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Friday Grab Bag — Come for the Red Sox Game, Stay for the Bootmobile

March 30, 2012 by

For Red Sox Fans & L.L Bean Aficionados: Two venerable institutions are celebrating their 100th Anniversaries this year and what could be more natural than L.L. Bean teaming up with Fenway Park to celebrate that event? A lot you say, well quiet down.

Of the most interest to the average fan I believe will be the display of a large and unique collection of baseball artifacts that were collected by the founder of L.L. Bean, including letters between Leon Leonwood Bean and Babe Ruth and Ted Williams.

The L.L Bean Bootmobile will kick off the festivities when it drops by Fenway for the 2012 Season Opener, prior to the Bootmobile leaving on the 2012 Bootmobile Tour. It will be your chance to get your photo taken with the iconic vehicle, I kid thee not. There will also be ticket giveaways and a variety of other events centered on the joint anniversary.

Want to develop for the Windows Phone? There is AppCampus!
Of course it might help to speak Finnish. Microsoft has teamed with its partner Nokia and to continue their strong push of the Windows Phone platform with the creation of AppCampus, a venture that is designed to fuel development of apps for the platform.

The effort will be managed by a third partner, Aalto University School of Science and Technology, which was formed in 2010 in Helsinki with the merging of The Helsinki School of Economics, Helsinki University of Technology and The University of Art and Design Helsinki.

The three year venture, which will see Nokia and Microsoft invest approximately $24 million, seeks to garner thousands of applicants developing along a range of mobile apps. Aside from Windows development the effort will also encompass development for Nokia’s Symbian operating system.

Miss your Android apps on your PC? Look for that to end
BlueStacks, a developer of technology that is designed to allow Android apps to play on a PC has released the beta-1 version of its technology that should enable that feature. Called the App Player, the release is the second from the company.

A quick visit to its site confounded me on more information since it had a hot button to download the app but none to give me general information about the program, such as minimum system requirements etc… Maybe I just looked in the wrong place, would not be the first time.

According to PCWorld the app emulator runs on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 and enables you to use apps from a variety of Android app sites and run them on your PC, which would be cool, and lead to an even greater loss of productivity on my part. In the future the company is reportedly aiming at also allowing Macintosh users to play Android games. I wonder what Apple will try and do about that?

The Patent Wars
TiVo sues Time Warner & Motorola Mobility
TiVo, not wanting to be left on the sidelines in all of the lawsuit fun after ending a suit against Microsoft that apparently ended in a draw has filed a lawsuit against Motorola Mobility and Time Warner Cable, Venture Beat has reported.

The company is an experienced hand at this game, and a successful one, winning or resolving cases against several foes in the past including a deal that called for AT&T to pay the company at least $215 million. It also has a suit pending against Verizon.

In the most recent case TiVo is claiming that the two companies are violating three of its patents including ones that cover “multimedia time warping system,” and “system for time shifting multimedia content streams.” I do not envy the judge or jury in these cases.

Dell kills smartphone development — for now
Dell is once again rethinking its mobile strategy and this time I is its smartphone effort that is on the chopping block. It has already killed its tablet offerings, although the company is expected to return with a Windows-based offering by year end.

The company is killing in the United States its Venue Pro which runs a Microsoft OS and its Venue line that runs Android operating systems. It said that it will continue to sell the phones in Europe. The company did indicate that it intends to return to the U.S. market with new products at some point in the future.

FTC looking at establishing a “Do Not Track” option for consumers
The Federal Trade Commission has said that it is developing a “Do Not Track” option for consumer data and that the agency will seek to encourage the industry to adopt this as a standard feature that companies will be encouraged to adopt across the board.

At the same time it has indicated that it would like Congress to enact a law that would allow consumers access to the data that has been collected on them, much the way that you can access your financial standings.

Will this kill Facebook and Google? I am being facetious but they are top data harvesters, but I imagine they will simply provide an option to opt out and many, possibly most will not. Of more real interest to me is when I start hearing from sites I did not know where tracking me. I wonder what this will mean for the cookies market, if anything- any ideas?

NFL passes new rule changes
I sort of tune out the NFL right after the Super Bowl hype dies down. Sure there is free agency signings but it takes a while for the dust to settle and you can get a feel for how your team was helped or harmed. Possible aside from the Jets this year.

So while I knew that the NFL had changed some rules I did not realize that they changed 5 and that at least one more may be altered before all is said and done. Some of the changes were no-brainers like making the overtime rules the same in regular and post season and making the 12th man n the field penalty a dead ball foul.

The other moves include having Replay Officials initiate reviews on some types of turnovers, adding the recipient of a crack back block being added to the growing list of defenseless players and adding loss of down to kicking a loose ball. Was the last one really screaming to be added? There were a couple that was not approved as well, but it is still early in the offseason. Head over to SB Nation for a look at what did and did not pass.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, Baseball, Boston Red Sox, Dell, FTC, Microsoft, NFL, PCWorld, SB Nation, Smartphone, Tablets Tagged With: , , , , ,

Asus Transformer Prime Tablet- You Win Some and You Lose Some

March 29, 2012 by

I am not a tablet!

