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Friday Grab Bag: Replacement Refs, Sports Conspiracy and Windows 8 Coming

June 8, 2012 by 1 Comment

NFL’s contract talks with refs breaks down
The week started off with some bad news as it appears that the NFL and its referee’s union have not been able to come to a meeting of the minds in regards to the next contract for the refs. The most current one expired on May 31.

The two sides apparently met with a mediator to try and reach an agreement but that has not panned out and according to ESPN the talks have completely broken down. The league is now actively looking for replacement officials and will seek former officials and ones from smaller collegiate leagues but it is reported that it does not plan to raid BCS officials.

Apparently the NFL’s decision to hire backup refs does not sit well with the NFL Players Association, which has derided the hiring of ‘scab’ officials. Who would have guessed that these two would not get along.

Two trade associations seek to represent crowdfunders
You knew this was coming due to the growth of the number of crowd funding sites and the still undefined role that they play in providing funding for startups looking for a cash infusion. Now there are two lobbying groups vying for the crowd funding sites support.

The two are the National Crowdfunding Association and the Crowdfunding Professional Association both want to be the force for these companies in Washington D.C. This is still in its infancy since neither has yet hired a staff or leased offices, but you know it is coming.

Apple publishes guide on iOS security
With the growing concern about data security, especially on mobile devices Apple has moved to try and ease the concern about data on devices that run its iOS operating system by publishing a guide to how it implements security. Macnn has a nice breakdown here.

Window app numbers continue strong growth
The number of apps submitted to Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace has now topped 100,000, double what it was just five months ago, according to a piece in Endgaget. For those of you scoring at home this is slower that Apple’s App Store but faster than the Android Marketplace.

One of the big differentiators between the rival Apple and Android apps has so far seemed to be that the Android apps are too often one size fits all, good for tablets and smartphones while for Apple there tends to be a clear differentiation. I wonder how this is panning out for Windows and will we see most of these apps available, unchanged, for Windows 8 tablets?

NFL concussion lawsuits consolidated
A large number of the many lawsuits now pending in a number of courts across the United States have been consolidated into a master complaint against the league. In all it looks like approximately 80 cases have been brought together in this effort.

The suits contend that the NFL both glorified violence and downplayed the damage that concussions had on players. The NFL contends that it always has the players safety at heart, well that and an 18 game season.
Windows 8 in two weeks?

Microsoft is reportedly going to make pubic a preview of Windows 8 on June 20th, according to a report in Digital Trends. The move will make it an interesting month for operating system fans since Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference is next week and should have some interesting updates while Google’s Google I/O event is at the end of the month.

The Windows Phone 8 preview is expected to happen at a Microsoft event called the Windows Phone Summit, billed as a sneak peak of the future of the Windows Phone.

The Greatest sports conspiracy story ever told
For years I have heard that the 1985 NBA draft was rigged so that Patrick Ewing would go to New York. Never paid any attention to that, and for that matter really do not to this day. But Patrick Hruby goes to town on the issue and a host of others in the piece “The Truth is out there: From the 1985 NBA Draft Lottery to the Olympics to Game-Fixing…”

It s all here, frozen envelopes, mafia controlling NFL games, IRS and FBI documents carefully redacted and so much more. I enjoyed it a great deal, but was not sure if it was one long rant or a very clever tongue in cheek piece. Bonus conspiracy flow chart here.

YouTube to broadcast Olympics
We have long talked about how YouTube can position itself as an almost independent sports network and now it looks like it is taking that next step. The site will be providing live webcasts of the upcoming London Summer Olympics to viewers in Asia and Africa.

The plan is to provide ten channels that will feature high definition video of a variety of events including the medal finals of all 32 sports. In all it will broadcast a total of 2,200 hours.

FTC claims import ban on Microsoft& Apple could hurt competition
The Federal Trade Commission has said that Google’s efforts to ban Xbox imports by Microsoft and Motorola/Google’s efforts to stifle Apple’s iPhone sales based on patents that Google owns and claims the two have violated could harm competition. It will be noteworthy if the FTC puts some muscle behind this comment as it does appear that patent lawsuits are going to stifle both competition but also innovation

Filed Under: Android, Apple, BCS, FTC, Google, Microsoft, NBA, NFL, Olympics, Startup, Windows 8, YouTube Tagged With: , , ,

Intel Predicts a Wave of Windows 8 Tablets with Intel Inside

June 7, 2012 by 2 Comments

Intel started talking about a potential major move in the tablet space at January’s Consumer Electronics Show when CEO Paul Otellini took the stage for his keynote, but most of the hype that day was centered around its ultrabook slim form notebooks.

