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Wednesday Wi-Fi Whispers: Ruckus Files for IPO, Qualcomm Stadium Gets DAS

October 10, 2012 by

It’s about as far from a whisper as you can get, but in the Wi-Fi world the big news of the week was Wi-Fi vendor Ruckus Wireless filing for a $100 million IPO last Friday. As you’ve read here earlier Ruckus is heavily involved with the growing market for big-space Wi-Fi (like stadiums, racetracks and other event areas) and with healthy revenues ($120 million in 2011) the long-rumored move became a reality with the SEC Filing that makes for such good hard-data reading.

The part we like the best in Ruckus’ S-1 is this bit about how big the market is getting for what Ruckus calls its “carrier class” Wi-Fi products:

According to Infonetics, the market for Wi-Fi networking solutions for carriers is expected to grow from $296 million in 2011 to $2.8 billion in 2016, representing a 57% compound annual growth rate. According to Gartner, the market for Wi-Fi networking solutions for enterprises is expected to grow from $3.4 billion in 2011 to $6.9 billion in 2016, representing a 15% compound annual growth rate. Carrier-class Wi-Fi addresses the needs of both of these markets.

Stadium and sports deployments probably fall somewhere in the middle of those markets, since many such deals are being done as partnerships between enterprises (teams) and carriers. But the good news for vendors like Ruckus is, there’s no getting away from the need for Wi-Fi. And the gear needs to be better than earlier technology to handle the needs of big events.

Qualcomm Stadium Gets AT&T DAS; N.Carolina State, U of Kentucky also get upgrades

We’ve always found it more than a bit ironic that Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, namesake of the chip giant, didn’t have any Wi-Fi to speak of and from what we heard, it had bad cell coverage too. That should change going forward at least a little bit thanks to a new DAS (Distributed Antenna System) deployment AT&T has installed at the home of the Chargers, which will bring AT&T’s new 4G LTE network to football fans in SoCal.

AT&T is also putting some cellular upgrades into college stadiums, including N.C. State’s Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh, N.C., which is getting some of the cool new multi-beam antennas. The University of Kentucky’s Commonwealth Stadium in Lexington, Ky., is also getting an upgrade via an AT&T DAS, so SEC fans should be able to get their mobile game on better while cheering on the Wildcats.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, NFL, SEC, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , ,

New GoPro App Turns Phone Into Camera Remote Control

October 10, 2012 by

If you are a fan or user of the GoPro mobile cameras, you now have a potentially cool new toy — the new GoPro smartphone app, which lets your phone act as a remote control for the company’s mobile HD Hero2 cameras.

The short video above does a great job of showing you what’s possible with the new app. Here’s some verbiage from the official GoPro announcement page:

Features include full control of all camera settings, live video preview to your smartphone or tablet for easy shot framing and more. The GoPro App also gives you access to our Photo and Video of the Day posts keeping you in touch with the latest radness from GoPro.

GoPro also notes that you need a software update to both the HD Hero2 camera and the Wi-Fi BacPac to use the app, all available from this page.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, GoPro Tagged With: , , ,

Bubba Watson Takes His Driver to the Cake — And a Pepper, and a Pineapple…

October 9, 2012 by

Pro golfer Bubba Watson channels his inner Gallagher on the Tonight Show. Enjoy.

Filed Under: Golf Tagged With: , , ,

Why Verizon Makes You Turn on GPS for NFL Mobile: So They Can Market the Data

October 8, 2012 by

In using the excellent (if sometimes buggy) NFL Mobile app this football season, I did notice one new annoying thing: The app requires you to turn on location services before it lets you watch games, a relationship I struggled to understand since there is no geographic blackout or anything else rights-related with the games that are carried by the app.

Turns out, the reason for the link is that Verizon is selling the aggregate data they get from mining their audience’s locations, a topic Verizon discusses in depth with Fierce Wireless. Though the security aspects of having my phone company aggressively marketing my location data doesn’t bother me that much (having to turn on and off the GPS is a bigger pain to me), Karl Bode over at DSL Reports smartly points out that the promises of big carriers like Verizon don’t really mean that much because the companies regularly assist the government when asked for cell phone data.

I get it that Verizon wants to monetize its services more, but worry that heavy handed continued data mining like the NFL Mobile app experience tilts too far in favor of the big paying customer (here the NFL) over the small paying customer, the average fan. Compared on a one-to-one basis, there’s no way to equate the worries of one person who doesn’t like to turn on GPS services (drains the battery!) to the needs or paying desires of a client like the NFL. But in the long run such unbalanced focus will lead to nobody using such apps if they are loaded with hoops you have to jump through simply to let Verizon earn more bucks.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, NFL, NFL Mobile, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Will You Watch the Red Bull Stratos Jump Live? Delayed Until Tuesday Next Week

October 8, 2012 by

UPDATE 3: Looks like we will have to wait until Sunday at the earliest:

Meteorologist Don Day confirmed a Thursday launch is not possible. The next weather window opens on Sunday October 14th.

