You are here: Home / Archives for Olympics

ESPN Supports Title IX with espnW Women’s Sports Channel

June 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment

On the 40th Anniversary of Title IX ESPN3 has launched espnW, a sports channel that will be dedicated to women’s sporting events. The anniversary of the passing of the Education Amendment of 1972, of which Title IX was apart, will be this Saturday.

What the act did, for those who do not know, is that it required equal opportunities for all at any educational institution that received federal funding. While most associate it with women’s sports, where it no doubt had its most public impact, it covered everything from school bands to access to math classes as well. It required equal spending for sports and has withstood a number of assaults to weaken it over the years.

The channel plans a major blitz in coverage, with it expected to carry 170 hours of live women’s sports through July 31 via an ESPN3 player that will give access to espnW. The network said that half of its programming will be exclusive to that channel.

ESPN said that the channel is in its long range plans as a permanent offering and that it has plans to expand what it will offer in the future. It currently has a lineup that will include basketball including WNBA, AAU Volleyball, softball, and tennis among others.

The web site for the channel includes the upcoming summer Olympics, athletes blogs including Olympic hopefuls, commentary, tweets from select athletes’ and a list of events that fans can go view live. This is a nice start for pushing women’s sports and hopefully as more fans view the events they will start making it to the mainstream broadcasts from ESPN.

Filed Under: ESPN, ESPN3, Olympics, WNBA Tagged With: ,

Is an Enhanced World Cup of Basketball on its Way?

June 20, 2012 by 2 Comments

The NBA is looking to alter the current World Cup of Basketball in a manner that will enable it to gain increased revenue from the event that is held every four years and is next scheduled to be played in 2014, according to a Yahoo Sports report.

The push is tied into an effort to discontinue sending star players to the Summer Olympics. While the Dream Team is one of the biggest broadcasting draws the NBA does not reap any revenue from the event and sees no reason to allow its stars to participate in an event where they might get injured.

For those who do not follow international basketball, there has been a World Cup tournament for some time, since 1950 to be exact, that is held every four years (with a few exemptions) and is played by the men’s national teams of members of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA). The U.S. is the current champion, winning in 2010.

The idea appears to be that by partnering more with FIBA the NBA would bring its marketing might to the event and its superstars and in return, would get a piece of the financial pie, and a big slice at that. Yahoo reported that some owners want a new World Cup that is entirely controlled by the NBA.

It will be interesting to follow this, as I imagine that the loss of the dream team in the Olympics will likely mean a loss of any chance to win a gold medal, or possibly any medal, and so will result in a lot of pressure to start including the players once again. That was the reason the concept started in the first place.

Filed Under: Basketball, NBA, Olympics Tagged With: ,

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: , , ,

Online Video Features at the Heart of BBC’s Olympics Coverage

May 15, 2012 by 1 Comment

If they can live up to their promises, the folks at the BBC may be the heroes of this year’s Olympics in London, especially for the online audience. According to news released today the BBC plans to have live coverage of every event from every venue — and for its online content the BBC is promising some cool twists, like the ability to rewind to the start of an event as well as “chapter marks” to let you skip to whatever part of the coverage you desire.

I am not sure if and how the BBC will be sharing broadcast rights with NBC, which also plans to stream everything online. Either way, it sounds like this will finally be the year that we don’t have to miss that important archery semifinal or equestrian dressage. It will all be online.

The promise of 24 simultaneous live HD streams sounds great — but so far we have been unable to ascertain whether this will be available only in the U.K., or to audiences worldwide. We are hoping the latter, will pass along more info as we get confirmation. If it is for everyone, we can hardly wait until what will likely be the biggest online sports event ever gets underway.

Filed Under: Apps, BBC, NBC Sports, Olympics Tagged With: , ,

London Olympics Creates Online Social Hub for Athletes and Fans to Mingle

April 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

If you are looking to follow your favorite athletes at this year’s Summer Olympics, the governing body has just set up a system that will enable you to do just that with both famous and those that hope to soon to be famous.

The International Olympics Committee has set up a site called the Olympics Athlete Hub, an effort that hopes to enable fans to make connections with the athletes that are participating in this year’s games as well as past performers.

What the hub does is simply aggregate the Twitter and Facebook feeds of the athletes and provide a single unified spot that brings them all together. A quick look over at the page shows that currently three of the five players are American NBA players.

Once you sign up you can search the athlete directory by athlete name, country, sport, discipline or event. There already 1,000 athletes in the hub and this will grow as qualifying for events is ongoing and as athletes qualify they will be added. There are also former Olympiads such as Mark Spitz, Nadia Comaneci, Edwin Moses, Yelena Isinbaeva, and Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, who pass along tips on training.