Now fast forward several months and a half a world away and the company is making some bold pronouncements in the tablet space at the Computex show in Taipei and the center of attention is on tablets, specifically ones powered by Intel’s Atom Z2760 chips that were formerly code-named Clover Trail.

According to IDG, Intel said that its OEM partners have a total of 20 tablets in the labs and in various stages of completion that are based on its processor. The big beneficiary of this, aside from Intel of course, appears to be Microsoft and its forthcoming Windows 8 operating systems that is expected sometime in the fall. Intel has had other offerings in this space but they have been a non-factor so far.

Acceptance of these tablets will be important for Intel because Windows 8 will also be designed to run on ARM-based processors and these chips now dominate the non-Apple side of the tablet market. There is expected to be compatibility issues with older Windows apps on ARM, however.

Next week we will deliver a wrap up of the tablets that were unveiled at the show this week and it looks like there are some interesting ones including hybrids, ones for Android and some of the first Windows 8 offerings.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, Intel, Microsoft, Tablets, Windows 8 Tagged With: , ,

Nike and Microsoft Team for Fitness App on Xbox

June 5, 2012 by 2 Comments

The connected athlete just got a bit more connected today as Nike has entered into a partnership with Microsoft that will see the development of games for the Microsoft Xbox that uses the Nike+ technology.

The alliance was announced at the E3 show in Hollywood and the first program to be developed will be called Nike+ Kinect Training and the target date for release will be this year’s holiday season. And it will be exclusively available on Microsoft’s Xbox platform. It is currently estimated that there are 67 million Xboxes worldwide.

The program will connect users wearing shoes or a wristband that has Nike+ technology. Using the Kinect camera in the Xbox a user goes through a set of physical tests and the data is recorded and a personalized workout program is generated.

Then activity is recorded over a month and a reevaluation is made. As a user makes progress in getting in better shape the program evolves to raise the bar on their workouts. The program is capable of providing real time feedback to help keep workouts in line with goals.

Multiple users can share a video and work out at the same time by using the Xbox network. You forgot to work out? No problem as you can set it up to send reminders to your phone (apparently only if it is a Windows Phone).

The effort is expected to help expand the Nike brand, and as part of that effort the program will feature the ability to integrate with Facebook so that a user can share results on the social network.

In other Xbox news Microsoft has released a software program that enables tablets and smartphones to connect to the Xbox console and allows them to be used as a second screen. Called Smart Glass it can be used on devices powered both by Microsoft’s Windows family as well as operating systems from rivals such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Microsoft, Nike

Friday Grab Bag: Too Many Penguin Texts? Free Wi-Fi for Intel.

June 1, 2012 by 2 Comments

Barry Bonds was interviewed last week and it seems that the former Pirates and Giants slugger is interested in taking a role in baseball. He met with Giants team executives about a role for himself with the squad.

Bonds has a personal service contract with the team that has apparently been inactive while he went through his trial and now that it’s behind him is looking for it to become active. I guess if Mark McGwire can return why not Bonds? I think sports reporters cringe at the idea.

The Patent Wars — A visual representation
The number of patent lawsuits seems to be increasing geometrically in the last few months as company after company either sues or countersues rivals. It has gotten so big that it is almost impossible to stay on top of all of the suits, lower and up court rulings along with alliances and patent sell-offs.

Now a site called Visual.ly has set it out in a graphic format that sets out the details much clearer. It shows who is selling patents to whom, and how many. It shows the back and forth suits between players such as Microsoft and Motorola. Head over and see if you can figure it out.

Technicolor seeks to enforce 40,000 patents
Remember Technicolor? You still occasionally see its logo on older movies, particularly many of the early classics that were filmed in color. Well the company has apparently been working to enforce a range of patents that it owns and its prime target appears to be mobile devices such as handhelds and smartphones.

The company said that the patents are in areas such as video, audio and optics and it has a team of 220 people that are dissecting products to see if and how they might violate its patents. The licensing division at the company represents a growing revenue and profit stream.