October 10, 2012 11:10 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@RedBullStratos

Red Bull Stratos

UPDATE 2: Launch was canceled Tuesday due to strong winds. Try again tomorrow?

UPDATE: Follow the live feed on YouTube. As of 10:15 PT, the launch looks like a go, with Baumgartner getting into the capsule.

I’m still not sure if the upcoming Red Bull Stratos Jump is something really special, a complete PR stunt, a budding hoax, or at the very worst, the first live execution on the Internet. There is certainly no shortage of promotional prep work being done for the planned space jump by Felix Baumgartner, but the whole idea that the dude may have his eyeballs melt or something horrific like that makes the whole thing something I will probably skip when it happens live, now on Tuesday due to weather complications.

For a lot of details, Engadget has a great writeup here. Which spells out some of the risks, which include great harm that could come to Baumgartner’s body if bad things happen, like a suit tear, or an unstoppable spin.

Will you watch? Where do you come out on this stuff? I have been spending a lot of time lately being amazed at how Red Bull, the kind-of-weird energy drink, spends boatloads of cash to do things like sponsor far-out mountain bike escapades all in the name of YouTube bike porn. Good fun. But the space jump seems… a bit out there, in my opinion. As the blog post clip below notes, Felix will be wearing five high-def cameras so if anything goes wrong… the web will be the first to know.

Good luck Felix. I hope this is a thrill and not something bad.

Advanced high-definition cinematography cameras will beam real-time images of Felix Baumgartner’s every move in the Red Bull Stratos space capsule, providing interior and exterior points of view during the mission. And when Felix jumps, he’ll be wearing five high-definition cameras, giving you the feeling you’re right there with him in the descent.

In addition to documenting the record-breaking jump Felix’s experience will also be captured by powerful long-range and infrared cameras on the ground, as well as by a helicopter hovering near his flight path. The live stream of Felix’s jump will be available on redbullstratos.com, on partner sites and carried by more than 50 TV and Internet channels around the globe, in advance of a BBC documentary this fall.

Jay Nemeth (FlightLine Films), the mission’s director of high-altitude photography, and his team have been working to meet the challenges of the lethal stratosphere for the last five years. The Red Bull Stratos capsule and Baumgartner’s pressure suit have more HD cameras than most 45-foot TV production trucks. “We have basically created a flying video production studio,” Nemeth said.

Who ensures secure signals from the capsule back to earth? Riedel Communications, renowned for its advanced fiber, intercom and radio technology – provides the entire communications solution for the mission, integrating both wireless and wired digital intercom systems. Riedel furnishes the fiber-based video and signal distribution as well as the wireless video links to the capsule’s onboard cameras – enabling stunning pictures to be delivered from the Red Bull Stratos capsule to ground control.

Filed Under: Red Bull Tagged With: , , , ,

SideBets Adds Facebook, Twitter Integration to Mobile Social Betting App

October 4, 2012 by

Screen shot of the SideBets app. Credit: SideBets

The year-old SideBets mobile sports betting app has added functionality that allows users to send messages about their successful wagers to Facebook and Twitter, according to company executives.

Announced today, the new version of SideBets also supports the creation of betting “groups” and the ability to send a single bet to a group of friends, with a “first accept” feature allowing the first respondent to accept the wager. If you’ve not used SideBets before the app has virtual “SideBet Dollars” that act as a counter for your friendly wagers. The app also supports several betting games, which users can play with friends who also have the app.

According to Jon Goldstein, one of the three founders of SideBet’s parent company, the Detroit-based Blue Ox Entertainment, the SideBets app now has 5,000 active users among the 15,000 or so who have downloaded it since its debut last September. The new features, Goldstein said, are meant to enhance the main “utility” of the app, which he sees as its own type of social network, like Twitter or Facebook.

“Real gambling is not social,” Goldstein notes, pointing out that bets with casinos or bookies aren’t friendly interactions and may not be something you want to talk about, even if you win. But betting with friends, he said, is inherently social, and could eventually become a business.

While SideBets does charge a small amount of money for virtual cash (approximately $1 for each $100 in SideBets Dollars) there is no way to cash in winnings for real money, a factor that keeps the SideBets game relatively free of legal entanglements. Like other social betting apps, such as PickMoto and GrabFan, SideBets is betting on winning users by making it easy for them to find detailed information like games, point spreads and other information, while also keeping track of all betting activity.

But the jury is still out on whether SideBets or any of the other sports betting apps out there will win a big number of users, especially with the specter of legalized mobile betting hanging somewhere in the future. Right now, Goldstein sees the mobile sports betting market as a field in true infancy, with no real successful model to follow.

“Eventually there will be a tipping point [of a successful model] but nobody really knows how to do this yet,” Goldstein said.

Filed Under: Apps, Betting, Facebook, iPhone, Pickmoto, Sports Betting, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,
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