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Friday Grab Bag: No Old Style in Chicago

November 8, 2013 by

Android USA, a smartwatch maker, has said that its technology will connect its forthcoming smartwatch to other mobile devices that run the Android operating system.

According to the company, its device will wirelessly sync with a smartphone via Bluetooth and give users access to features such as the phone’s music library as well as email and calendar. Pricing and availability of the watch have not yet been announced.

A Phablet too far?
Time magazine has taken a look at the growing trend, and size of phablets, the large smartphone, small-tablet hybrid that is becoming increasingly popular with users, particularly communters who use mass transit and can use the device for both purposes.

The author of the piece ties in sales of the devices with portability, and uses three different sized devices to see how well they do and don’t work in different situations for an interesting read.

Nike+ gets a new app
The Nike+ Move app has been released and for all of you band wearers get ready. Of course the new Fuelband SE Fitness tracker is still pending. The new app is designed to work with iPhone 5S and takes advantage of the new M7 motion coprocessor.

The app has a number of additional features compared to older versions of tracking apps and includes sleep. It has been designed so that users cannot game it and make it appear to be more active than they really are.

Old Style out of style at Wrigley
Bad news for baseball traditionalists in Chicago’s north side, the last can of Old Style beer was served at the last game of the season that just recently concluded. Now fans at Wrigley Field seeking to drink an alternate to some of the big named beers will need to leave their seats and go in search of a cart.

Budweiser has apparently taken over all traveling beer vendor sales and so that will limit the choices of fans. Of course they can always pregame at the Cubby Bear. [editor’s note: Real Cub fans will refuse to order Budweiser, aka Cardinals beer; and Murphy’s is a better pre-game spot especially on sunny days.]

Baseball launches Free Agent Frenzy
No, this is not just the usual hot stove league where people discuss who they want their team to pick up. Instead MLB.com has a contest that could see you at opening day with free tickets. All you have to do is correctly pick where a number of free agents will end up by the start of next season, with a point for each correct guess. There is a pair of tie breaker questions as well.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Major League Baseball, Nike Tagged With: , , , , ,

MLB sees strong increase in mobile and social media demand during playoffs

November 4, 2013 by

mlbpost

Major League Baseball had a great postseason (depending on who you were rooting for), with exciting games and strong broadcast viewership but it also experienced a great deal of success connecting online and via mobile with its fans as well.

While all of the playoffs and World Series had strong viewership during the 38-game run MLB.com saw a huge increase in fan participation, with a total of 296.4 million viewers over that period, an increase of 43% over the previous year and an average of approximately 10 million a day, according to stats from MLB.com.

In the area of live video streams MLB.com saw a very big jump in viewership, overall up 22% compared to 2012. Viewership on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones was up 30%YOY. The video was available from MLB’s broadcast partners TBS and MLB Network and was seen on Postseason.TV on MLB.com and in MLB.com At Bat.

However live video, which requires a subscription, was only the tip of the iceberg. Combined with on-demand video MLB.com had 152 million video streams representing a massive 170% increase over last year. Mobile is driving this usage with MLB.com At Bat app’s share of the total video streams delivered increased 130% compared to last year’s Postseason.

MLB’s mobile app, At Bat, saw its usage up 76% this postseason, and was opened 76.6 million times or an average of 2.5 million times a day. MLB was active on Facebook, with its team of posters recording 4,800 individual posts, which in turn had 1.4 billion impressions. The impressions were up 80% from last year. MLB also delivered 2,840 posts on Twitter at @MLB and saw an increase of 81% in retweets.

For the first time MLB.com distributed highlight clips across a wide swath of social media including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which were watched collectively 33.5 million times.