Users of the service can post photos and also win prizes for liking athletes on Facebook and following them on Twitter, and the site is expected to roll out a number of additional award programs leading up to the games, including one that can send the winner to the games.. During the games the site will feature a section that will feature real-time chats with athletes that will take place from within the Athletes’ Village.

It really seems that the Olympics as an organization truly understand the advantages of social media as well as the reach and power that a major on-line presence brings. With its broadcast partners making all events online and highlights that can be followed on YouTube it is certainly much easier to follow the contests easier than possibly any other sporting event in the world.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, BBC, Contests, Facebook, NBC Sports, Olympics, Social Media, Sports Social Media, YouTube Tagged With: , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: The Olympics are 98 Days Away!

April 20, 2012 by 1 Comment

Next week in pro football news, the ever popular draft is coming. One interesting thing about the NFL regular season schedule being released this week is that Las Vegas already has lines on the games! Not sure if it is time yet to lay a dime on Green Bay giving the points however.

Intel delivers high capacity solid state drives for consumers
Intel has delivered the Solid-State Drive 330 Series, a lineup that is directly targeted at the consumer market. Now being a consumer you might wonder why you would want one of these drives and the answer is easy. They have the capacity to store your growing digital music/video/images collection that might not fit on your smartphone or tablet, or even computer.

The drives will be available in the 60GB, 120GB and 180GB capacities and is a SATA 6Gb/s-based SSD. The difference between a SSD and what is probably in your computer is that a traditional hard disk drive has rotating material and so is much more prone to damage from dropping or other accidents. A SSD is what is in your smartphone, or at least the underlying technology is.

Exercise cycle delivers feedback wirelessly
Ever ridden an exercise bike and found that the data that it provided was worthless, or like at my gym, the data technology always seems to be broken? Well a company called Body Bike wants to fix all that with a wireless solution that can provide feedback using Ant + wireless technology developed by Ant Wireless.

The Body Bike Connect uses the wireless technology to send a wide range of information including VO2 max, calories, distance, and average, percentage and maximum values to an Ant enabled console. It also can be used to handle personalized settings.

Foursquare tops 20 million users
Now I have to admit I am not a Foursquare user. I don’t care that you are buying a cup of coffee or getting your haircut. Why do you think that is interesting to anybody but stalkers and home thieves? Well enough of the rant, as I see that the location-based check-in service startup has 20 million users, up from 15 million in December.

Google’s Motorola plans driving partners to rivals?
There is growing speculation that part of Google’s plans for its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility is to emulate what Apple is currently doing, becoming a vertically integrated developer. What that means is that it would develop the hardware, the operating system and possibly even the chip, for future Android devices. Currently it helps partners design products that are sold as Nexus systems.

This would make it very tough for partners to compete with Google’s own products, and could be a major impetus for them to look for alternatives. While Apple’s iOS is out two alternatives remain that already have at least a bit of mainstream acceptance.

The two are Research in Motion, which reportedly is in talks to license its technology to Samsung. The second and possibly more viable alternative is Microsoft. Its Windows 8 is due soon and it has Intel helping to promote the technology.

Apple and Samsung to settle?
Among the many patent battles being fought across the globe, two of the bigger participants are Apple and Samsung with over 20 cases between the two pending, and now it looks the top bosses will be talking face to face about how to settle the issues.

The two companies have agreed to settlement talks that will be presided over by a San Francisco-based magistrate judge. At the meeting are expected to be Apple chief executive Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung, as well as the general counsel for both companies.

BBC will stream all Olympic games
The BBC is taking an aggressive broadcasting stance for the upcoming Summer Olympics. With the games in its own backyard the broadcasting giant said that it will be broadcasting up to 24 streams of live HD sports to cable and satellite broadcasters for television viewing.

This will enable viewers to watch every Olympic sport, if they were so inclined. The move is an expansion of its previous plan that had called for all of the games to only be broadcast online. In addition it will be broadcasting on BBC One and BBC 3 as well as radio coverage.

This move, coupled with NBC Sports promising to put a huge amount of the games online mean that viewers can now see events that they wish to rather than simply the ones that the broadcasters have determined that viewers want.

No Greek Warship for Olympics?
A Greek trireme powered by 170 rowers has been scratched from the opening ceremonies of the upcoming London Olympics- the reason is that they are afraid that it will be too popular, causing I guess people to actually want to come to the opening ceremony.

That is really too bad because it not every day you see a replica of the Olympias, an ancient warship that was used in one of history’s most important battles sailing by. I hope they are not planning on canceling the basketball portion of the Olympics because I hear that is very popular as well.

Filed Under: Android, BBC, Contests, Cycling, Golf, Google, Humor, Lawsuit, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Microsoft, Monday Night Football, NBC Sports, NFL Draft, Olympics, Samsung, Skiing, Smartphone, Startup Tagged With: , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »