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Google Enters Facial Recognition Space with Viewdle Buy

October 4, 2012 by 1 Comment

Viewdle

Google’s Motorola Mobility unit has purchased Silicon Valley-based developer Viewdle, a company that creates face detection software for an estimated price of between $35 and $40 million. Gesture and facial recognition appears to be the next technology that smartphones and other device manufacturers will be using as they seek to differentiate themselves as rivals have also been moving down this path.

Viewdle is a cross platform developer that creates applications and software development kits that enable facial and gesture recognition that are optimized for the low power environment of mobile devices. At last year’s CTIA conference the company won the Social Networking/Content/Entertainment category of CTIA’s annual Emerging Technology (E-Tech) Awards competition.

Viewdle was founded in 2007 and closed an estimated $2 million Series A round of funding backed by Anthem Venture Partners. Iit closed its Series B round of funding in October 2010 after raising $10 million. Investors included Best Buy, BlackBerry Partners Fund and Qualcomm as well as Series A investor Anthem Venture Partners

In the past few years others have been snapping up developers in this space. Apple reportedly has purchased a developer named Polar Rose, a developer that helps identify users in photos and enables storing images based on their content for an estimated $22 million.

Intel has long been showing that it is working in this area and last year showed that it could perform facial recognition with software running on its systems. If it is internally developed look for smartphones and tablets sing its processors to offer that capability at some time in the future. Earlier this year Facebook entered the fray when it purchased Face.Com for $100m and it was expected at that time that the facial tagging app would find its way into mobile products.

I imagine that it will be some time before we see a Motorola Razr phone that has this capability but it will be interesting to have. This could be a real boon for sports fans that take lots of pictures, say of college baseball players and then forget who they are. Now you phone or camera can tell you.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Facebook, Google, Intel, Motorola, Viewdle Tagged With: , , ,

Mobile Sports Report Friday Grab Bag: 3D at MLB Playoffs — New Galaxy Note Coming

September 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Is Google adding ads to Maps?
WebProNews is reporting that Google appears to be preparing to monetize its Maps app. The company has applied for a patent for Online Map Advertising. It looks as if this will allow the company to insert ads directly into the maps that you are viewing.

However on the plus side it looks like it might just be targeted at third party sites that use the maps as part of an effort to show people where their place of business is and they might include an ad in the space.

Also Google has said that contrary to rumors it has not submitted a new maps app to Apple for approval in its App Store. However the company is not ruling out doing so in the future.

Did the Lingerie Football League help settle NFL Ref strike?
Seattle fans are pointing to the team’s last second, replacement referee assisted, win over Green Bay as the straw that broke the camel’s back and forced the NFL to settle with the regular referees, who will be manning the field this weekend.

However a funny piece in Deadspin about the officials from the Lingerie Football League notes that it has a tougher standard for its referees that the NFL did for its replacements. The logic behind this was that apparently the LFL fired some refs for incompetence and they ended up doing NFL games as replacements. True or not it is pretty funny.

Are HTC and Nokia the next patent litigants’?
DigiTimes is reporting that Nokia and HTC may be about to meet each other in a court over potential patent issues. The problem appears to be that the Windows Phone 8 that each company has released bears a great deal of similarity to the one its rival introduced.

The article states that Nokia has already lodged a complaint with HTC over the belief that HTC has copied the design of Nokia’s Lumina 820 for HTC’s Windows Phone 8x offering.


Toys “R” Us sued over tablet
The battle for tablet supremacy has apparently spilled over into the toy aisle as Fuhu is suing Toys “R” Us for coping Fuhu’s Nabi tablet and using the technology in the recently released Tabeo. The suit claims that the two companies also had a deal signed in October 2011 under which Toys “R” Us had agreed to distribute the Nabi and to promote the product.

Fuhu is claiming that the product was not adequately advertised or promoted and that Toys “R” Us deliberately tanked the product in favor of its own Mateo that was then under development.

MySpace trying for resurgence
An interesting piece in Gizmag reports that MySpace, once the power in social media but a backwater since the emergence of Facebook a few years back, is currently undergoing a major redesign and I seeking to reestablish itself.

The site will have a much more visual look from the previews shown and it will have a new interface, in part influenced by the emergence of tablets. One interesting feature will be your ability to import all of your Facebook contacts.

Samsung’s next generation Galaxy Note out next month?
There is going to be a major Samsung event in New York on Oct. 24th, according to a press release that Samsung Mobile has sent out to the press. While the company has been mum on what it will be unveiling at the event, the rumor mill seems to think that it knows.

