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A Fluffy Friday Roundup

August 26, 2011 by 1 Comment

Big Changes at Apple with Jobs out

As by now every geek in the Western world knows, Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, chairman and CEO has stepped down as CEO due to health reasons. Many are praising him as possibly one of the greatest CEOs of modern times and say that he has performed the greatest corporate turnaround in history. Hard to argue with this and in any case I am not well enough informed on overall corporate history in America to dispute or support the claim. But to play a game of what if- what if John Sculley had not relieved Jobs of his position as head of the Macintosh division in 1985? I believe that Jobs learned a great deal about focus and proper product development in his years at NeXT Computer and Pixar.
Jobs returned to Apple when it purchased NeXT and he began running the company after the ouster of then-CEO Gil Amelio in 1996. At the time Apple’s stock was stuck trading below $10. He quickly killed a number of products and honed the company’s focus. One of the complaints about Jobs prior to his ousting at Apple had been that he was unpredictable and chaotic managing the Macintosh division. Those traits were now gone. Now it remains to be seen if Tim Cook, his hand picked successor, can successfully follow in his footsteps.

An athlete who does not go to the highest bidder?

I think that Jered Weaver is my new favorite baseball player. No I have not started rooting for American league teams but his reasoning for signing his latest contract really struck a chord with me. Rather than wait until next season ended and let his agent, Scott Boras get the Yankees and Red Sox engage in a bidding war for his services, he instead signed an $85 million extension with the Angels. Now of course $85 million is a lot of money, but how many of us would leave additional millions on the table when it could be ours for the taking? He said “If 85’s not enough to take care of my family and generations to come then I’m pretty stupid.” A refreshingly honest comment IMHO.

Do you really need an HP Touchpad, even at $100?

The Samsung Galaxy

A funny thing happened on the way to leaving consumer electronics for Hewlett-Packard, its Touchpad became an overnight sensation. Stores are posting signs proclaiming they have no more, people are following HP execs on Twitter to find out when and if more will be available. There are lines at some stores and people are purchasing extras in the hopes of reselling them for expected profits. Still why buy a poorly reviewed product with a now obsolete OS, even if it is at the sale price of $99? A friend of mine who is self employed admitted to me that if he had spent the time working and gaining billable hours rather than fruitlessly waiting in line, he could have purchased a Samsung Galaxy or Apple iPad rather than a tablet that he had not even considered purchasing a week ago.

Can NBC Sports Challenge ESPN? NBC has Sports?

Is NBC Sports trying to go head to head with ESPN? That is the topic of an interesting piece at Sports Business Daily. The idea seems to be establishing a honed, professional approach to the sports it has, Major League Soccer and the NHL. I had not realized that the Versus channel was part of the NBC sports empire. The network has worked hard in the last few months to rid itself of the junk sports programming it had and has lured, if that is the word, MLS from Fox. Still it has quite an uphill battle and I wish it the best. I think that ESPN would really benefit from some stiff competition in sports broadcasting, and maybe force it to deliver a more focused, professional product rather than simply running its talking heads by us at every conceivable moment. I believe that the MLB and NFL networks are also putting pressure on the World Wide Leader.

Filed Under: Baseball, ESPN, FoxSoccer, iPad, Major League Baseball, NBC Sports, Soccer, Sports Business Daily Tagged With: , , , , ,

ESPN Takes Shot at Creating NFL QB Rating Stat

August 16, 2011 by 1 Comment

ESPN has developed a new statistic called the Total Quarterback Rating that it claims will provide an accurate assessment of a NFL quarterbacks’ performance and will factor in a range of variables including strength of opposition.

The QBR program will use a scale of 0-100 with 50 being league average and will have a weighted scale to determine how well important and difficult a pass was in a game, as well as a number of other variables including touchdowns, sacks and QB fumbles, to arrive at a total.

The QBR will also use a host of historical data points such as historical outcomes for teams facing the same down, distance, field position and time remaining. There will also be a Critical Index included that looks at when it happens in a game. Here is how ESPN lays out the calculations for QBR.

