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BMC debuts Team App Just Prior To Tour de France Start

June 29, 2012 by

BMC has two of the most appealing plots in the Tour de France this year: Can Australian Cadel Evans successfully defend his 2011 title? And can American George Hincapie, making his record-setting 17th Tour de France start, get his record-tying 16th finish?

The seven other riders on the BMC squad all have their own stories to tell in the Tour de France, too. Which is why, the team has unveiled its 2012 mobile app for Android and Apple iPhones.

Team news and race results are easily accessible via the free app. Race action photos, rider bios, information on the BMC Racing Team’s partners, direct links to the team’s online store, Twitter feed, Facebook page and Tour Tracker or all available via the free app.

And from the lighter side, fans can find out what team resident music expert, Manuel Quinziato, is listening to via his “Quinziatunes” playlist.

The BMC Racing Team app can be downloaded for Android, here and for iPhone here

BMC held a pre-race Tour de France press conference with comments by Cadel Evans and Philippe Gilbert. Listen here

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, iPhone

Cadel Evans Seeks Title Repeat as Tour de France Unfolds With Vast Network, Mobile Viewing Options

June 29, 2012 by

Australian Cadel Evans, riding in the midst of an unheralded season, will seek to successfully defend his 2011 title beginning Saturday in the 99th edition of the Tour de France — a route highlighted by more time trial distance and less severe climbing.

The race, beginning with a prologue in Liege, Belgium, will encompass 21 days of racing and two rest days and conclude with its traditional finale — circuits around the Champs Elysees in Paris on July 22.

For race enthusiasts not in attendance, the Tour de France will have an unprecedented variety of online viewing options, paced by nearly 300 hours of network broadcast, online and mobile options via the NBC Sports Network. Live race video online, however, isn’t free — it costs $29.99 for the entire race, or $4.99 per stage. Plus, you need to sign up for a Map My Ride account.

Hundreds of online cycling publications will also feature live Tour de France content, most notably in the event’s official site, letour.fr and two largest cycling websites in the United States, cyclingnews.com and velonews.com.

The race’s official site letour.fr currently has vast archived Tour de France history and daily will offer a live updates and nearly instantaneous results.

VeloNews.com and cyclingNews.com will have multi-platform journalists at the race providing daily reporting, analysis, video and a live feed text feed from each stage.

Bicycling Magazine (bicycling.com) will offer daily multimedia content from the Tour de France, while steephill.tv will offer an exhaustive list of content and global live feed options.

The riders, race staff and media will also be a large part of the social media mix. More than 100 of the entrants have Twitter accounts accessible via the Twitter handle, TDF 2012

This year’s overall title competition will suit a strong time trial rider who doesn’t necessarily possess dominating climbing skills. The race features only three uphill finishes but includes more than 100 kilometers of time trials.

Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara (RadioShack-Nissan) is favored for Saturday’s 3.8-mile prologue and Germany’s Tony Martin (OmegaPharma-Quick Step) and American teammate Levi Leipheimer will also likely be in the time trial mix.

Evans (BMC), 35, didn’t race in May and has only a victory in the three-day Criterium International in April this season. Evans will be supported by a strong teammate group featuring 17-time Tour de France participant (and hopeful 16-time finisher) George Hincapie, Philippe Gilbert of Belgium, and 23-year-old American Tejay van Garderen.

The Olympics, which begin less than a week after the conclusion of the Tour de France, has sharply altered the overall competition and other sub-plots like the best sprinter and climber contests.

Mark Cavendish (Sky) of Great Britain, who already has 20 Tour de France stage wins, has lost weight and has predicted he won’t dominate sprints as he has in recent years in favor of focusing on the Olympic road race.

Likewise, former world titlist Tom Boonen of Belgium, a six-time Tour de France stage winner, is skipping the race as is promising American Taylor Phinney (BMC). Both riders are also focusing on the Olympics.

Alberto Contador of Spain, a three-time race winner, and two-time runner-up Andy Schleck (RadioShack-Nissan), who inherited Contador’s title in 2010 when the former was post-race suspended for the using the banned stimulant clenbuterol and who also finished second twice, are not competing.

Contador’s suspension will last until the end of the summer while Schleck is recovering from a spine injury sustained in early June while racing in France. Norway’s Thor Hushovd, who won two Tour stages last year, will also be absent this year while he recovers from a virus.

Eight Americans will compete this year, with Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Sharp) of Wenatchee, Wa., who won his first Tour de France stage last year, favored in sprinting stages and veterans Leipheimer, Christian Vande Velde (Garmin-Sharp) and Chris Horner (RadioShack), all top-10 overall finishers.

