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Bantr Seeks to bring Soccer Fans Together

June 18, 2012 by 3 Comments

With the Euro 2012 tournament up and roaring along with the first round of eliminations I got to wondering about what type of chat and viewing options that was available for fans to catch up on scores and possibly talk a bit of trash to rivals and went looking.

Not surprising there is a number of apps available for a fan, including some we have talked about here previously such as Fancru. One i found that caught my eye was Bantr, an app that is designed to bring together soccer fans.

What made it noteworthy was it was one of the first fan interaction sites I have seen that is dedicated to a single group of fans, it is only about soccer, which I suspect is just fines with fans of that sport because the cross over talk would probably get pretty heated.

The free app is currently only available for products that run Apple’s iOS operating system including the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone. It is obviously designed for European soccer and supports English, German, Northern Sami and Spanish.

It shares many similarities with other interactive fan sites: you can select your teams that you support, check into games; chant or banter with other fans and predict outcomes. Some interesting touches include in game voting on if a player dives, on cards and penalties and the worthiness of substitutions. You can also vote for player of the match, rate players, refs and matches, and vote on manager and player approval.

The company was founded in 2010 and has secured $328,000 is seed money, according to Crunchbase. If you want to get a taste of what is available but do not want to download the app just yet, or do not have an iPhone (Android support is supposedly coming) you can head over hear at Facebook and take a look at what is available.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, ESPN, Euro 2012, Facebook, iOS, Soccer, Startup Tagged With: , ,

Friday Grab Bag: Big Kindle Sale, Kentucky Derby Point System

June 15, 2012 by 2 Comments

Looking for a sports watch that can track your every move but dislike the bland sameness that seems to pervade the industry? Well Nike has teamed with TomTom to break that boredom with a set of Nike+ Sports watches that come in day-glo colors so that you can match your jogging outfit.

The upgraded GPS watch, which runs around $149, will support NikeFuel and provide users with a wealth of information including position, speed, and the ever popular calories burned. It also can be programmed with reminders and motivational messages.

Apple to kill Ping in next OS release?
Apple has been hinting for some time that Ping, its attempt at social networking, was on a short leash and now it sounds as if it is at the end of its short product life as the company decides not to spend good money after bad.

All Things Digital reports that the technology will be absent in future operating system releases. Of course in hindsight that seems quite obvious considering all of the Facebook integration there will be in the next release.

ESPN loses Premier League broadcast rights
Sports Illustrated has reported that ESPN was shut out of the latest round of broadcast rights for the English Premier League. The winning bid of $4.49 billion was submitted by BSkyB and BT for the domestic TV rights in a 3-year deal. The previous deal, which was split between ESPN and BSkyB was for $1.95 billion.

ITC throws out Google patents in Apple/HTC dispute
The International Trade Commission delivered some bad news to Google when it threw out five of its patents that it had assigned to HTC. HTC needed the patents in its legal battles with Apple where it is trying to bar the import of select Apple products into Taiwan.

According to Foss Patents the court rejected an investigation into the assigned patents and said that it cannot sue Apple over violating patents that it does not own, and which it appears is just renting from Google for the trial. HTC said that it will appeal. Both Apple and HTC/Google have a series of patent lawsuits against each other ongoing around the globe.

HTC buys some patents
So if you can’t rent them, buy them. HTC has confirmed that it is buying once high flying graphics processor developer S3 Graphics, and that a driving reason behind the deal is to get its hands on the company’s patent portfolio.

While not the largest in the industry S3 does own approximately 270 patents, some of which are licensed to other third party developers. HTC is one of the major companies that has been fighting it out with Apple over patents used in mobile devices such as smartphones.

Kentucky Derby Follows NASCAR’s Lead
Ever wonder how a horse qualifies for the Kentucky Derby? Well wonder no more because the races organizers are taking steps to spell out how and why horses manage to gain entry to one of the premier racing events in the world.


Churchill Downs has developed what it calls the “Road to the Kentucky Derby” and will use a point system much like NASCAR’s that will assign points to horses that run select races, based on how they finish. The program will start this fall for the current crop of two year olds and will be used to determine next years crop of horses for the race.

