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Look to Mobile Apps to Stay Competitive in Fantasy Baseball

April 3, 2012 by

With the second start to this year’s MLB season, and I am still not sure what the league gained by starting last week in Japan followed by a long layoff, all fantasy teams should be in place for the long haul to October greatness.

However the fact that the draft is completed means that only the first step is finished, and then comes the monitoring of teams and players, keeping a hawk eye not only on the waiver wire and the injury report, but also how your own roster is performing so that gaps and shortcomings in a lineup can be repaired quickly and efficiently.

I still know one or two people that primarily use one source for all of their information, but with the growing number of sites that are available it makes sense to have multiple sources for data, and to have an app or two loaded in your smartphone or tablet so that you can react instantly.

Most of these are available on both Android and Apple’s iOS. One or two are available on a BlackBerry and I did not find any that specified Windows Phone, although I imagine that will change in a year.

These are in no particular order and with that we will start with Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball ’12. Many fans are familiar with this free app and a few new features have been added including Facebook and Google logins as well as features such as real time score updates and player stats.

Another I am sure most are very familiar with is ESPN’s free Fantasy Baseball app, although when you say free there is a pay option of sorts. The basic app gives you team management, the ability to accept or reject trades from other managers and a host of news, tweets and video from ESPN’s Fantasy Baseball analysts.

If you are an ESPN Insider, or want to join for the extra features you also get push notifications when players are benched or are send to the DL. It also has exclusive video and news from the ESPN team. For those looking towards next year it is good to remember that it also has Spring Training notes so get the app early. A user must have an ESPN Fantasy Baseball team.

Fox Sports is not about to be left out in the cold on this and has a new version of Fox Fantasy Baseball. It allows you to join an established Fox league or form a private one with customizable rules and offers a variety of scoring systems including rotisserie and head-to-head.

The app allows a great deal of league customization with leagues ranging from four to 20 teams and a variety of draft, trading, and score keeping options available.

CBSSports.Com has its Fantasy Baseball app that has three different main settings. For the casual fan or those new to a fantasy league there is a setting for you, and you can organize a league or enter into an established one.

At the second level, called Premium Games, a player can win up to $3,500. This has four levels of participation, in part determined by the fan’s experience and the entry fee that they wish to pay, with fee’s for a first team ranging from $29.99 for the $150 prize to $499.99 for the $3,500 prize. Cash prizes awarded to the winner of each ten team league.

For the experienced that want a customized experience there is the Commissioner- where you can set customized rules for the league, rosters draft format and a variety of other features. CBSSports offers a range of apps that will work with the league.

We have already covered Bloomberg Sports Front Office 2012 here so all I will say is that it is a very full featured app that covers a wide range of areas that fans would want or need information about players or teams.

For those that are late or waiting until the first week of the season to hold their draft there is GlassWareMobile’s Fantasy Baseball Draft Wizard for Android. While not specifically for stat heads it helps to understand simple terms such as VORP. It provides three years of stats for players and gives dynamic adjustments to players’ value in real time.

Roto Sports RotoWire Fantasy Draft Kit 2012 is another place to go for the draft information that you need. You enter your league parameters and it will generate a draft either based on player rankings or dollar vaue. It contains 2012 projectsions for over 1,000 players and continuously updates them

Interested in tracking minor league players in case you are in a league that allows September call-ups to count? Try MiLB.Com Triple-A 2012. No video on the $4.99 app but it has pitch by pitch tracking for the International and Pacific Coast League teams as well as standings schedules and other information.

For those that do not bother tracking minor league players you do not know what you are missing. I love how some guy in a windswept PCL team will come to the majors with gaudy numbers that just do not translate well the MLB parks and pitching. This is a way to stay ahead, especially if your league requires a rookie each year.

There is just about something for everybody here, aside from operating system limitations. Most but not all are free, a positive price in my mind, and deliver and increasing array of information to fans. I would be interested to hear any pros or cons on these apps from any users out there.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, Bloomberg Sports, CBS Sports, ESPN, Fantasy Baseball, Fox Sports, Google, iPhone, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, RotoWire, Smartphone, Tablets Tagged With: ,

MSR Tech Watch: The Masters is a ‘Major’ IT Challenge for IBM

April 3, 2012 by

Everything about the Masters, from Magnolia Lane to the blooming azaleas to the old-timey scoreboards, oozes tradition. But to make sure that you can see all that old-timey stuff on your iPad, it takes a lot of new technology and online-infrastructure smarts. That’s where IBM comes in, as the white-bibbed caddie who makes the Masters come alive online.