Bradley Wiggins (Sky) of Great Britain, who has three wins this season, Robert Gesink (Rabobank) of the Netherlands, winner of this year’s Tour of California, and Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas-Cannondale), second last year in the Tour of Italy are among a half-dozen potential overall title contenders.

After three days in Belgium, the race progresses from the English Channel across northern France to the Vosges, south to the Alps, farther south to Cap d’Agde on the Mediterranean Sea, then into the Pyrenees and conclusion in Paris.

James Raia is a California-based journalist who writes about sports and leisure. Visit his cycling site at tdf100.com

Filed Under: Apps, Cycling, Tour de France, Twitter

Recon Instruments Seeks to Enlarge Heads-Up Display App Space with SDK

June 28, 2012 by

Recon Instruments has taken an important step in expanding the demand for its Heads up Display technology by opening it up for developers with the release of a software developers kit (SDK) for Android that will open up the platform to third party developers.

Possibly lost amid all of the splash that Google provided at the opening of its Google I/O show yesterday Recon used the event, packed with Android developers, to reveal the details of its HUD SKU to the market.

While its main focus has been on developing for ski goggles, the HUD devices have been used for a range of other uses including by a skateboarder who recently set a speed record, and recorded the event using Recon’s technology.

I suspect that as additional apps are developed Recon will start to see its products used in a growing number of fields which will be increasingly important as competitors are starting to crowd the field. Google showed a live working demonstration of its Google Glass project at the show yesterday and they were used in ski diving and rappelling down a building.

A number of other developers including Oakley and Vuzic are also working on at least somewhat similar projects, so the larger the app ecosystem for Recon’s platform the more likely it will have long term success.

The SDK will enable the development of apps for the current version of MOD Live, the current HUD from Recon, as well as the next generation that is currently under development. The basic components that developers will have to work with include a GPS unit, Bluetooth connectivity and a host of sensors including on board altimeter, barometer, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyro, 3-axis magnetometer, and temperature sensor.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, Google, Live sports via mobile, Recon Instruments Tagged With: ,

Google Delivers 7-inch tablet, the Nexus 7; Google Q Streaming Media CE device

June 27, 2012 by

Google has delivered a host of new features for its Android operating system as well as a co-developed 7-inch tablet and its first consumer electronics device that is designed to unify and play the data that you might have stored in the cloud.

The tablet was developed along with partner Asus and is called the Nexus 7, a 7-inch tablet that will take on everything from products from rival’s Amazon’s Kindle , Barnes and Noble’s Nook, Microsoft’s Surface and Apple’s iPad to just name a few.

The $199 tablet features a Nvidia Tegra 3 quad core processor as well as a12 core Nvidia Tegra application processor that will run the just announced next generation Android operating system 4.1, code-named Jelly Bean and has a 1280 x 800 pixel display.

The Nexus 7 is designed to work with other Android devices so a user can start reading a book on their phone and pick up on where they were on the tablets. It supports interactive articles that enable a user to go from an article in a magazine to say a video showing an exercise being described in the article.

The Nexus 7 is built around using the company’s Google Play store as a center of usage and said that it is available now for preorder with shipment expected for mid-July. It will come with a $25 credit to spend in the Google Play store as well as free books, magazines and others.

The company also showed its Nexus Q, a black ball that is a social media streaming device that a user can control via another Android device and is designed to access data and media that is stored in the cloud.

Designed to be set up from your phone it is essentially jukebox and movie player, and as the ability to serve as a center that allows your friends to add songs or movies from their devices to the playlist, and anyone can take control and rearrange the playlist to suit their tastes. Same with movies and YouTube videos. It will run Android 4.0 and feature 16GB of internal storage and have both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities.

The company displayed its Google Glass project, much to surprise of the audience. The live Google Glass demo started by showing ski divers in a blimp over San Francisco equipped with glasses. They jumped from the blimp and the glasses enabled the audience at the Moscone Center, and online viewers, to follow the divers as they descended onto the roof of the building.

They also employed bikers doing flips on the roof top and then building climbers to drop down the side of the building, all wearing the glasses. It was a very impressive live demonstration and I suspect it will give users of cameras such as GoPro a moment of pause.

But the company does not envision the Glasses to be just for recording information and video for friends but also make it easier to access information via your glasses rather than taking out a smartphone, unlocked it and then do a search for the required information.

The Glasses in Project Glass feature and array of technology including a display, a camera, a processor and memory to store what is being recorded as well as a touch pad, microphone, small speaker, sensors including gyroscopes as well as multiple radios for data communications.