ESPN has walked down the path of creating its own statistic at least once before, with its Productive Out in baseball, which it debuted in 2004. This showed how many times a team used a sacrifice or a bunt to move a runner over and purported to show that teams with the most were doing a better job. It fell apart rather quickly as other, better thought out stats were much more indicative of success, and I believe that many of the last place teams led the league in productive outs. Here is ESPN’s explanation as well as a good take down by The Hardball Times. Nowadays productive outs are just a running joke on some baseball web sites.

Does this mean that QBR is fated for the same demise? Probably not, and it does look easier to understand than the somewhat bizarre NFL Quarterback ratings. It uses many of the same factors that other homegrown rating systems use, and simply weights them differently. For instance Football Outsiders’ has its DVOA for quarterbacks and Advanced NFL Stats has several rating systems used for slightly different purposes.

TheBigLeads’ excellent football analyst Jason Lisk has a good piece on why this is probably a good thing for the NFL, and shows who it is aimed at, much more a casual fan rather than one that wants to delve down into the complex statistics of the game. He also compares how the different rating systems reveal slightly different results.

It will be interesting to follow this over the course of the season and see if it remains relevant and how much the WWL touts its own invention. Stay tuned.

Filed Under: ESPN, NFL Tagged With: , , , ,

ESPN kicks up Xbox service in time for College Kickoff

August 8, 2011 by 1 Comment

ESPN plans to launch a revamped version of its ESPN360.com live sports service in time for users to for the start of the college football season. The latest version is designed to give viewers enhanced customization so that they can fine tune their broadcast watching experience.

Slated for release on Aug. 25, which not so coincidentally is just a week before the Sept 1 start of the NCAA Division 1-A season starts, so that if you rush you will be able to watch that Villanova at Temple game that has been intriguing you all off-season. Snide comment aside ESPN will be making over 400 regular season games available as well as 31 bowl games.

The live sport streaming service, available on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming console will now feature a host of additional features and upgrades, with possible the most interesting being the ability to have a split screen so that you can watch two games, or programs, at once.

There are many more ranging from a live college scoreboard, the ability to use a Kinect controller from Microsoft to gain voice control capabilities that will enable a user to pause, rewind, play and skip all using voice control. Upgrades will also allow users to set reminders, receive live alerts if they wish add the ESPN crawler at the bottom of their screen for scores and other sports news. This can be personalized to feature a users favorite sports and teams.

The deal is available to customers of EXPN’s Internet and broadband partners which show ESPN.3 and includes include Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Bright House Networks and Suddenlink Communications.

Filed Under: ESPN, ESPN3, NCAA Football Tagged With: , , , ,

Women’s World Cup Final Available on Sprint Phones

July 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Want to watch the women’s World Cup soccer final game this Sunday but won’t be near a TV? Sprint smartphone users are covered thanks to the carrier’s ability to provide a live stream of the game (which starts at 2:15 p.m. Eastern time) via its ESPN Mobile TV channel on its Sprint TV app.

To watch the U.S. vs. Japan game Sprint users will need to have the “Sprint Everything” data plan which includes unlimited Web, texting and calling while on the Sprint Network. The everything data plans start at $69.99 per month plus a required $10 add-on charge for smartphones.

As I write this I’m watching the British Open live via the Sprint TV app on my Samsung Epic 4G, and the video is pretty good even through a 3G connection. (They are doing an endless loop replay of Tom Watson’s hole in one right now.) Seems like a great alternative for soccer fans who may be out and about when the U.S. and Japan get together to decide the title.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, ESPN, Live sports via mobile, Soccer, Sprint Tagged With: , , , ,

Reds’ 2B Surges on Twitter, Asks for Extension

June 19, 2011 by 4 Comments
Picture of Brandon Phillips from his Twitter account

Brandon Phillips' photo from his @DatDudeBP Twitter account

He’s arrogant, famously calling the St. Louis Cardinals a bunch of “little bitches,” but Brandon Phillips is quickly establishing himself as Major League Baseball’s must-follow athlete on Twitter. Is it a tactic to get the Cincinnati Reds to grant him a rich extension, or trade him to a major market team that can pay him big coin?  

Phillips’ Twitter followers surging

Phillips’ followers surged from just over 50,000 to 65,000 in the three days ending June 19, after an ESPN.com story about the Cincinnati Reds second baseman’s use of Twitter to improve his image. Phillips tweets as @DatDudeBP, and is a Mobile Sports Report recommended athlete to follow.