“The Masters is all about being more than a tournament, it’s about being a service to the game of golf,” said John Kent, sponsorship marketing technology manager for IBM, which provides much of the technical underpinnings for the Masters.com site and all the tournament’s scoring tabulations. “The challenge is to preserve all the history and tradition, and balance it with technology.”

Take those scoreboards — the iconic white signs that provide drama all their own, when names and scores are manually shifted in a pleasing delay after roars are heard from distant parts of the course. Though technology exists to create LED leaderboards that could update in real time, Kent said the tradition of the manual white boards isn’t going away from Augusta.

“There’s a lot of drama at the course with the manual scoreboards — you can be sitting at 18 and hear a roar somewhere else, and then you watch the scoreboard and wait for that tile to disappear,” Kent said. “The funny thing is, those are the most highly automated manual leaderboards out there, with wireless connections to the crew in back.”

Real-time video another Masters innovation

Since most golf fans aren’t lucky enough to have a Masters badge, the next best thing to being there is live video — and IBM helps the tournament provide a plethora of streaming images at the Masters.com website. During last year’s tournament Kent said the site served up 3 million video streams on Saturday and another 4 million on Sunday, an amazing online total when you consider that many golf fans are glued to the regular broadcast and its almost commercial-free serenity.

According to Kent, the explosion of handheld devices that can serve up video images is partly responsible for the growth in online viewing of the Masters — the Saturday and Sunday online video totals mentioned above were 40 and 80 percent higher respectively than the stats from the same days the year before, and he expects more growth in mobile viewing this year. “We’re seeing a trend of people using the Masters.com site at work on Thursday and Friday, and then using mobile devices on the weekend,” Kent said. “They’re just taking advantage of the best experience available.”

And to make sure that experience is Masters quality, the IBM tech team does its own “range work” in the offseason. This year that meant testing numerous Android-powered devices so that the release this year of the first Android Masters app would be green-jacket good.

“The complexity this year was in the number of devices we had to test,” Kent said. Apple’s iOS, he said, is easier to support since there are a finite amount of things to look at. But with Android devices, Kent said, there is a wide range of differences, not just in hardware form factors but in the different ways the manufacturers implement the Google OS.

At the golf course, IBM does bring in a truckload of servers to help gather, encode and send out to the Internet the video streams for the seven different channels on the Masters.com site. But you might never see any of this infrastructure on camera — just another part of how the tournament and the Augusta National club combine new technology with tradition.

One advantage the Masters has over other major tournaments is that it is played on the same course every year. To support quality images — Kent noted that the Masters was the first golf tournament to be broadcast in color, and the first to use HD — Augusta National has buried miles of fiber beneath its azaleas, to bring signals from cameras without cables lying around.

“The Masters uses plenty of technology, but you’ll never see it,” said Kent.

IBM customers benefit from Masters tests

While there are few businesses that have the kind of explosive one-weekend stress test traffic that the Masters does — Kent said the Masters.com site attracted 10 million unique users last year, who totaled 197 million page views — IBM does learn a lot about how to dynamically allocate resources during the event, which ultimately serves corporate customers better.

“We have a single cloud infrastructure that supports it all, the scores, and the live video,” Kent said about the Masters.com back end. “And our [corporate] clients struggle with the same things — how to build the right cloud and how to dynamically allocate resources as efficiently as possible.”

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, CBS Sports, Golf, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, PGA, The Masters, Tiger Woods Tagged With: , ,

Boston Bruins Combine all Social Media in Bruins DEN

March 28, 2012 by

While lamenting the fact that it is impossible for my March Madness team, now in second, to gain any additional points I failed to notice that the Boston Bruins have launched one of the most aggressive aggregation sites for social and traditional media concerning the team.

The Bruins, winner of the last Stanley Cup, have launched the Bruins Digital Entertainment Network (DEN), a site that combines television, ticket info, with a wide range of social media contacts and sources.

The site promises that it will provide not only what fans have come to expect in terms of data on players and games but it also said that it will be creating original content for fans to view. You can follow the team in a variety of manners including via BostonBruinsTV.com, at its popular web site BostonBruins.com or on Facebook. The list goes on with support at Twitter, Google +, Tumblr, as well as Facebook and Foursquare check-ins.

The Bruins DEN is a tool that will enable the teams’ corporate sponsors to reach out towards fans with a focused effort, and the site said that it expects to have 2.5 million unique visitors each month, so it should be quite an opportunity for them. Not only that but any technology that it uses is often highlighted with the name of the developer or partner,

An example of that is when the site says that its partners will benefit from its enhanced social analytics capabilities, courtesy of startup Umbel. It has an app for fans called the Official Boston Bruins Mobile App (Bruinsmobile.com) powered by AT&T. The app already features a sitcom series called ‘The Bear and the Gang’ that centers on the teams mascot. The bear also has his own Pinterest page.