The answer is the next generation Samsung Galaxy Note, the Galaxy Note 2. The hybrid smartphone tablet has already been unveiled in South Korea and has been expected to be released in the States soon.

TBS to add 3D imagery to baseball playoffs
TBS has said that it will be adding “3D hologram imagery’ to its playoff broadcasts this fall. It will use the technology to illustrate different pitch grips and to show how the pitch will work. It will also be used to show pressure points, release points and ball rotation.

I guess using real live pitchers to show the same thing would be too complicated. While I think that this could be interesting I also am afraid that it will cause the station to miss a number of live pitches. The channel will also be tripling the number of super slo motion cameras that it uses compared to a regular season game.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, Facebook, Google, HTC, iOS 6, Lawsuit, Major League Baseball, NFL, Nokia, TBS, The Big Lead Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: Samsung News, New World Cup Mascot, Windows 8 Tablet Tidbits

September 21, 2012 by 6 Comments

World Cup 2014

Oddly I never think of an armadillo when I think of Brazil, yet in just a few years fans will be flocking to the country to watch the 2014 World Cup and no doubt will be inundated with images of the new World Cup mascot, an armadillo.

FIFA unveiled the mascot, which it has not yet completely ruined by giving it some cute name, Monday with the assistance of Brazilian soccer legend Ronaldo. Don’t worry, they are unveiling its official name in November.

Twitch gets a $15 million investment for eSports broadcasting
Twitch.tv has received a $15 million investment that is intended to help the company expand its eSports live streaming capabilities. The money, which came from venture capital investment firm Bessemer Venture Partners, will be used to expand its engineering team.

This is the company’s third round of funding, bringing its total to $23 million, with the last being a $8 million round in 2007 when the company was known as justin.tv. It received a small seed funding in 2007.

Samsung strikes back at the iPhone
Samsung has said that it plans to add Apple’s just released iPhone 5 to its existing patent lawsuit that it has with its rival. The move has been expected as the company said that if Apple included LTE Samsung believed that the technology would likely violate its extensive patent holdings in that area.

Hopefully this will go better than Samsung’s Facebook campaign, where it asked which smartphone a user would like to have if stranded on a desert island. The Apple faithful flooded the site and voted for the iPhone.

However on a brighter note the company has landed a major deal with American Airlines that calls for the airline to equip 17,000 flight attendants with the Samsung Galaxy Note, according to CIO.

StubHub out Ticketmaster in for MLB?
A report from the New York Post is claiming that Ticketmaster is seeking to replace StubHub as the office site to resell your MLB tickets. According to the piece the deal between MLB and StubHub has expired and there is pressure from several teams to switch.

The reason for the switch is pretty obvious; you can get discounted tickets for top teams at StubHub, while Ticketmaster has a reputation of piling on charges and raising the price. Teams like the Yankees want their seats sold at a higher price.

Intel gets first marquee Atom smartphone user in Motorola
Motorola Mobility has unveiled its Razr I smartphone, its first that is powered by Intel’s 2GHz Atom Z2460 processor. The phone features a 4.3 inch display that can use its entire area, displaying images from border to border.

Among its other features are an 8 MP camera, the ability to start up in one second, NFC and the screen has a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels. No pricing was announced at the rollout.

Anti-Japan protests lead to Intel Extreme Masters tournament cancellation in China
The latest round of the Intel Extreme Masters tournament was scheduled to take place in a few days in Guangzhou, China at the Anime Comics and Game Show has been canceled due to anti-Japanese protests, organizers have said.

The protests, sparked over a fight between Japan and China over a set of islands has led to the cancelation of a large number of Japanese vendors at the show.

More details on Surface Tablet from Microsoft
Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer told the Seattle Times that company would be pricing the device in the same price range as Apple’s iPad rather than in the area that Amazon and Google are seeking to carve out at the low end.

This is not really a surprise since Amazon and Google are positioning their tablets as front end devices that will be used to purchase additional goods and services from the company, and are selling the tablets at cost. The range that Microsoft is looking at is from $300 to between $700-$800.

Leaked pricing on the pending Asus tablet, according to a report from ZDNet, is that it will be even pricier, coming in at $599, $799 and $1,299 depending on model and features. The most expensive is expected to have an 11.6 HD display.

Google asks ITC to ban wide array of Apple products
The International Trade Commission has agreed to investigate alleged patent violations by Apple based on charges brought by Google. Google is claiming that Apple is violated a number of patents that came to the company via its Motorola Mobility purchase. It is also asking the ITC to ban all Mac OS X computers, all iPads and most iPhones.