Android growth still strong
Google’s Andy Rubin, who is the head of the smartphone operating system, said that the daily activation of devices running the Android operating system is now averaging 900,000 devices a day. Last year at the same time it was 500,000.

Asus confirms Google Tablet-off the record of course
Android Authority said that it sat down with an executive from Asus at the recent Computex show who confirmed that his company was building a Google-labeled tablet that will enter the 7-inch form factor fray.

Expected to be powered by Nvidia’s quad-core Tegra 3 processor the device is expected to be priced in the $150-$250 range. Look for Google’s big Google I/O conference at the end of the month as the launching pad for the device.

Want to make your pillow a touchscreen? With MaKey MaKey you just might be able to
MaKey MaKey is the latest startup to catch my limited attention span has appeared at Kickstarter, a project that seeks to turn everyday items into functioning touchscreens with the ability to interact with the Internet.

Sound too good to be true, well it is not reality yet but there is a some interesting demos over at Kickstarter. It is simply a board, some alligator clips and an Internet connection via a PC and in no time you to could be using bananas as a keyboard.

Its funding effort, which ends today, has been a tremendous success. Seeking a $25,000 goal it went over the top and at the time of this post had already received pledges worth $533,313 with close to 11,000 backers. Nice bit of overkill.

Kindle scores big with State Department
While Apple gets most of the publicity due to its tremendous success with the iPad the Kindle just scored a major deal with the US State Department. According to a piece from The Atlantic Wire, the State Department will be purchasing thousands of Kindles.

The total value of the deal has been reported at $16.5 million and will call for the tablets to come with a teaching program. The initial buy for the project is 2,500 devices and they will be sent to libraries and other education around the world.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Asus, English Premier Soccer League, Google, iOS, Kickstarter, Kindle, NASCAR, Startup, Tablets Tagged With: , ,

Crowdfunding Site Indiegogo Closes $15 million Series A Funding Round

June 13, 2012 by 1 Comment

Indiegogo, company that understands from firsthand experience the challenges and disappointment that can come from trying to get a project funded has taken that experience and has moved into the crowdfunding space, with a hefty financial infusion from some major players in the VC space.

The latest player in the increasingly crowdfunding field has some funding of its own to brag about after receiving $15 million in Series A venture funding in a round that was lead by Insight Venture Partners and included Khosla Ventures as a new investor.

Existing investors Metamorphic Ventures, MHS Capital, ffVenture Capital, and Steve Schoettler, co founder of Zynga also participated. The company had previously closed a $1.5 million seed round. It plans to use the money to scale out its operations according to Venture Wire.

While the growth of crowdfunding sites has been credited to the enactment of the JOBS Act that eased direct investment in companies by individuals, Indiegogo precedes the act by a number of years. After failing to get funding for a project that its founders were trying to get off the ground it turned to helping others find funding, ranging from indie films to tech projects.

The site operates much like others in that it has a number of profile fund raising efforts, the close date for the funding project, the goal and where the effort stands to date. If a company does not reach its goal it gets nothing.

This field seems to be growing by leaps and bounds and we hold out hope that some really solid products come from all of the various crowdfunding efforts. I suspect that we will see some continued growth in this market as others seek to cash in before the inevitable market retraction.

Filed Under: Crowdfunder, Fundable, Indiegogo, Kickstarter, Startup Tagged With:

Fancru Takes up the Sports Fan Chat Challenge

June 12, 2012 by 2 Comments

Fans like to talk with fans, at least ones that share similar allegiances, and Fancru is seeking to exploit that with its sports app that will enable groups of like minded fans to chat as well as allowing you to reach out to your friends.

If this sounds a bit familiar it is. There are several other apps that are seeking to establish themselves as platform for fan interaction and FanCru realizes that it has to step up to the plate big time to enable it to be recognized above the noise in this space.

The app, currently only available for the iPhone (it will work on an iPad but is not optimized) is the brainchild of John Wagner, Fancru’s co-founder and president and Bill Diamond, co-founder and CEO. Wagner is a self proclaimed sports nut who constantly watches games and saw this as an opportunity for fans to share experiences with others both attending the sporting events and those following elsewhere.

