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BuddyTV Preps for MLB playoffs — Lets You Know When Games are On

October 3, 2012 by

BuddyTV MLB Quicklist

BuddyTV, an app that enables sports fans to quickly find out what games are available via local broadcast and cable carriers is launching a feature that will enable fans of Major League Baseball to track the playoff games that are slated to begin later this week.

The MLB Quicklist will be part of the company’s current app, BuddyTV Guide, and will provide the broadcast information of the games, listing them in either chronological order or if a user wants they can get specific team information. If all of the playoff series went their full set there would be 43 games played during the current post season.

The program allows users to set alerts to remind them of game times and the app has a number of filtering features that enable users to select just a single topic such as sports, comedies or reality tv shows.

The overall app is easy to use. It indexes all the major cable and pay TV providers’ schedules as well as major Internet Video providers and then presents that in a user defined format for them to peruse. Users can set up watchlists, and also filer out types of programming that they are not interested in. It also connects with Facebook and has the ability to integrate iTunes, NetFlix and Amazon programming as well as allow you to blacklist programs and channels. The program is free for iOS devices and is available at Apple’s iTunes App Store. So far the company has had approximately 400,000 downloads since the app was introduced.

There are a growing number of apps for tracking TV programming with ones available such as TV Guide Mobile and TV-Listings USA and TV Show tracker so the more customization an app can provide for a user the more appealing it will make itself.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Baseball, Facebook, iOS 6, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile

Watching Golf this Week: The Ryder Cup

September 28, 2012 by

It’s really too bad that the Ryder Cup, the biennial golf competition between the U.S. and Europe, takes place in the fall — because that means a lot of fun and interesting golf is going to get lost in the tornado of football this weekend. Fortunately, thanks to the PGA and Turner Sports there’s a boatload of Ryder action taking place online, so get your browsers fired up for Friday morning foursomes. And then some fourballs. What?

Oh yeah, the Ryder Cup’s first two days have something we never see during the regular tour year — team competitions! If you need a how-is-it-scored primer, the BBC has a great one explaining the scoring — but basically foursomes are alternate-shot competitions (meaning each of the two players trades shots) while fourballs are more familiar team play, with everyone playing their own ball and the team with the player with the lowest score wins the hole. Each hole is worth a point, and the team with the higher score at the end wins an overall match point. If the match is tied each team gets a half-point. Singles on Sunday need no explanation. Mano a mano, also match play so it only matters how many holes you win, not your total score.

And after the inflated importance of the FedEx Cup — yes there was some good golf by the big names and congrats to Brandt Snedeker for bagging the big check — there is nothing truer than playing for your country or your continent, no prize money on the line just pressure and pride. This year the Cup is being contested in my home town, Chicago, at the monster known as Medinah. I remember playing there once, just out of high school, thought I had some game, and put something like a 120 on the scorecard. The pros, of course, will be shooting pars and birdies but the scores matter less than the head to head, between the great Euro players led by Rory McIlroy and the U.S. team, led by Tiger Woods.

With live coverage online, on TV and on an app, you have no excuse for not watching some great golf, even if you are also watching football. The great thing about Ryder coverage is that it’s also unlike tournament coverage — there is usually always some tension going on, and the TV folks are usually in a Red Zone-type mode, switching to where the pressure is most high. A great way to end the real golf season. Just wish we didn’t have to be distracted by the return of real refs and all that.

REMEMBER: ESPN for TV Friday, NBC on Saturday and Sunday.

THE 2012 RYDER CUP

(all times Eastern)
TV COVERAGE

Friday, Sept, 28 — ESPN, 8 a.m. — 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, Sept. 29 — NBC, 9 a.m. — 7 p.m.
Sunday, Sept. 30 — NBC, 12 p.m. — 6 p.m.

RADIO
SIRIUS XM (Satellite)
8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday; 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. The live broadcasts are also available to subscribers on the SiriusXM Internet Radio App and online at SiriusXM.com.

ONLINE / MOBILE APPS
Ryder Cup Live will be online basically the whole tourney, starting at 8:20 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, 12 p.m. on Sunday, and going until competition is over each day. The live video is free (no cable contract required), and mobile viewers can download the iPhone app, the iPad app, or go to the Ryder Cup Mobile Site if you have an Android device.