MLB.Com’s use of a wide variety of mobile and social media technologies to reach fans is obviously showing strong return interest by fans and enables fans that cannot see the games to catch highlights and information on a as it happens basis, something that will keep fans coming back for more.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, Boston Red Sox, Facebook, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, Smartphone, Sports Social Media, Tablets, Twitter, YouTube Tagged With: , , , ,

MLB’s At Bat app rakes in the viewers and sales

November 1, 2013 by

atbat

Major League Baseball has been very aggressive in developing and delivering a variety of apps that can enhance a fan’s appreciation of the game and the flagship product in that effort is clearly At Bat, a program that enables fans to watch and/or listen to games.

The program has seen strong demand, with 10 million downloads in a single season, and very high usage with 1 billion launches. MLB said that 60% of fans open it every day. Last year it had 6.7 million downloads.

Apple recently announced that the program is one of the 10 top grossing iOS apps of all time, and that is no surprise in view of how long the two have partnered. When Apple opened its App store in 2008, At Bat was one of the original apps available.

Of course the app is not just for Apple’s platform, although they are often the first to get the latest releases and have the most features, but it also has an Android version as well as BlackBerry and Kindle Fire.

It would be interesting to see if the growing popularity of the app, which helps fans view games that might not be broadcast in their area, or hear favorite broadcasters has had any impact on other areas of the game such as television viewership. The recently concluded series between Boston and St. Louis saw TV ratings jump 17% this year.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, Boston Red Sox, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, Smartphone, Tablets Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: SensoGlove wins award, Nike+ grows

October 25, 2013 by

The Nike+ Fuel Lab, the recent expansion of Nike’s effort to get a larger body of developers working on its Nike+ technology has started to invite a select group of tech companies to work with it on the platform.

The 2014 Nike+ Fuel Lab in San Francisco is a 12-week program for which the company said it will select 10 companies to partner with it in developing apps. Among the resources it will provide are access to Nike+ and NikeFuel APIs and SDKs, work space and mentorship a well as $50,000. Send in your application now!

Patent trolls under attack in Congress
Companies that are fighting patent trolls, individuals or corporations that file frivolous patent infringement lawsuits may have a new, potent tool in the defensive arsenal as the U.S. Congress may consider a bill intended to curb such behavior.

Introduced by Bob Goodlatte, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee one aspect of the law would be that winners would receive fees from the loser unless the loser had a ‘substantially justified’ position.

Baseball teams worth more than you thought
Bloomberg News spent nine months working out how valuable each Major League Baseball franchise was by looking at all forms of revenue and came to the determination that the teams have been undervalued by an average of 35%.

The team that came out on tops was the New York Yankees, pegged at $3.2 billion. In the breakdown it shows that the teams’ regional sports network accounts for almost $1 billion of that value, or more than many of the bottom teams totals.

Sensoglove wins Tech award
Sensosolutions digital golf glove, SensoGlove, has won Golf Magazine’s 2013 Techy Award as announced in the publication’s November 2013 issue. The Techy Awards cover 20 different categories that span all aspects of the game of golf.

So it’s not a surprise that the category that the SensoGlove won was Techiest Glove. The glove is filled with sensors that help you adjust your grip by position and power so that your hands are in the correct place and exerting the right amount of pressure.

Web connected video devices to outnumber world population soon
If it seems that everyone next to you at a sporting event is using their camera, tablet or heaven forbid, camera to take still images and video to put onto social media you are not far off. According to a recent study by market research firm HIS, as reported by Home Media Magazine, devices may outnumber humans soon.

The study estimated that by 2017 the total installed base of Internet-connected devices that can play video is expected to reach hit 8.2 billion a 90% increase from the 4.3 billion that is estimated to be connected by this year’s end. The planet’s population in 2017 is estimated at 7.4 billion.

Filed Under: Baseball, Bloomberg Sports, Lawsuit, Major League Baseball, New York Yankees, Nike Tagged With: , , , ,

AT&T Bosox fans set wireless data records during World Series opener

October 24, 2013 by

It’s a bit of a broken record — another big sporting event, another huge wireless data usage event — but the numbers never fail to amaze me: According to our friends at AT&T, fans at Fenway Park Wednesday night set new records for wireless data usage during the Red Sox victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in the opening game of the 2013 World Series. How much data? Try 248 GB of data, bigger even than the Bosox’s Big Papi.