Twitter as negotiating tactic? 

Favorable accounts of Phillips’ Twitter use comes at an auspicious time for the all-star second baseman. Days after the ESPN.com story broke, Phillips asked the Reds to negotiate a contract extension, according to an NBC Sports report.

Phillips told ESPN he will keep clubhouse talk off his Twitter account, but the timing of the ESPN story closely followed by a demand for a contract extension proves that he knows a large and favorable fan base will improve his chances of becoming one of baseball’s highest-paid athletes. Phillips has a $12 million team option for 2012, which ESPN said the Reds may not be able to pick up. Major League Baseball’s trading deadline is July 31.

Even if Phillips doesn’t start sending pay-me-or-trade-me tweets, the day is soon approaching when high-stakes contract negotiations become a part of an athlete’s online repertoire, and something fans will want to follow on smartphones and iPads.   

“The Ochocinco of baseball”

According to Phillips, Twitter is part of a more benign strategy. Twitter gives fans a chance to get to know him better, he told ESPN.

Phillips tweets occasional contests, which in the past have awarded fans spring training visits, dinner, and trips to San Francisco. According to ESPN, Phillips’ use of Twitter may have contributed to improved clubhouse maturity and leadership in 2011.

In addition to famously slurring the St. Louis Cardinals, which caused bench-clearing brawls the next time the two teams met, Phillips has been a controversial player in his seven-year major league career for failing to run out balls to first, laughing and joking when his team has trailed and other on-field lapses.

Phillips acknowledged that he’s after the celebrity athletes can get by being wired to their fans, including another famous Cincinnati pro.

“I want to be the Ochocinco of baseball,” Phillips told ESPN. Of course, Phillips was referring to the Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver who once threatened to be the first player to produce in-game tweets and has attracted greater than 2.13 million followers to his @ochocinco account.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, Cincinnati, ESPN, Major League Baseball, Twitter Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Score Media Beefs Up to Battle ESPN, Yahoo

May 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Canadian Benjie Levy is committed to giving mobile sports consumers in North America choice.  Chief operating officer and executive vice president of Score Media, Levy was the driver behind his company’s May 12 deal to acquire SportsTap.

The SportsTap acquisition means Score Media has the third largest U.S. audience of sports consumers on smartphone sports applications, trailing only Goliaths ESPN and Yahoo.  

A corporate challenger speaks

In a statement, Levy said, “ScoreMobile’s acquisition of SportsTap brings together two innovative and popular services and positions us well to deliver even more exciting experiences for sports fans and creative solutions for our advertising partners.”

Two mobile sports application worth a look

Launched in 2007, SportsTap is available free through iPhone App Store and Android Market for free. Providing real-time NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA, NHL, NCAA, NASCAR, Futbol, Golf and Tennis scores, SportsTap includes drill downs to stats, player news and top stories. The app has automatic refreshes, and is an excellent choice for the mobile sports viewer on a budget.

Terms of the SportsTap acquisition were not disclosed, but ScoreMobile said it would operate SportsTap as a stand-alone company. Based in Toronto, Score Media operates The Score.  A more robust application that includes a strong take on sports news and video, The Score is a portal for sports fans with a strong take. For example, The Score featured May 22 an excellent blog post and video about James Hardin’s flop against the Dallas Mavericks that most mobile sports viewers would consider a value-add to their sports knowledge.

Competition guards again mobile sports monopolies

Score Media’s acquisition of SportsTap is significant because it means not all companies are willing to cede the mobile sports application market to ESPN and Yahoo. If Score Media or others are able to retain enough consumers to woo big-budget advertisers and sponsors, it will likely be able to forge into live video broadcast. In turn, that would break ESPN’s potential stranglehold on live sports via mobile devices, and a charge-what-it-wants mentality. Consumers would benefit. 

Is Levy an emerging industry’s Ted Turner?

With its bold move to acquire SpartsTap, ScoreMedia bears close watching, and prime placement on the menu of your mobile device. That is, unless you don’t believe consumers gained when Ted Turner acquired the Atlanta Braves and created a super station in the early days of cable.

Filed Under: Apps, Benjie Levy, ESPN, ScoreMobile, SportsTap, Yahoo Tagged With: , , , ,
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