ESPN3 is also carrying the ESPN broadcast live on Friday.

FACEBOOK PAGE
The PGA Facebook page is the Facebook home of the Ryder Cup.

SOCIAL MEDIA
The Ryder Cup has something called the 13th Man page, similar to the Social Caddy we saw at the PGA. Lots of Twitter streams, a USA vs. Europe Twitter competition, an Instagram feed… worth a bookmark.

TOP TWITTER FEEDS TO FOLLOW

Geoff Shackelford — well known golf writer. If you’re not following Geoff you are missing the online boat.
Golf Channel — official Golf Channel feed
@PGATOUR — official PGA Twitter feed
@StephanieWei — great golf writer who is a Twitter fiend.
Doug Ferguson is the lead golf writer for AP. Good Twitter insights that often aren’t part of your wire-service lead.

WHAT’S THE COURSE LIKE?
Here’s the deets on Medinah Country Club course.

WHO WON THIS THING LAST TIME?
Europe is the defending champ, if you remember. I remember bad raincoats.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, ESPN, Facebook, Golf, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NBC Sports, Ryder Cup Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Barnes & Noble Expected to Offer Nook Video Services

September 25, 2012 by

Barnes & Noble is planning on offering a video streaming and downloading service later in the fall as it faces increased competition not just from Amazon but also from the expected Apple iPad Mini and the upcoming Windows 8 tablets from Microsoft and its OEMs.

The company, which has been pondering the fate of its Nook e-reader for some time despite its popularity when released, said that the service will enable Nook users to buy movies and television shows from Time Warner’s HBO; Viacom; Sony Pictures Home Entertainment; and Walt Disney Studios. It said that it is planning to add additional media content in the future.

It is commonly viewed that Amazon’s Kindle platform is the primary rival to the Nook and recently Amazon provided a huge upgrade to that platform in terms of quality of tablets and added a new larger model.

However the physical tablets are only part of the equation as Amazon offers both a streaming video service via its Prime offerings, but users get two day shipping on many items purchased using Amazon. Amazon has added a huge new library of videos via a deal with Epix as it seeks to also steal customers from Netflix as to help differentiate its offerings.

Aside from the Amazon threat is the looming issue of just additional competition in the overall tablet space. Intel has said that there are almost two dozen new tablets pending using its processors that will be running one of the versions of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system.

Microsoft will also be entering the space with its own tablet, called the Surface. Google’s Nexus 7 was released just a few months ago to very favorable reviews and looks to be a long term contender. Then Apple, the overall market leader in the tablet space, is expected to enter the smaller form factor sector next month with a 7-inch iPad.

Barnes & Noble has not yet provided a pricing structure for the video service. Amazon offers its streaming video by the year while Netflix has a per month charge.

Filed Under: Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google, Intel, iPad, Microsoft, Nook, Surface, Tablets, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

iPad now on Duke’s hard court

September 25, 2012 by

Duke University’s men’s basketball team is the latest college sports team to adopt a tablet as a major training tool as the school revealed this week that it was going to eliminate notebooks and move over to Apple’s iPad.

The school will be providing the latest version of the iPad with a 64GB storage capacity and players will have a range of information ranging from the static such as schedules and scouting reports, to live video of the teams’ plays as well as those of rivals and scouting reports. Also included will be tracking software and the ability to wipe the memory if they are stolen or lost.

Tablets are gaining ever increasing acceptance across a wide spectrum of usage models and sports, often viewed as so old school that it is still considering the typewriter, has actually been at the forefront of adoption.

There are at least eight NFL teams that have moved away from paper notebooks and onto iPads including the Dallas Cowboys, Washington Redskins and the Baltimore Ravens. MLB and the NBA have also been quick to follow suit.

Colleges have seen what their professional brethren are doing and have also started to adopt the technology. At the start of this season Stanford University adopted the iPad for its football players. Ohio State announced earlier this year that it was going to outfit all of its student athletes with iPads over the next two years. Other schools moving in this direction include Syracuse and the University of Colorado.

The one constant I am seeing is that almost all of the schools and pro teams are using Apple’s iPad as the tablet of choice and that is a great PR boost for the company (not that they really need it), but if rivals want to get high profile positioning of their tablets they might be well rewarded by going after some teams. I guess we might see this change a bit when the Windows 8 tablets come out next month, but then again maybe not.