Mind you, none of these figures represent traffic that might have traversed over the Meru-supplied Wi-Fi network inside Fenway. The following figures are all from AT&T’s Distributed Antenna System (DAS) network, the collection of small cellular antennas that bring better connectivity to crowded public places. And this is only AT&T carried data, which means that the total of all wireless customers in the park is almost certainly a multiple larger. But for your enjoyment here are the AT&T stats, direct from our AT&T sources:

— Data usage on the AT&T in-stadium network during Game 1 was 248 GB (gigabytes) of data
— 248 GB of data is equal to more than 700,000 social media posts with photos
— AT&T fans made more than 17,361 voice calls and sent more than 56,335 SMS text messages Wednesday night on our in-stadium network
— The peak hour for data traffic on the in-stadium network was from 10–11 p.m. EST
— The 248 GB total surpassed the record for data usage for the AT&T in-stadium network at Busch Stadium in St. Louis in 2013, which was 183 GB set on 10/11/13

We’ll see if the Meru folks can provide any Wi-Fi stats before the series ends. Like football, baseball is perfect for data dalliances because of all the downtime between action. Just more proof that this mobile sports thing is more than just a fad.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Baseball, DAS, Major League Baseball, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: MLB Looks at iBeacon

September 27, 2013 by

In the last few weeks Microsoft has been very good at starting rumors with its vague comments about potential new directions and the latest is that it might be looking at delivering a Phablet that runs the unpopular Windows RT operating system.

As reported by Slash Gear, Microsoft vice president Terry Myerson speaking at the company’s financial analyst meeting last week said that the distinction between a phone and a tablet is blurring and that has seen the growth of the Phablet space.

Google’s Balloon idea about to pop?
Much has been made about Google’s plan to launch a series of balloons to provide Wi-Fi-around the globe in an effort called Project Loon. Now Per Lindstrand has come out against the program calling it ‘a waste of time.’

If you are unfamiliar with Lindstrand he was Richard Branson’s partner as they sought to fly a balloon around the world. He said that he expects the balloons to eventually all gather at the North or South Pole.

MLB gives iBeacon a trial run
One of the features in Apple’s recently released iOS 7 operating system is something called iBeacon. It is a technology that is designed to address the shortcomings that GPS suffers from when used indoors.

Now MLB has demonstrated the potential of the technology for use at ballgames and has the potential to bring fans to within 10 feet of their destination, not within the ½ mile that is how much a GPS can be off. No word yet if it will incorporate it in its At the Ballpark app, but keep an eye out next season.

Wall Street misses on Apple iPhone sales
The day that Apple released its latest generation iPhones the naysayers were out in force. The company has lost its mojo, CEO Cook is not inventive enough, the new phones are a dud and on and on as the stock, which had soared prior to the rollout started to sink.

The market put sales of the new phones in the 6 to 7.5 million range and just a week later Apple is breaking the 10 million unit barrier and phones are on backorder. In addition the company told Wall Street to expect quarterly earnings to be at the high end of the range it had previously announced. Mojo rising I guess.

Intel invests in Google Glass rival
Recon Instruments, which has been making wearable technology for some time has announced that Intel has come on board as a significant investor, although the sum has not been revealed. Recon makes Heads-up Displays for sports.

Recon has a number of partners including Oakley and has been shipping, and selling the devices at a number of outlets worldwide, including Apple Stores. Recon said that so far it has shipped over 50,000 devices.

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 ship date set from Sprint
Sprint has announced that it will be shipping the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 on Oct. 4. So fans of the very popular phone can start getting in line soon. The real good news for many will be that it comes with an Unlimited Data Guarantee for life.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, Google, Intel, Intel Capital, iOS, iOS 7, iPhone, Major League Baseball, Microsoft, Surface, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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