The site is easy to navigate and all of the social media connections are clearly marked and easy to find. There is the almost obligatory Twitter feed, pictures from other fans posted using Instagram, and a hsot of additional connections ranging from one that gives you the all-time player roster to one that has a list of giveaways and events.

The organization is moving to provide fans access to its team in a great number of ways, and allowing them to show their pride and interest in the team. Regardless if you download and use the mobile app, post images on Instagram, comments of Facebook or check-in the Bruins are putting the fan experience first. At the same time the business side is carefully intertwined with the effort so that the team can monetize itself and its partners’ efforts in this endeavor.

About a decade ago just a few baseball teams had an Internet presence but MLB quickly learned what a tool the Internet was and pushed all of its teams online, and has since been very aggressive with all forms of social media. I hope that the NHL takes a page from that book and uses this as a template for the other teams in the league because I believe that fans will greatly embrace this opportunity.

Filed Under: Apps, AT&T, Facebook, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NHL, Pinterest Tagged With: , , ,

MLB Fans Increasingly Watching Games via Mobile Devices

March 27, 2012 by

Major League Baseball opens its season next week with the Champion Saint Louis Cardinals helping the Miami Marlins christen the new ballpark that is opening down in Florida on Wednesday April 4th, followed the next day with six openers on Thursday and nine more openers on Friday.

Yet fans are already tuning in to games, with many of the Spring Training games being broadcast on the leagues MLB Network channel, if you are lucky enough to get it as well as many local stations. When the season opens this is a good place to get a quick look at all of the teams.

However there is a rapidly growing section of the fan base that is mobile and wants its games and information mobile as well and baseball is increasingly catering to these fans.

For the fifth consecutive year mobile users will also have the option of using MLB.com At Bat 12, giving users the ability to watch it not only on mobile devices but an increasing range of connected devices as well.

The release of the latest version, which coincided with the start of Spring Training, shows the increasing popularity of watching sports, and in this case baseball, on a variety of devices. The first weekend it was available there was 2.9 million downloads and users received 450,000 live audio and video streams, increases of 132% and 83% respectively over the first weekend of Spring Training games in 2011.

The app is available for Apple’s iPhone and iPad, Android phones and tablets, Kindle Fire, and BlackBerry users with a Windows 7 Phone version expected by Opening Day. It costs $14.99 and provides home and away radio broadcasts, pitch trackers, breaking news alerts and a range of additional features. The features are not standard, with some devices offering more than others.

Then there is also MLB.TV. It comes in two basic flavors, regular and premium. The regular version, which costs $19.99 a month or $109.99 a year allows users to watch games on their computer and features a set of DVR functions that allow a user rewind live game action. It also provides the ability to display games as PiP, split screen or mosaic.

The premium version brings much more to the table, starting with a free subscription to At Bat 12. It is supported on connected devices aside from the computer such as the Xbox 360, Sony Playstation 3, Roku, Apple TV, select Samsung and LG connected televisions and Blu-Ray players and it provides both home and away feeds as well as all of the features available in the basic version. The program costs $24.99 a month or $124.99 a year.

Baseball is doing a very good job of making the sport widely available and on wide variety of devices from television to smartphones. The fact that for less than $3 a month a user can listen to games, something that is much less demanding on a data plan than watching streaming video should draw fans. I have seen some reports that baseball’s hardcore fan base is getting older and I suspect that the expansion of the broadcast to these platforms will appeal to a younger set of fans.

Filed Under: Amazon, Apple, Apps, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, Smartphone, Tablets Tagged With: , , ,

ComScore: Mobile Devices 20 Percent of March Madness Online Viewing

March 26, 2012 by

By now you have probably seen a number of studies that show America loses $(your number here) amount of money due to loss of productivity due to people watching the March Madness at work. I think this study, highlighted by Mashable, is the more interesting one, how many people used mobile devices to watch games.

According to market researcher comScore 20% of online viewing occurred on either a smartphone or a tablet, a number that is roughly double the average for non-sporting events, the company’s comScore Device Essentials research showed.

There are a number of reasons to use a smartphone or a tablet to watch a game. It is easier to do so surreptitiously than on a computer screen, ability to watch multiple screens, traveling or just wanting to check in occasionally during some free time to catch up.

The increase of traffic by devices is very interesting. Compared to the three Thursday/Fridays prior to the tournament computer viewing of sports content was up 77%, surprisingly the weakest growth of the technologies surveyed.