Filed Under: Apple, Basketball, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Duke University, iOS, iPad, Major League Baseball, Microsoft, NBA Game Time, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NFL, PlayerLync, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , ,

Ryder Cup Gets Big Online Push — Live Video and Social Media Too

September 24, 2012 by

Following on their successful joint effort at the season’s last major, the PGA and Turner Sports will kick out the online jams for this week’s Ryder Cup matches, with a lot of free online live video and some social-media bells and whistles that include a U.S. vs. Europe Twitter contest.

According to a press release from Turner and the PGA, the Rydercup.com website will be the host of a wide array of event coverage that will supplement the TV coverage, which is also extensive — 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Eastern) on ESPN on Friday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on NBC Saturday, and noon to 6 p.m. on NBC Sunday. Online coverage will start Friday and Saturday at 8:30 a.m., and continue until play concludes. Sunday, online coverage of the singles matches starts at noon. The matches are taking place at Medinah Country Club just outside Chicago.

The live video online will probably be similar to the experience we saw at the PGA Championship, with live updates, video archives and scores. There was both good and bad, with a great feature that let you go back and replay anything that had happened previously, and a terrible feature called “predict it” that keeps annoying you in a popup window asking you to predict what’s about to happen. Though sports prediction games are increasingly appearing, I have yet to be convinced that predicting shots in golf online is what the experience is all about.

There is one big whiff, however, on the Ryder Cup mobile side — the accompanying mobile-device apps for all this online goodness only work on iPhones and iPads, leaving half of the mobile consumers who use Android platforms high and dry. Though Turner reps claim the mobile website will work just as well as the iPhone app, any mobile user knows that a dedicated app almost always delivers better performance.

On the social-media side, Rydercup.com will offer a “Tweet Battle” between Team U.S.A. and Team Europe, with a “Social Scoreboard” showing which team is winning, both online and at the course. The score will be tallied by counting the number of fans using the respective hashtags — #RyderCupUSA or #RyderCupEurope — in their social media posts. The event is also on Facebook and on Twitter, with something called “The 13th man” replacing the “Social Caddy” feature from the PGA, where you could follow a bunch of Twitter streams.

The PGA earned itself no small amount of social media self respect by not censoring messages from the PGA, especially when its parking situation at Kiawah Island resulted in a lot of angry fans and media for long delays getting out to the course. Right now it appears the site is taking a very USA-USA-USA stance, which is perhaps understandable, but probably not so appealing to European fans. Not sure if other golf fans agree but I for one would rather we see a return to the days when this competition was more collegiate and friendly, and less jingoistic. You can still compete hard without having to make it a sports equivalent of war. But I may be on the short side of that argument.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, ESPN, Golf, Golf Channel, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, NBC Sports, PGA, Turner Sports Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Major League Baseball jumps on Apple’s Passbook Ticket Technology

September 20, 2012 by

Major League Baseball has long been a fan of Apple and its technologies, rolling out its very popular sports apps on the iOS platform first and so it is no surprise that it has quickly adopted Passbook, the mobile ticket option available as part of its iOS 6 operating system.

With the operating system just being released this week MLB already has four clubs set up to support the technology, the San Francisco Giants, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox and Kansas City Royals, all of which will offer the option at their home games for the remainder of the season.

Passbook is a technology that enables a ticket to be transmitted, stored and displayed on an iPhone. Apple is seeking to have it adopted as an accepted technology at a wide range of establishments that use tickets including movie theaters, boarding passes as well as used for coupons and loyalty cards, to just name a few. A nice feature is that the ticket can appear on the lock screen so that users don’t slow down a line activating and logging into their phone.

For baseball fans they have multiple avenues to purchase the digital tickets including via MLB.com or the official Club websites, including the mobile web, or through the MLB.com At Bat or At The Ballpark mobile apps. MLBAM also will automatically display the digital ticket from Passbook on the device’s lock screen as a day-of-game reminder.

The tickets will be like a normal ticket and will show the information that you would expect including game date, opponent, time, section, row and seat. StubHub, the official secondary reselling site for MLB will also adopt the technology.

Filed Under: Apple, Baseball, iOS, iOS 6, iPad, iPhone, Major League Baseball, Passbook, San Francisco Giants Tagged With: , , ,
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