The Mariners erupt for lots of runs — and Twitter fans celebrate
I know from experience that it is always hard to stay positive about your favorite baseball team when they are playing poorly and it looks like it will be a very long season of poor play and lots of losses. The Mariner fans have seen their team flounder a bit but it certainly rose to the occasion when the Texas Rangers came to town this week.

Two high scoring games by the team, with one final score more closely resembling a football score had the teams’ fans sharing their enjoyment on Twitter. I do not follow the team on Twitter but was surprised to see the results when MLB pointed it out and directed users over to its Twitter Hub, a site I had previously missed. Interesting place.

Intel/Devicescape a Boon to Mobile Devices Owners with Intel Inside
Intel has reached a deal with a company called Devicescape that will enable users of ultrabooks and tablets that are using select Intel technology to gain free access to a network of 7 million public Wi-Fi spots. Using a feature called ‘enhanced connectivity’ that is in some Intel-powered devices a use can connect to Devicescape’s Curated Virtual Network (CVN).

The CVN has the ability to update a wide range of apps such as Facebook, email and Twitter on the device even if that device is in sleep mode. It even has the ability to log in to select networks that require that.

Cisco claims 2.5 web connections for each person on earth by 2016
In an annual survey conducted by Cisco Systems it predicted that by 2016 the number of Internet connections in the world would grow to 18.9 billion, a growth that is being driven by the demand and deployment of mobile devices.

The survey said that last year there was a mere 10.3 billion connections and that the biggest traffic growth would come from India, Brazil and South Africa. Sounds like a good time to be a networking company.

Pittsburgh Penguins abuse fan via Text
A fan is suing the Pittsburg Penguins hockey team over disregarding the terms of an agreement that he signed with the team and claims that it is sending him too many text messages. The agreement limits the team to three text messages a week and in the first week it sent 5 and the following week 4. He is seeking class action suit status and wants unspecified damages. The horror, the horror.

Twitter use slowly growing, survey says
The Pew Internet & American Life Project takes a look at Twitter use and finds that its adoption rate is stable and slowly growing, from 11% of US adults last May 2011 to 15% one year later. The study found that daily usage had increased to 8% of Internet users.

The biggest growth area, probably not too surprising, was in younger Internet users, in the 18-24 year old space, which tripled in the last year.

Google files antitrust complaint against Microsoft/Nokia
Google is claiming in an antitrust complaint that Microsoft and Windows phone ally Nokia use of patents has been done in such a way as to disrupt Google’s Android business. The complaint, filed with the European Commission, claims that the two plaintiffs, and others, are conspiring to enforce their patents in relation to smartphones and then splitting the resulting revenue.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, Cisco, Google, Lawsuit, Microsoft, Smartphone, Twitter Tagged With: , , , ,

Wave of Tablets on the Horizon

May 31, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I guess a toy store selling tablets targeted at children is a natural progression of life, and come to think of it after seeing several of my friends’ iPads being hammered on by 7-year-olds, it is now starting to make a good deal more sense.

Welcome to the Kurio7, a 7-inch tablet from Techno Source that will be first seen at Toys”R”Us and then hopefully move into greater distribution at a later point. A key selling point will be the built-in parental controls.

The customizable controls will help prevent children from downloading apps or visiting sites that they should not, and will allow them to surf safe sites on the Internet, read e-books and do the host of other functions that tablets are known for.

The tablet has built-in Wi-Fi and can support eight different logins, each with a different profile, password and controls. It comes preloaded with content that is targeted at children including games, videos and educational material.

Next Generation Transformer almost here
The Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700T, a 10-inch tablet that is the latest in this family is expected within the next few weeks as well. The TF700T lineup will come in two basic flavors, ones targeted at gamers and multimedia users and creators and those for communication and more traditional tablet functions.

The gaming version will feature a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 chip while for those looking for 3G/4G LTE connectivity it will be powered by a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4. It will feature an 8-megapixel camera on the back with LED flash, and a 2 MP front facing camera.

Pricing has not been yet released but it will be interesting to see where the company seeks to position the device. Its earlier version of the Transformer had very disappointing sales.

Google’s Nexus stats appear on benchmarking site
The as yet only rumored Google Nexus Tablet has not yet been announced but t appears that the devices abilities have been listed at benchmarking site Rightware. While the fact that Google was developing a tablet has already been announced by the company so far the details have not been made public.

According to the information the tablet will have a 7-inch display, will run the Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) operating system and will be powered by a quad core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor. The display will have a 768 x 1280 resolution and it appears to be manufactured by Asus.