Smartphone usage soared 83%, tablet use in viewing sports was up 94% and all others increased 78%. For use while viewing non sports content they all record minor decreases in the 1% to 4% range. As the study noted, the sports usage was not in place of usual viewing but was rather incremental consumption.

Whatever the reason this is a solid trend for major events with the most recent Super Bowl having a huge on-line presence, in part driven by mobile devices. I expect that the upcoming London Olympics will see mobile devices having an even greater impact as fans can catch events that might not be on broadcast television.

Now I would like to see a study on how many tablet and smartphone users massively went over their data plans and are either facing extra charges, throttling or both.

Filed Under: Apps, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Mashable, NCAA Hoops, Olympics, Super Bowl, Tablets Tagged With: , ,

Friday Grab Bag: London Olympics will be on YouTube

March 9, 2012 by

YouTube and NBC to team on Summer Olympics
NBC will be taking advantage of YouTube’s huge online popularity to help drive traffic to NBC’s home page during the upcoming Summer Olympics in a move that looks to benefit both players according to reports from Sports Business Daily.

The deal calls for YouTube to promote NBCOlympics.com on its home page and to direct visitors to live and highlight videos of the London Games. YouTube will be providing the player that users will need to view the video.

For YouTube it is a further step up into the big leagues as it is replacing Microsoft’s MSN portal as the player of choice. MSN had the 2008 and 2010 Olympics. For NBC it gains a huge presence on the Internet.

According to comScores Media Matrix NBC Sports is currently 6th for the US audience online with 14.7 million unique visitors in February 2012. While it will undoubtedly get a huge boost regardless of any deal due to the Olympics it still trails market leader Yahoo Sports by a significant amount- Yahoo with 50 million users.

US to insist on digital app security?
“Oops your data was stolen again-my bad” may not be the correct response to all of the constant leaking of data from smartphones and other devices. At least one US Senator, Charles Schumer, has taken up the call and has asked the FTC to see if the manner that Google and Apple are running their operating systems violates users’ privacy.

While not a big fan of government intervention I have to agree with this statement from him about apps that steal data- “beyond what a reasonable user understands himself to be consenting to when he allows an app to access data on the phone for purposes of the app’s functionality.”

He is asking that the government agency to force smartphone developers to add safeguards that require expressed consent before allowing access to personal information. It seems that more than these two are guilty and usually all we get are crocodile tears from them when caught. I wonder if this FTC effort will get out of the noise stage?

Apple drops Google Maps
Apple has dropped support for Google Maps in its iPhoto for iOS technology. The move is most likely partly caused by the company’s lawsuits against Google and leading Android users and Google’s fighting back via lawsuits filed my Motorola Mobility, soon to be a part of Google.

However Apple has also purchased mapping technology via its acquisitions of Placebase, Poly9, and C3 Technologies. Apple still offers Google in a number of other ways in its OS and platform offerings so be careful reading too much into this.

Is this a major win for Apple in its Patent battles?
A Google and Motorola Mobility have been ordered by Circuit Judge Richard Posner to disclose details of the development of the Android operating system to rival Apple as part of Apple’s ongoing patent lawsuit over the development of Android.

The case has been ongoing since 2010 and has resulted in a satellite of additional suits by all involved. This will probably add fuel to the fire but not clear if it will have a meaningful impact as there are a number of rumors that Apple may be looking to settle.

What are the best baseball books?
This is always a topic that incites my baseball loving friends- what are the best books on baseball? Well Jeff Polman is the latest to tackle the topic in a blog post found in the Huffington Post. He positions it as the 25 Baseball books that you would want if you were stranded on a desert island.

I really enjoyed the list but like most fans feel that there were favorites that he omitted, some that are worthy and at least one that is a favorite for immature reasons (Seasons in Hell). I do think that Ball Four cannot be omitted no matter what the reason. There is a good conversation on the topic ongoing at Baseball Think Factory at this time. Drop in and make yourself known.

E-Reader use continues to grow
According to a recent Harris poll the growth in e-reader ownership and usage portends good news for those in both markets. Just seven months ago 15% of Americans had one of these devices and now that number has almost doubled to 28%.
What is very good news for companies in this market is that the growth does not appear to be constrained to any one particular age segment with users in the ages 18-35 and 36-47 categories slightly ahead at 30% currently and that number just drops slightly to 28% among ages 67 and older and 24% of those in the 48-66 age category. Typical users read more than non-users as well.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Barnes & Noble, Baseball, Baseball Think Factory, Contests, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, Microsoft, Motorola, NBC Sports, Olympics, Yahoo, YouTube Tagged With: , , ,
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