and started throwing eggs at the building.

According to a piece at IDG a crowd had formed prior to the store opening and when an employee announced that there would be no phones available that day and gave no reason why.

Rams sign Fisher- Dolphins feel used
The St. Louis Rams have signed Jeff Fisher as its next head coach, according to ESPN and other sources. Details have not been released but I think it will be very interesting to see what he managed to squeeze out of them.

This has apparently irritated the owner of the Miami Dolphins, the other major suitor for his services. He had seemed to vacillating between the two and it seems Miami now was just using it for leverage in St. Louis.

I guess that the team learned nothing from its pursuit of Jim Harbaugh last year. Not only did it jack up what Harbaugh earn as a 1st time NFL head coach, Miami then had to salve its current head coach’s feelings.

I cannot wait until Miami goes on a search again- I suspect they will now massively overpay one of the former head coach/announcers out there like Gruden.

3D for Apple iOS
According to Mac Daily News Apple has filed for a patent that shows it will be developing a 3D GUI for its iOS-based mobile products. Apparently this is just one of several 3D products that are/were nder development at the company Will I be able to interface with my phone like they in “Minority Report”?

Mizco delivers cross platform USB charger for phones, tablets
Mizco International has delivered a cross platform charger that it claims will handle a wide range of smartphones and tablets, something that could make traveling with multiple devices significantly easier in the future.

Called the Cross-Brand Tablet and Smartphone Charger it is from the company’s Digipower division and is designed to support USB charging for products from all of the major manufacturers.

The $29.99 charger has a featured called a SmartSwitch that can be set in one of three positions and is capable of optimally charge USB-powered tablets from major manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung, HTC and BlackBerry as well as USB-powered Smartphones.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, iPhone, Major League Baseball, Microsoft, NFL, Smartphone, Tablets Tagged With: , ,

4iiii Delivers Feedback System for Bikers and Runners

January 13, 2012 by

A new product from startup 4iiii Innovations could prove to be a boon for every jogger that has run into someone looking down to check their time or for every bicyclist that has hit a pot hole checking their heart rate monitor.

The company has debuted Sportiiiis (pronounced Sport-Eyes) it is a display technology that attaches to glasses to enable an athlete to check monitors for instant feedback.

Designed to be used with a heart rate monitor and other sensor technology, the Sportiiiis attaches to any set of glasses a user wears, be they sunglasses, prescription glasses or anything in between by using the device’s universal attachment points.

A user first configures the device using software that can be used on a range of smartphones as well as PCs and Apple computers, setting performance goals and ranges within which the athlete wishes to work.

The device provides feedback that can be read off a multi-colored LED boom that runs across the bottom of the glasses between them and the user and can be followed by a user’s peripheral vision without taking their eyes off of the road. The feedback can come from a rage of user-supplied monitors or sensors including heart rate monitors, speed monitors as well as power meters, via a wireless transmission.

The projection shows current and recent performance and has a red light to indicate that the user is going too hard, green if just right and orange and yellow to show that they are in between. The Sportiiiis also include built-in speakers that provide audio feedback using either a male or female voice. Both the volume of the speakers and the intensity of the LED colored lights are adjustable.

To control the Sportiiiis a user accesses its Tip-Tap technology that allows a user to tap once to get audio feedback including current heart rate or cues related to the current workout while a double tap switches between sensors and can switch between power, cadence and speed.

The company is led by Kip Fyfe who has had previous success in related sports feedback development. He was the founder of Dynastream Innovations, a company that developed a variety of technologies and products, possibly the most notable being a sports sensor that was mounted in running shoes that featured speed and distance sensors and was first used by Nike.

The company also developed ANT +, an ultra-low power wireless protocol that is increasingly finding its way into a wide variety of athletic devices (including Sportiiiis) that provide real-time feedback. In 2006 he sold the company to Garmin for $46M CAD.

He said that he realized that it was inconvenient and even dangerous for athletes to take their eyes off the road to get feedback, and being an avid runner even during Canada’s cold winters, we wanted to see his heart rate, speed and other information easily and simply, which gave both to the idea of Sportiiiis.

The device is expected to be on sale within the next month and will have a MSRP of $199.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Cycling, Startup Tagged With:

Incentient Uses iPads, Wi-Fi for Suite Services at ‘The Q’

January 12, 2012 by

For those lucky enough to sit in the luxury suites at the Quicken Loans Arena (The Q) in Cleveland, home to the Cavaliers and the AHL Lake Erie Monsters, ordering from the concierge just got a whole lot easier due to a collaboration between the arena and Aramark, the sports facilities food and beverage provider.

The Q has introduced a Wireless Concierge service that uses SmartTouch Technology developed by Incentient and deployed on Apple iPads in its 92 luxury suites that allows customers to order wirelessly from a wide array of products categories.

Incentient is a New York-based developer that is focused on creating solutions for hospitality venues including restaurants, hotels and resorts and sport and entertainment arenas and has a variety of technology that it has developed targeted at enabling real time communications between the venues and its customers.