This is very likely the tip of the iceberg — Apple has a rumored new iPad, there are rumblings of updated offerings from Amazon and then later this year the release of Windows 8 is expected to open the floodgates for a new batch of tablets.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Amazon, Android, Apple, Asus, Google, Kindle, Microsoft, Nvidia, Samsung, Tablets Tagged With: , , , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Facebook Phone, Dell Tablet Specs?

May 29, 2012 by 1 Comment

Toshiba has announced that it is getting out of the netbook market and will not be offering new ones, at least in the United States. This follows a trend that has been developing for some time as others have already discontinued their efforts, including Dell.

Toshiba said that it will instead be focusing on the ultrabook, an emerging class of notebooks that feature light, sleek form factors coupled with powerful processors, according to Liliputing. I suspect that the netbook category is going to be killed, at least in the US, by ultrabook from one direction and tablets in the other.

Dell Tablet specs leaked?
I am always a bit leery of publishing leaked information unless it was leaked to me personally but the piece over at Neowin looks pretty compelling. It appears that Dell is developing its forthcoming Windows 8 tablet around Intel’s Clover Trail dual core Atom processor and that the device will have a 10.1-inch HD display with 1366 x 768 resolution.

Other features include 2GB of memory and as much as 128 GB of SSD storage. An interesting feature looks to be a removable battery that allows users to choose between one that has a 6-8 hour life and a larger one that has 10-12 hour life.

Apple’s response to DOJ a good read
While I have not read the legal documents the people at Forbes have gone to the trouble and bring out some marvelous quotes from Apple’s filings and some interesting commentary about how they foresee the case progressing.

Not being a lawyer hinders any real objective opinion on my part but I think that the author of the piece, Philip Elmer-DeWitt, makes a pretty compelling argument on Apple’s side. Head over for his piece and a like to the Apple filing.

Crowdfunding site flaws?
I increasingly talk about crowd funding as it is an interesting method for small developers to get the initial funding needed to launch a product. However there is another side to the equation that is clearly brought out by Gizmodo — the failures.

It points out that companies that you see on its front page are ones that are getting funding, while ones that fail, or are on their way to failure, seem to completely disappear from the site, as it only wants to show winning or potential winning offerings.

Since, according to the article, Kickstarter gets a percentage of the amount pledged; this makes sense since only projects that get 100% of their request get anything. To see why some of them might have failed head over to Mashable for a short piece on crowd funding mistakes.

The Patent Wars continue

Microsoft wins round versus Motorola in Germany
Apparently Microsoft owns patents relating to how you splint one log text message into two smaller ones and Motorola has violated those patents. A German court ruled that Motorola’s technology to permit this feature infringes on Microsoft’s patents. It was reported that while Microsoft could ban Motorola products in the country it is instead seeking a license fee.

The two have been going at it tooth and nail for some time in the patent department with both sides scoring what appear to be major victories. I wonder of the license fee is the first step towards resolving their issues.

Apple tops in mobile PCs
The preliminary results are in for the NPD DisplaySearch’s Quarterly Mobile PC Shipments and Forecast Report is in and to the probably surprise of no one Apple is the top dog in this field. According to the report Apple shipped approximately 17.2 million mobile PCs in Q1’12.

This is a 118% increase over the same period from a year ago and of the total iPads represented 80% of Apple’s total, or 13.6 million units. For the industry as a whole the results were nowhere near as good with shipments growing 30% year to year, reaching 76.2 million for the quarter.

Cisco kills Tablet
In a move that surprised me because the product never appeared on my radar in the first place, Cisco is killing its Cius tablet. The networking giant had developed and introduced the tablet a year ago with the stated purpose of pioneering the business market with the product.

The tablet featured a 7-inch display and had a $750 list price. Sold via its channel partners it was obviously hurt by lower cost offerings from rivals that businesses increasingly allowed employees to bring in from home.

Facebook building smartphone?
The New York Times has reported that Facebook is once again dipping its toe into the smartphone market and has a project underway that should see a new product available in the market sometime next year.

According to the article Facebook has been actively hiring hardware and software engineers including a number that had worked on Apple’s iPhone. It had been reported a few years ago that Facebook had a development project for a phone but killed it.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Cisco, Dell, Facebook, Kickstarter, Mashable, Microsoft, Motorola, Smartphone, Startup, Tablets Tagged With: , , , , ,
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