The app has several different distinct functions, and in some ways it reminds you of a host of other apps such as Foursquare, since you can log in your location, ESPN, since it gives you scores, and rival apps such as Recapp which provide news articles about selected teams.

Similarities aside it has a game feed that connects you to other fans following an event. Then on top of that there is the Cheer & Vent function that allows you to vent etc as well as post images from where ever you are.

You establish an account and then select the sports teams and leagues that you want to follow-NFL, NCAA Football, MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS and Brazilian Soccer. Add the teams you want and then you can connect to them via Facebook, Twitter, searching your address book, SMS and the old fashion way by including their names manually. You can check to see which teams have the most fans and earn points for prizes by doing various actions.

The company’s first version of the app, for all practical purposes a beta release, provided it with plenty of user feedback that it used to incorporate in its current offering. But it is not just listening to what fans think of the product that is important to the company. Available now for the iPhone the company is working on an Android release and then will optimize its iPhone app to efficiently run on iPads.

Fancru is taking an interesting approach in that it is seeking to engage teams and leagues into using its technology as possibly a front end to an app that the teams might be developing by opening up its SDK and APIs up to the market freely available.

It is hard to predict how that will work out for the larger, more established leagues such as the NFL and MLB. Right now MLB has AtBat as its official app, which it own. However MLB has been very proactive in trying to engage fans via a series of apps and contests and having like minded fans chat during games would seem to fall into the direction it is taking. There is also an effort to allow teams to add a local flavor to AtBat so that while the league might not adopt the technology local teams might have that option.

In addition Fancru has been accruing analytics about what its users are doing and so it would enable teams to better meet fans wants and needs, Wager points out. He sees the app as a valuable tool to teams that want to bring fans out to the events in a day when many have huge high definition televisions and are content with watching at home.

By enabling a team to have contests that could be centered on a game, a player or a section of seats it can bring fans into more active participation and with that more active attendance.

A challenge to an app of this sort will be breaking through the noise. The Apple App store has almost a million apps currently. There are slightly older rival apps that either point to a single sport such as GolfGamebook or are also more broadly based such as GrabFan, PlayUp and Kwarter.

Being a relatively new category helps since there really is not established leader and they are all facing the same uphill battle. In addition stadiums and leagues are only ow upgrading their wireless capabilities to enable in-game fan interaction. I suspect that within a year or two a huge number of fans will be using a chat technology that connects them to others in and out of the stadium.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Facebook, Fancru, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Major League Baseball, MLS, NBA, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NFL, PlayUp, Startup 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: , , ,

Pocket TV Seeks to Turn your TV into a Giant Android Device

June 6, 2012 by 1 Comment

A new crowdfunding effort has caught my eye this week with a project to turn your television into an Android tablet. It does seem a bit counterproductive at first since I can buy quite a few tablets for the cost of my TV but on looking at the details it seems that if it is priced right it could make a very solid tool for people on the go, work wise and for vacation.

However the Pocket TV is an interesting device. The builders have created a computer on a dongle powered by a 1GHz Cortex A9 processor that runs the Android 4.0 operating system and is designed to plug into a TV’s HDMI port. Once connected it permits you to display your Android environment on the big screen.

The dongle enables you to bring the environment with you wherever you go so that you can use it in say a hotel room and it would give you video conferencing capabilities if you so wanted. It also allows you to access data and videos that you have stored in the cloud, giving a traveler even more flexibility. Included with the dongle is a standard IR remote that enables you to control the device while using the big screen since it does not convert it to touch screen capabilities

The funding process is going quite well for the effort. As of this morning it had a bit over $94,000 pledged of the $100,000 that it is seeking and it still has 33 days to go, so it looks like it will reach its goal with time, and possibly money to spare.

The more I learned about the device the more interested I was in Pocket TV. I can really see this as a boon when you have short trips and just need something to respond to check social media, play a game or two or respond to email but dislike carrying a notebook or tablet, and with the large screen it can be much more convenient than a smartphone in some environments.

The Pocket TV is the first from a startup called Infinitec, a technology developer that is based in Dubai, making it the first high-tech project I have seen from that country. It has been around for some time, having opened its doors in 2008 and was founded by Ahmad Zahran and David McKern and got its start developing USB memory drives.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, Infinitec, Kickstarter, Startup
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