Asus got some good news while revealing some bad news this week. It prevailed in a lawsuit brought by toy maker Hasbro, but it revealed at best lackluster sales of one of its flagship products, the Asus Transformer Prime Tablet.

The good news was that the request for a preliminary judgment that would have prevented Asus from using the Transformer Prime name has been refused. Hasbro filed for this when it filed suit last year contending that the name Transformer Prime would lead to confuse consumers with its own popular brand of Transformer toys and asking the courts to prevent Asus from using the name was refused.

The judge, ruling in US District Court in Los Angeles disagreed and said that he did not believe that consumers would be confused between toys and a tablet (I know some that would disagree) and that further the tablet does actually transform. Hasbro is not happy with the ruling. However the lawsuit will continue on to trial

The bad news for Asus is that the case revealed its sales level for the Transformer Prime. It had a 2,000 pre-order before it was available for sale and that expected orders for the next two months will be in the area of 80,000 tablets, according to a report in PaidContent.

Filed Under: Asus, Lawsuit, Tablets Tagged With: , ,

Bleacher Report Adds ‘Team Stream’ Feature to Home Page

March 29, 2012 by

A screen shot of the B/R home page with the Team Stream feature on the left side.

In a somewhat circular form of innovation, the functionality of Bleacher Report’s popular Team Stream mobile app — which surfaces a curated “stream” of news about a team or sport — is now an integral part of Bleacher Report’s main website home page.

Actually live since sometime last week, the Team Stream feature for B/R’s home page allows visitors to customize what stories they see in the strip that runs prominently down the left hand side of the page. And just like the Team Stream app, the Team Stream homepage feature will provide links to not just Bleacher Report content, but to content from sports sites across the web.

According to David Finocchio, co-founder and vice president of content and product at Bleacher Report, the not-written-here attitude is somewhat unique among major sports sites. “The idea is to provide fans with the most relevant information about their teams in one place,” said Finocchio in a phone interview this week. Though many leading sports sites are almost as bad as Bobby Knight and the word “Kentucky” when it comes to linking to competitors, Finocchio said that Bleacher Report’s web-era heritage makes prominent linking a no-brainer.

“We’ll link out to anyone providing the best content,” Finocchio said. “The challenge is creating an experience that people want to come back to.” So instead of worrying about keeping people trapped on a page, Finocchio said, “It’s about getting them to come back tomorrow.”

The basic premise behind Team Stream is that B/R’s team of web-watching editors will sift through everything that is out there and prepare a bundle of content centered around the teams or sports. Fans can then select which “streams” they want to follow, and a selection of items will appear in the stream on the home page, just like they do in the mobile app.

Filed Under: Apps, bleacherreport, Tablets Tagged With: ,

Vivaldi Tablet plays an Open Source Tune

March 28, 2012 by

Looking for a tablet that can serve as an eReader and possibly more while not wanting to support the corporate giants in the business such as Apple, Samsung or Nokia? Then MakePlayLive might have the solution for you.

The company has started to take orders for its 7-inch form factor Vivaldi tablet, one of the first tablets that is available using an open source operating system rather than iOS, Android or any of the other operating systems currently on the market.

Originally named the Spark Linux, the Vivaldi will operate using a free software platform of GNU/Linux, Mer and KDE Plasma Active. The hardware comes with a 7-inch display that has 800 x 480 resolution. It is powered by a 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor and includes a Mali 400 GPU. It features 512MB of RAM and a 4GB flash disk for data storage.

The Wi-Fi only system can support 3G with an external add-on and it includes a 1.3MP front facing camera, HDMI 1080p output; two USB ports and a microSD slot. The battery is estimated at having approximately a 7 hour life. The company is already talking about a 10-inch version.

This is not the lone effort of a developer in the Linux space but at least one other player, Ubuntu Linux, has been working on developing specifically for this space and a port of Ubuntu 10.11 is reportedly near for the Archos 43 and Archos 101 tablets. Bohdi Linux 1.4 is designed for tablets and notebooks and is based on Ubuntu but is differentiated.

There is also the Trimble Yuma from SDG Systems, but it is doubtful that many casual users will want the tablet that has been ruggedized for military use. The 7-inch system features the Ubuntu 10.4 LTS Netbook edition Linux software and is powered by an Intel 1.6GHz Atom processor.

Demand for the tablet looks to be good as the company has shut down its pre-order sales effort and has a note on its site saying that all of the first shipment of the tablet has been called for, a good sign for the company and open source in the tablet market.

While the Vivaldi will most not likely steal market share away from Apple’s iPad, or even maybe the Kindle Fire, it is good to see that Linux is moving into this space and providing competition to the mainstream players.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, BlackBerry, iPad, Kindle, Tablets 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: , ,
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