Project Glass is still a work in process and the company was asking for feedback to see what else the audience, which features many of its top developers, would also like to have in the devices. It announced the Google Glass Explorer addition for developers and admitted it was still a rough product. Hopefully some of this will make it to YouTube.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Asus, Barnes & Noble, Google, Kindle, Microsoft, Nook, Smartphone, Surface, Tablets, Wi-Fi, YouTube Tagged With: , ,

PGA Tour to Part Ways with Turner, Manage its Own Digital Properties

June 26, 2012 by

We’ve seen this movie before, when the NFL started taking control of its own content and starting the NFL Network. Now golf’s big professional tour, the PGA Tour, has announced plans to completely take over production of its own digital properties, ending a relationship it had with Turner Sports since 2006.

It’s perhaps a small surprise that golf’s biggest operator should want more control, since by its own account digital consumption of content is growing fast with no top in sight. And Mobile Sports Report readers already know that the PGA is planning to expand its live video options in 2013, with full simulcasts of broadcast TV available to the mobile, digital audience.

Paul Johnson, PGA TOUR Senior Vice President of Strategic Development, Digital Media and Entertainment, put it simply in the PGA’s press release:

“With the speed in which the digital landscape is changing, we feel it is important to control all aspects of the business directly,” Johnson added. “This does not reflect upon Turner, which has done a wonderful job and has been a great partner; it is about our overall strategy regarding our fans, players, sponsors and other stakeholders, and our desire to control those elements directly out into the future.”

The PGA and Turner, in our view, have done a pretty impressive job innovating, with cool online apps like Shot Tracker, which is due for an upgrade as well in 2013, maybe even getting to mobile platforms.

The real question, as golf writer Geoff Shackelford asks, is whether or not digital coverage will be better or worse in 2013. Is it a rebuilding year, or will the talent in Ponte Vedra Beach perform like LeBron? We, along with lots of other digital golf enthusiasts, will be watching.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Golf, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, PGA, Turner Sports Tagged With: , , , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Google I/O This Week

June 25, 2012 by

Google’s Goggle I/O show is this week so expect to hear an onslaught of news from the company and its partners on all things related to Android, smartphones, tablets, Chrome and most likely a host of other issues that they are concerned with.

The show will be held from June 27 to June 29 at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center and most of the keynote sessions will be live streamed for those of you that are interested but don’t want to endure the cold of an SF summer. (editor’s note: 75 degrees here today, Oregon boy.)

One message I would like to hear is how it will deal with the growing fragmentation of its Android operating system. It seems that most of the major manufacturers are only now coming on board with Ice Cream Sandwich, and a new OS is expected this week.

The issue is important for a number of reasons but a major one is that continued fragmentation could lead to developers only focusing on Apple’s iOS and even Windows 8 when that OS is available.

Intel invests in touchscreen developer
Intel Capital was the lead investor in a EUR20 million investment funding round for touchscreen technology developer FlatFrog Laboratories. Invus was also an investor in the round. FlatFrog is developing technology that tracks light traveling inside the cover glass of a screen.

Apple dealt a setback in battle with Motorola
Judge Richard Posner, who is presiding over one of the major patent disputes between Apple and Motorola, has ruled that Apple cannot pursue an injunction against Motorola and has dismissed the case with prejudice.

Posner had previously indicated that this was the direction he was leaning in but relented to allow testimony from both sides of the case last week. Apple does have the option to appeal his ruling.


Apple moving ahead in Samsung patent suit
While losing an important round to Motorola, Apple is continuing to push ahead with its Samsung lawsuit and will have its request to have a court order blocking sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 heard this week.

The judge in the case has also said that she hopes to rule on Apple’s bid to block sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone at the June 29th hearing.

Microsoft says no to Motorola patent proposal payout
Microsoft has declined to accept the offer that Motorola made that would settle the patent dispute between the two companies that has threatened Microsoft’s ability to ship Xbox 360 consoles into the US and would bar some Android phones from Motorola as well.

Motorola was offering to pay 33 cents per phone that uses Microsoft’s ActiveSync software and wants Microsoft to pay it 50 cents for each device that uses Microsoft’s Windows operating system that uses Motorola’s industry standard video compression patent.

Mobile Carriers agree to alert travelers on roaming charges
Have you ever traveled in a foreign country and used your smartphone and had a slight heart attack when you got your bill at home with the huge roaming charges attached? Now carriers are going to do something about that.

What they are doing is to send you a message alerting you to the fact that your data plan has changed and new rates will apply. Among the 24 that have signed on are AT&T, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom-Orange, Hutchison 3 Group, SoftBank Mobile Corp., Verizon Communications, America Movil, and Vodafone Group.

Apple fined over 4G claims
An Australian court has fined Apple $2.27 million over its claims for its iPad that included unsupported promises of 4G support. After the charges were brought Apple changed its advertising and offered refunds. Apple now touts the device as WiFi+ Cellular.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Android, Apple, Apps, AT&T, Google, Intel Capital, Lawsuit, Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung, Smartphone, Tablets Tagged With: , ,
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