PGA’s Mobile Device Policies a Bit At Odds With Tourney’s Online Promotions

The golf hasn’t started yet but as we look through the spectator guide for the PGA Championship we ran across the mobile device policy, which seems pretty sound. Turn your phone to vibrate, you can check data and send messages, just no picture-taking during the golf. And certainly no video. Otherwise you will be asked to surrender your device, which you can then pick up later you naughty online phone user, you.

Of course, this rule will apparently NOT apply to PGA staffers, since the championship is making a big deal of its social media coolness this weekend in Kiawah. The tournament even has an Instagram page and will be hosting some fun Viddy videos, probably shot on phones. Just not on fan phones. So, yes, the PGA Championship is into social media. Just not any social media created by, you know, people.

Scrolling down a bit on the user guide we see that the PGA is suggesting that folks leave distracting items at home like dogs and milk crates, as well as iPods and iPads. But the news release for the tournament’s digital coverage notes that a lot of items will be designed to take advantage of the iPad:

Optimized for iPad – the official PGA Championship site and PGA Championship LIVE will be optimized for the iPad. The site and video player will take advantage of the iPad’s large, multi-touch display to provide fans an enriched viewing experience.

Seems like with the inevitable rain delays, an iPad could be a handy thing to have out there on the island. So don’t bring it. But if you do, enjoy the iPad optimization.

Our favorite bit from the user guide, however, has nothing to do with digital — unless it’s the digits on your hands that you save by not being utterly stupid:

DANGER FROM WILDLIFE
Please do not disturb or feed alligators, snakes or other
natural wildlife while on the grounds of the Ocean Course.
Use caution when walking in areas near ponds and tall grasses.

I’d watch out for Tigers too. They tend to attract big crowds, and will turn on anyone using a camera phone to record their brush with greatness.

Kevin Love’s Insider’s View of the Olympic experience via Twitter, Instagram

If the 156-73 victory by the USA over Nigeria didn’t quite stimulate your appetite to watch more of the Summer Olympics basketball competition, Kevin Love is here to assist.

As he’s done on Twitter, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ forward and USA Olympic team reserve is thriving in London via social media. He’s chronicling the Olympics in his own personal way via Instagram, the image application.

Love has nearly 382,000 followers on Twitter and more than 56,000 followers on Instgram.

Sweet Dreams, Fellas

During the Summer Olympics, Love is posting an insider’s view of the U.S. team. It’s not network style, like replays of dunks or sweet passes. It’s more like Candid Camera. Love takes compromising, often funny pictures of his teammates with Instagram and also posts the shots to Twitter.

How about a picture of teammates sleeping on the airline with eyeshades on? Or how about teammates with their faces smashed into pillows? Or how about teammates looking prim and proper in their official Olympic attire?

Love’s playing role on the Olympic team may still be undefined. But his roles as the team’s unofficial photographer and official team prankster are well established.

The Summer Olympic basketball competition continues through Aug. 12. Stayed tune for more of Love’s zany Olympic view.

Love’s Twitter handle is @KevinLove and his Instagram signature is KevinLove.

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

Baseball Adds Instagram to its Team

Major League Baseball is teaming with Instagram to show photos and images that come directly from the teams, enabling fans that are not at events to get a feel for the game, players and fans in attendance.

The concept is very simple but can be very compelling as well. Using @MLBOfficial as its tag line MLB teams will be posting photos from their games as well as behind the scenes images for others to view. Instagram says that MLB is the first professional league to do so.

Currently the teams that are already on board for the program include: SF Giants (@sfgiants), NY Yankees (@yankees), LA Dodgers (@dodgers) Atlanta Braves (@braves), Texas Rangers (@rangers), Seattle Mariners (@seattlemariners), LA Angels (@angels), and the Kansas City Royals (@kcroyals). Instagram said that eventually all MLB teams will be launching accounts.

A quick look over at the SF Giants official account finds that there are 339 photos and 41,530 followers. Note that you have to be an Instagram user to view the images at its site. However a quick visit to the Giants site can give you fan photos.

In the past a huge number of fans of teams have posted images of their teams and players. According to a recent piece in Mashable there had been a 400% increase in Instagram photo postings from major league ball parks compared to the entire 2011 season, with more than 40,000 posted at the time of the piece.

We have long thought that MLB was an organization that appears to really understand how to reach out to fans at multiple levels. It has developed mobile apps to enable you to follow games on mobile devices, is creating high grade stadium wireless networks and constantly launches games and contests to keep fans engaged.

I suspect that this will both help draw more fans to the site to view baseball pictures and also contribute additional images to the mix. I certainly hope that other pro and amateur sports follow this lead because they have the ability to get images that regular fans will not.

What’s a Picture Worth? To Facebook, $1 Billion as it Buys Instagram

Social media powerhouse Facebook has purchased Instagram in a combination cash and stock deal that is valued at $1 billion. Instagram is a photo sharing site that permits users to share photos with their friends.