SmartTouch is a customizable application designed for use on the iPads’ touch screen enables customers to browse, select and order items from the site. At The Q it allows suite guests to order food and drinks, purchase merchandise and even event tickets among other items simply by tapping the screen. The technology provides two way communications so if there are issues with orders that can be conveyed instantly.

Among the other features of the program is the ability to look at the venues future calendar, get stats and scores for the event being played as well as others elsewhere and get information not only about The Q but also nearby businesses.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, iPad

Who Will Build a Kindle for Sports? Millions of Fans Await the Answer

January 12, 2012 by

One great comment I heard at CES in Las Vegas this week was that tablet computers are “the killer app for watching video.” To that I would add a caveat: Tablets could also become the complete killer app for watching sports in a mobile fashion, if and only if the leagues, cellular providers and broadcasters could come to some workable agreement on viewing rights. What could make all that happen quickly? Why not something like Amazon’s Kindle, but instead of books, have it devoted to sports?

The real revolution started by the Kindle isn’t the cool technology behind the device itself. Instead it’s the simple pricing and content procurement method which eliminates the need for consumers to care about the cellular connection and simply allows them to pay for the books they want to read. If only sports could be so simple.

In the real world, we know it’s far from easy to get sports content on your mobile device. Just trying to definitively describe how you could get Monday’s BCS Championship game to show live on a mobile device took a weekend’s worth of reporting and numerous email exchanges with the supremely helpful ESPN folks. It’s not all ESPN’s fault that its mobile offerings are so constricted, but the fees ESPN charges cable providers play a part in the snarl of rights and access barriers that make mobile sports viewing such a pain in the rear.

The hope here at MSR is that all parties concerned learn some lessons from the digital music business, where a simple store and powerful simple device — iTunes and iPod — led to an explosion in sales of music, videos, podcasts and now books too. The Kindle is an extension of the iPod/iTunes simplicity to the mobile ecosystem, eliminating the concerns about how much data you’re downloading and whether or not you are exceeding your monthly mobile limits. Why not build one tailored for sports, with the connectivity costs and rights fees built in? If half a million people went through the maze of tasks necessary to watch the BCS game online, what could the size of that audience be if folks could walk down to Best Buy, pick up a “KindleSports” and start watching immediately?

At another CES panel I heard representatives from the major motion picture houses talk about how mobile video is no longer a future thing, but a booming business already grabbing millions of viewers and the associated advertiser interest. It’s time for sports entities to get into the game in a similar big way, and a KindleSports would be a great way to start. I would be just one of the millions waiting in line to buy one.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, AT&T, BCS, ESPN, ESPN3, iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Football, Tablets, WatchESPN Tagged With: , , , , ,

iBike Delivers Powerhouse Fitness Plans

January 11, 2012 by

Velocamp has expanded its iBike platform to help transform it into a tool that everyone from the most casual of riders to ones with dreams of possibly participating in the Tour de France can take advantage of to improve themselves.

The latest from the company that has delivered a variety of cycling performance tools is called iBike Powerhouse Fitness plan, and it comes with four different plans each targeted at a different customer profile so that it does not try to shoehorn a wide variety of riders into one program and then disappoint them when it does not meet their needs.

John Hamann, Velocomp’s chief executive officer said that while there are lots of expensive tools for professions that enable them to track progress and work on better results, the more casual types are really left out.

The Powerhouse Fitness Plan uses a 5 minute ride along with monitoring equipment to measure your current physical state and then creates a custom plan within a basic framework. The framework is designed to achieve specific goals and track your usage and can modify plans if you fall behind or are advancing faster than expected.

The hardware required for the system includes the user owning an iPhone or iPod Touch, software, sensors that mount on the bike to measure power and other factors. There is a mount for the front of the handlebars where a waterproof case is attached so that the information is fed real time into the iPhone or iPod Touch.

The Plans

The plans were developed by Hunter Allen, one of the top cycling endurance instructors with specific expertise in using power meters. There is a basic program that allows you to develop a program and then track and display your results as well as provide feedback and changes to the program.

The package with the basic plan has a MSRP of $269. There are a set of six additional plans that can be downloaded for $9.99 each. Among the additional programs is one called iSlim, a program designed to help the user lose weight. Then there is ExpressFit designed for quick results; Weekend Warrior is for those that really only have two days to try and get fit each week. Then there is Brazilian Butt, designed to shape your lower body. Other programs include Heart Healthy and Kid Fit.

The Trouble with Android

iBike, as could be guessed by its name, is an Apple house and currently only supports a pair of products for its computer, Apple’s iPhone and its iPod Touch. It is not that the company wants to miss out on the hundreds of millions of users of Android and other platforms, Hamann said.

Apple has a consistent form factor while the Android form factors, including connectors and overall device sizes vary all over the map. By just supporting Apple it simplifies stocking for both the company and its retail outlets, but he does not rule out moving to new platforms in the future.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Cycling, iBike, iPad, iPhone, Tour de France Tagged With: , , ,
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