NHL Lockout in September?
It is new contract time for the players and the league and according to a piece in Sports Business Daily things might be looking very bad for fans of hockey. Apparently the league has sent its first proposal to the players and it reads like it wants to get baseball’s reserve clause back for hockey.

Players could be tied to a team for ten years before free agency according to this piece in Sports Business Daily. The league also wants to cut down the amount of both hockey revenue and non-hockey revenue that the players will receive. It looks like this could be an ugly fight.

Samsung buys CSR’s mobile chip technology
Samsung Electronics has spent $310 million to purchase chipmaker CSR’s mobile phone connectivity and location technology. Included in that deal will be its Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and location based technology. CSR said that it was at a disadvantage in these spaces because while it believed its technology was leading edge, it did not provide an integrated solution like some of its rivals like Intel, according to a piece in The Business Recorder.

Samsung said that the technology, and CSR’s research and development in these areas, will help it to enhance its applications processors that are the heart of its smartphone and tablet business and so be able to better compete against rivals such as Apple.

The connected viewer now a reality?
We have log talked about the growth of second screen sports viewing here at MSR, where fans watch a game on a primary device and yet watch or communicate using a second such as a smartphone or a tablet. I expect the upcoming Olympics to set new records in this area with all sports action being available on-line.

Anyway the good people at Pew Internet & American Life Project have done a survey that shows just how much this occurring. This synopsis shows how this trend is now and the full report makes very interesting reading.
• 38% of cell owners used their phone to keep themselves occupied during commercials or breaks in something they were watching
• 23% used their phone to exchange text messages with someone else who was watching the same program in a different location
• 22% used their phone to check whether something they heard on television was true
• 20% used their phone to visit a website that was mentioned on television
• 11% used their phone to see what other people were saying online about a program they were watching, and 11% posted their own comments online about a program they were watching using their mobile phone
• 6% used their phone to vote for a reality show contestant

Olympic tidbits

Some Olympiads get bad first impression of London
Several buses carrying Olympic athletes headed to the Summer Games apparently got lost on the way to the Olympic Village earlier this week, taking as long as four hours to reach the destination that was a mere 24 miles away.

Kerron Clement, an American participating in the 400 meter hurdle possibly sent the first athlete-based Tweet from the Olympics but it is probably one that the IOC wants to forget, according to Newser.Com He said “Athletes are sleepy, hungry and need to pee. Could we get to the Olympic Village please,” “We’ve been lost on the road for 4hrs. Not a good first impression London.”

Speaking of the Olympics- Ancient Greek roots to modern games
Pretty much everybody knows that the root of the modern Olympics comes from Ancient Greece, where from 776 B.C to 393 A.D a series of competitions were held between athletes from a variety f the city states that populated the area at that time.

What is not as widely known is the roots of some of the sports that are played today go all the way back, I mean the Sports Pickle would not lie! How a single Korean managed to arrive in Greece is still unclear.

Border security strike in England next week?
In a move that could have very bad consequences for travelers to the London Olympics next week, the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) voted yesterday in favor of strike action in a row over jobs and pay.

If you are wonder who or what the PCS is, it is the union that represents approximately half of the UK Border Force and staff such positions as passport control and customs at the airport.

All Athletes are not equal
A sad item from Japan, where it appears that the Men’s soccer team will be traveling business class to London while the Women’s team, fresh off its Gold Medal in the Woman’s World Cup, will get stuck back in economy.

Kickstarter Results might not be what you expect
Mashable has published a nice infographic developed by Jeanne Pi and Ethan Mollick at Appsblogger that shows how Kickstarter projects perform on a number of measurable data points including delivery on time and successful reaching funding goals.

The piece delves into the numbers and gives what looks like a very accurate and interesting view of who wins, who loses across a number of categories. One interesting finding was that the more a project is overfunded the more likely that it will be late.

A sign the apocalypse is upon us?
TLC is planning a new reality series and Pete Rose, baseball’s all time hit leader is scheduled to be the star. According to a piece in Entertainment Weekly the working title of the show will be “Pete Rose and the Kiana Kim Family Project”

It will follow 71 year old Rose and has 30 something fiancé Kim as they go on about their daily lives and the interaction between his four grown children and her two young ones and their take on the relationship. Doubt this will be on my active roster of TV shows.