While some have seen Instagram as a potential rival to Facebook and others just a flash in the pan the deal is the biggest in Facebook’s history by a large margin and will help expand its already enormous reach in the social media space.

Instagram had been only available on Apple’s iPhones until just last week when the platform moved to the Android platform where it was greeted with a tremendous rush of downloads and usage by an entire new group of users.

Facebook made it clear to customers wondering if it would just assimilate the company that the answer was no, but that it would use some of its technology in Facebook going forward. Instagram is expected to continue to operate, and develop, as an independent company.

I wonder if this will really add that much to the Facebook empire. When Yahoo was still a high flying company back in 1999 it purchased one of the most popular Internet portal sites, GeoCities, for $3.6 billion in a deal what looked like it would greatly enhance Yahoo’s position as a portal site. You may well as ask what is a portal site now.

A user can already post a photo pretty easily to Facebook, maybe not with the bells and whistles that come with Instagram but still pretty quickly. Now with some f those bells & whistles incorporated into Facebook, will there be a need for an independent Instagram in the long run? I bet no.

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Mashable to sell for $200 million?

TV makers missing the boat on apps?
The NY Times has a nice, short pierce on how other forms of streaming video are increasingly sidelining television viewing and that they need to add a greater degree of connectivity to compete with developments such as Apple TV and even smartphones. It asks some of the questions that likely be the basis of this conversation going forward.

How is Twitter’s Finances?
Gawker has come forth saying that the micro blogger’s revenue and profits are poor, based on leaked information that that site has received. Twitter has been pronouncing that it has seen an uptick in its performance but Gawker says otherwise.

It claims that in 2010 Twitter had total revenue of $28.5 million, a pretty good number for a startup until the fact that it had to spend three times that to earn the revenue and that for the year it reported a net loss of $67.8 million.

The company, which has 100 million active users, does not appear to have a comprehensive plan to maintain steady revenue, according to the article, which claims that it could be the greatest tech bust ever.

March Madness is here- so are the apps (for iPhones)
Appolicious has taken the time to track down and do a nice short write up on 5 apps that can help you track the tournament and follow your teams. They are both free and paid apps and cover just scores to ones that include analysis, news updates and bracket creators and tracking information.

Generation C?
Labeling generations seems to be an art, although I have always wondered why the first I had heard of was Generation X. I mean why start at the bottom of the alphabet? Well the good folks at Nielsen have come up with another, Generation C.

At least this one makes sense as the C stands for connected and its members are Americans in the 18-34 age group, or 23% of the overall population. Gen C make up 27% of online video viewers, 27% of those that visit social networking sites, represent 33% that own a tablet and 39% of the smartphone owners.

Mashable on the block?
Reuters is reporting that CNN is in talks to purchase social media news site Mashable for more than $200 million. Mashable covers a range of areas in the tech and social media sector including startup news and issues related to major players. CNN declined to comment.

One interesting aftereffect of the big Apple iPad announcement is that it seems to have unleashed a wave of rumors about pending rival products. While there is always talk about company A planning to do such and such with its next generation platform, it seems much more pronounce these days. Of course it could be that I am just now paying more attention, anyway here are a few of the more interesting ones.

Google and Asus to team on 7-inch Tablet?
DigiTimes is reporting that Google and Asus are teaming to deliver a 7-inch Android tablet that will be shipping in May. Targeted directly at the e-reader space that is currently dominated by two players, Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook the tablet is reported to be in the $199-$249 price range.

Padfone to ship in April?
It looks like Asus will be delivering its Padfone convertible next month, at least in select markets. I have to say that this is the device that I am very interested in getting my hands on. The reason is that the phone snaps into the tablet and the phones processor powers the entire device. This way a user can get a tablet with 3/4G without a separate contract, a major drawback on connecting tablets to digital networks.

The Padfone is a three piece product with the first being 4.3-inch smartphone designed for the Android 4.0 operating system powered by a Qualcomm 1.5GHz dual core processor. That can be inserted into the top of a 10.1-inch tablet, and there is a keyboard dock as well

This and that

Instagram looks to Android
Instagram is coming real soon to the Android. Founder Kevin Systrom showed, but did not give a full demo of the app at SXSW. The company said that it currently has 27 million users.

Some iPads will be late

Apple’s recently introduced iPad, set for delivery this Friday, will be missing in some areas due to an overwhelming demand for the product. The company said that it has sold out and that some buyers will have to wait as long as three weeks to get their orders.

Nvidia vs Apple Rd 1
Nvidia disputes Apple’s claim that the iPad is 2x faster than nVidia’s Tegra 3 processor. Its response can be boiled down to simply- let’s see the data. Wonder if this is the first shot in a benchmark war a la Intel/AMD from a decade ago?

Path now syncs with Nike +
For users of the iPhone app that makes a journal of your life for your friends it now enables you to share your workout stats using Nike’s Nike + technology, with more forthcoming when Nike releases the Nike + Fuelband product.

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