Microsoft wins a round in patent battles
Microsoft has earned a victory in its patent battle with Motorola in a lower regional German court that ruled that Motorola has infringed on a Microsoft patent that relates to text input. Motorola is expected to appeal in the case.

The ruling could result in both the banning of select Motorola smartphones as well as unspecified damages if the appeal is unsuccessful.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Android, Apple, Asus, Baseball, Electronics Sports League, eSports, Facebook, FIFA, Galaxy Note, Intel, Intel Extreme Masters, iOS, Lawsuit, Major League Gaming, Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung, Smartphone, Soccer, Tablets, Venture Capital, Video Games Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Twitter and Sports: The Game Has Already Changed

September 19, 2012 by 5 Comments

If you saw my tweet earlier this morning you already know how I feel about the “sports week” promotion going on with Twitter. I think it’s a bit superflous since Twitter has already changed sports in a big way, for sports media, teams and athletes, sports marketing and sports fans.

Though I may still break all this down in more detail for a long-form report, I wanted to touch on all these points now just to start the discussion. What’s amazing to me as an outside observer is how quickly Twitter has changed how we consume sports content, and how people in all parts of the sports world interact. I’m old enough to remember how ESPN and SportsCenter killed off the daily newspaper box score, but the absorbtion of Twitter has cut across multiple segments of the sports world, at something like 10 times the speed. Quickly, let’s break it down by category:

Sports Media — Twitter is the new AP Wire

Years ago when I was a daily newspaper sports writer, the most addicting thing in the world was to go to the office to read the Associated Press wires. Those (expensive!) information streams brought scores and stories to our computers from everywhere around the world, a level of information and access that you could never fit in any bundled up package of newsprint. I also remember the charge I would get when our own stories would occasionally be picked up for national or international distribution. It was this cool secret society of people who were way more in the know about sports than your average fan on the street.

Now, that world is available to anyone with Internet access and a browser, since every single media person in the world of sports users Twitter as their own personal “AP wire,” alerting fans, competitors and anyone else of their latest scoops or opinions. It’s an incredible leap in just a few years for Twitter to become an internationally approved, accepted and used third-party method embraced by all sides of the increasingly competitive sports media world. It’s also become an instant feedback loop for all kinds of sports media, to know if their stories, videos or columns are “trending.” No other technology has been accepted and used so quickly, by so many. It’s simply stunning to see how fast Twitter has become the pervasive news-wire for sports, worldwide.

Teams and Athletes — A Direct Pipe to Fans and Followers

Beyond the media’s expected embrace is the growing coolness of athletes and teams using Twitter as a direct communication mechanism, a trend that may put a lot of boring sports reporters out of business. Who needs or wants to read bland press-conference quotes when you can hear or even talk to athletes and teams directly?

While I don’t think it will really kill off the need for sports reporting the ability to teams and athletes to circumvent the media process and connect directly with their followers has changed the sports business forever, in mostly a good way. In Twitter’s short life span we’ve already gotten much closer to athletes and the lives they lead both on and off the field. It’s made things both more interesting and more complicated but unquestionably more rich and informative. And it’s only really just begun.

Sports Marketing gets a Free, Always-On way to Announce

Another field just getting started but sure to explode is the use of Twitter for sports marketing purposes. Some savvy brands, like TaylorMade golf, are already big users of Twitter to engage fans who follow athletes in the sports their products are used. Around the big golf tournaments this year TaylorMade was all over Twitter, with fan contests, links to pictures of athletes in action, interactive chats and more. No longer do brands or teams need to wait for a media outlet to stage a press event, a promotion or simply to announce something new — they can go straight to Twitter and get the message rolling.

The low-cost/no-cost barrier to entry makes Twitter available to even the smallest marketers, who no longer have to pay hundreds of bucks to get a “press release” out on “the wires.” A savvy team of social-media folks can get much more mileage out of a cool Twitter campaign, which if it goes “viral” can get coverage and attention that nobody could pay for up front. The great thing is, this channel is open to anyone with a message — which means a few developers with a sports app are on the same footing as EA Sports. That’s pretty cool and means that there will likely be more innovation in sports marketing, real real soon.

Fans Get a Powerful, Free Way to Make Their Voice Heard — And Communicate with their Heroes

Finally, Twitter has forever changed how a large group of fans will interact with their favorite sports and athletes. Not only can you easily follow the media and athletes as outlined above, but with a small amount of skill you can also directly communicate with top athletes the world over, in a much more rich way than ever before possible — and at a sort of arm’s-length distance that makes it easier and comfortable for the athletes to participate.

The best example of this is the fact that a “retweet” has become the new autograph. Instead of standing around for an hour after the game and trying to shove a picture or a program toward an athlete to sign — how meaningful — you can now try to get that athlete to retweet or respond to your tweet, an act that usually requires either some original thinking or at the very least an honest emotion. We’ve already heard multiple stories about athletes meeting up with Twitter followers for dinners or drinks, and hosted Twitter chats are becoming more popular as a great structured way for fans and players to interact.

And though sports radio call-in shows remain popular, I would bet that in the next few years the “callers” who have to wait on hold for hours will be dwarfed by opinions that are sent in to shows via Twitter — a method already used by ESPN’s SportsCenter, among others. Having your Twitter handle shown on TV is the new “Dave from Wichita” label of honor for fanatics, and it’s probably only a matter of time before the first Twitter Bill Simmons emerges. Like everything else mentioned above, I can’t wait to see it happen.

Filed Under: ESPN, Sports Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , , , ,

Google Snaps up another Top App Developer-Nik Software

September 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Nik Software

Google has acquired smartphone image app developer Nik Software giving the company an alternative technology to offer users that will compete with Facebook’s Instagram. Google has not disclosed what it has paid for the company.

Nik is an established player in the mobile and desktop photo editing market and develops both for the general user space as well as having products that are targeted for the professional space as well. It was founded in 1995.

The company has won a number of awards for its programs including the 2011 International Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) Best Photo Software for its Complete Collection of professional photography products, which includes Color Efex Pro, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, and Dfine.

However it is likely that the app that caught Google’s attention is Snapseed, the first one that Nik released for the mobile space. Released last year it has already gained over 9 million users and won the iPad App of the Year from Apple’s App Store last year. This year TIPA awarded the app as winner in the Best Mobile Photo App category. Google has not laid out what it is planning on doing with the company.

Google has been a very aggressive player in the merger and acquisition space over the past few years with 119 deals so far in the company’s history. This year it has now acquired 10 companies counting Nik Software. Others include Meebo, QuickOffice, Sparrow, Frommer’s and VirusTotal.

Filed Under: Apps, Facebook, Google, Instagram, Meebo, Nik Software, QuickOffice, Snapseed, Sparrow, Wildfire Tagged With: , , ,

NBC’s Sunday Night Football Expands Social Media Presence

September 10, 2012 by 1 Comment

Sunday Night Football on NBC

I was reading an old NBC Sports press release this morning and an interesting note caught my eye on its growing use of social media as a tool in reaching fans. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all will feature much more prominently in the networks pro football efforts.

The first thing I saw was that for what seems like a first you will be able to get live video updates from the sidelines of Sunday Night Football. It seems that NBC’s broadcast team sideline reporter will be posting updates directly to Twitter.

As the ultimate in mobility, if not image quality, it looks like instead of a traditional camera they will be using an iPhone, according to Mashable, to record the updates that will be provided by reporter Michele Tafoya and then post them to @SNFonNBC.

I think that this is a great idea because it will enable her to expand beyond the role that sideline reporters often seem to fall into such as asking blindingly obvious questions to the coaches and occasionally providing an injury update when they can squeeze them into the broadcast.

During sports broadcasts I do not like the breakways from the action that seem to increasingly occur. ESPN almost ruined Monday Night Football for me by having a guest in the booth and talking with them and showing the conversation rather than the action that was on the field. I did not tune in to hear Mark Wahlberg tout his latest movie!

Apparently the Twitter effort started in the preseason and I managed to miss it, as I followed my tradition of not watching preseason games, or pretty much caring about their results aside from the injury reports.

For the second year NBC will also be employing Instagram as a tool to send images to fans, both ones that it generates from the control truck, field and locker-room but also fan-generated ones as well who can submit via Instagram using #SNF that be sent into a special Instagram tab on the Sunday Night Football Facebook page.

The centerpiece of the social experience will be its Facebook page, Facebook.com/SNFonNBC that will serve as an aggregation site for all of its various properties including NBCSports.com, ProFootballTalk.Com and RotoWorld.com as well as the Twitter feed and the Instagram postings.

I think this is one of the best uses of social media by a broadcaster and shows that as the broadcasters, at least this one, are getting a grasp on the fact that fans view events and gather information about them with a greater variety of media tools than ever before and that reaching them all takes a more concentrated effort.

Filed Under: Facebook, Instagram, Mashable, NBC Sports, NFL, ProFootballTalk, Sports Photography, Sports Social Media, Sports Social Media Data, Sunday Night Football, Twitter Tagged With: , , , ,
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