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Friday Grab Bag: Astrodome doomed, Apple Exec Knighted

May 25, 2012 by

Remember Michelle Wie, the precocious teen golfer that continually tried to crack the PGA, all without winning on the LPGA? (Well she actually did win her first title in 2009 but still…) Well she has now achieved something that is quite praiseworthy; she has graduated from Stanford University with an undergraduate degree in communications.

Hopefully she will go on and her career mirrors that other famous Stanford Golfer, Tiger Woods, at least with his success on the links.

Google rapidly makes changes at Motorola Mobility
Days after China finally gave its blessing to the $12.5 billion union between Google and Motorola Mobility changes have already started. Motorola’s chief executive officer Sanjay Jha is stepping down from that position and is being replaced by Dennis Woodside, according to a blog post from Google’s CEO Larry Page.

Woodside is a long-time Google executive and has held a number of positions at Google and his current title was Senior Vice President. There are now rumors that there will be layoffs at Motorola but so far Google has been mum on the topic.

Facebook Rage
There was an odd amount of glee when Facebook’s huge IPO did not experience a solid bump on its first day of trading, but now as it slowly sinks all week people are coming out of the woodwork with some solid complaints against the company and its underwriters.

I am sure that you have seen the growing anger as investors discover that the underwriters had reevaluated Facebook’s quarterly and yearly revenues downward, and had not filled in everybody involved. Or did they? Morgan Stanley said it has done nothing wrong but already at least one class action lawsuit has been filed and the SEC is looking into the issue.

The 8th Wonder of the World to go under Wrecking Ball
When the Houston Astrodome opened to glowing reviews in 1965 it was touted as the ‘8th Wonder of the World” but it is now an obsolete building slowly rotting away. Other hi-tech stadiums have outpaced it and simply having a dome over a field now has no cachet.

The city spends millions on upkeep for a building who’s tenants have fled and the cost of destruction has been pegged at $128 million, while renovation would cost between $400 million and $600 million In a city that already has two new stadiums, one for football and one for baseball it is hard to see how it can justify spending that much on the facility.

Apple exec is knighted
Jonathan Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design is now Sir Jonathan Ive after having been made a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE). He was presented the honor by the Princess Royal at Buckingham Palace earlier this week. The award was in honor of his services in the area of design and enterprise.

After the ceremony Ive said that the current group of products that are currently under way at Apple will be the best yet that the company has released. Ive, who has a reputation for secrecy, did not elaborate.

No Expansion of replay for now in MLB
MLB commissioner Bud Selig, speaking at a sports and society conference at St. Norbert College said that he does not believe that baseball needs to expand video review of umpires’ calls, at least right now, according to ESPN.

Selig said that there has been very little pressure to do ao and that since adding additional areas to the existing replay would require approval from both the players and the umpires will not be considered until at least next year, with trapped balls and balls hit down the line will likely be the primary focus. I for one cannot remember when the last trapped ball controversy occurred-anybody recall one?

Google wins at Oracle trial
Any dreams Oracle may have had for a huge payday based on its claims in its patent and copyright trial with Google has not come to pass and the jury sided with Google that it did not infringe on Oracle’s patents.

According to a brief note in the San Francisco Chronicle the jury decision means that Oracle can only collect a maximum of $150,000 in damages. I wonder if that even covers the cost of the case for the company. I doubt it.

No new apps for Windows Phone 7.0
Microsoft Windows Phone users that have not upgraded their operating system from 7.0 to Windows 7.5 are not blocked from adding or upgrading apps on their phone using its Marketplace site. The company released 7.5 last fall.

Google’s Larry Page wears half a glass. Is he an optimist?
Google’s CEO Larry Page wore a pair of glasses (with only one lens) made to support the company’s Project Glass development in a video that was shared on a company web page. He talked about the glasses and did a demonstration with them.

He used the glasses to snap a photo which required using a physical button on the glasses but he was able to share it with a head gesture and a tap of the glasses. It will be interesting to see what features appear in the final project when it finally arrives, and how fast people will seek to ban their use when driving etc…

AMD prepares for tablet space
Digi Times is reporting that when Microsoft releases Windows 8 later this year the AMD plans to insert itself into the mix with a low powered processor that it has designed for this space. The company will have its Hondo processors available and will quickly refresh the lineup in 2013 with a new architecture in its Tamesh line.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Athlete to Follow, Facebook, Golf, Google, Lawsuit, Microsoft, Motorola, Tablets Tagged With: , , , ,

Microsoft Slowly Pushing So.Cl Social Media Engine to Public

May 24, 2012 by

Microsoft has expanded the scope of who can use its So.Cl (pronounced social) social media search technology to everybody after a quiet beta push, as it seeks to establish it as a mainstream player in the social media environment.

So.Cl is a search engine that is designed to find and share social media, enabling you to connect with other users that have similar searches and interests and hopefully create an engagement between the participants. It enables users to take an assortment of media such as video, texts and photos, combine them into posts and then share them.

It is one of the many efforts under development at the company’s FUSE Labs and Microsoft has taken a low and cautious rollout for the product, quite the opposite of some of its efforts in the past. The company designed the technology for students and select schools were the first beta sites including University of Washington and New York University.

The student focus is intentional as the company has said that it believes that the features of the program reflect on how schools are teaching and how students are learning today, and not just computer science or technical students but for a range of scholastic focuses.

While focused on students I wonder how this will evolve, assuming that it does get off the ground. New sports blogs, apps for teaching players what to look for in an NFL defense, with commentary and past results listed in the frame? I have seen some pretty advanced sports pages and the ability to bring a large number of like minded fans, say baseball stat people, with live video examples etc.. could be compelling.

The effort was decidedly low key and that of course might have simply been because Microsoft did not want to try to be heard over all of the noise coming from the Facebook IPO or just because it is taking a different approach to establishing the technology.

So far it has had mixed reviews (I have not tried it yet) with Digital Trends decidedly unimpressed and with Cnet much more impressed with all of the features that the service provides.

Filed Under: Apps, Baseball, Facebook, Fanatic Fans, Google, Microsoft, So.Cl, Social Media, Social Media Data, Sports Social Media, Sports Social Media Data Tagged With: , , ,

Beyond the Hostage Video: Tiger Woods Schedules Google+ Hangout with Fans

May 23, 2012 by

Though we here at MSR thought a lot of the criticism was unfair, the now-infamous Tiger Woods hostage video is getting an upgrade. According to a tweet from Eldrick himself, Tiger Woods will invite some real people to join him in a Google+ hangout on May 29, ostensibly to talk about the upcoming Memorial and U.S. Open tournaments.

If you haven’t seen one, a Google+ hangout is basically a shared video chat, where up to 9 people can interact live via the comfort of their own webcam. The hangouts can also be broadcast live or archived to watch on YouTube, so non-participants can view the interchange. No word yet whether or not Tiger’s hangout will be broadcast live or taped, but you can be sure whatever happens that the mainstream golf media will rip it apart, bit by bit.

Here at MSR we are actually in great favor of moves like Woods’, which eliminate the bow-tied middlemen who still think of themselves as necessary “conduits” to the athletes. Don’t get us wrong — there is always going to remain a needed and necessary space for sports news coverage and opinions. But I also think that sports media are going to have to live with the fact that their value-added access to athletes is going to diminish in the future as more players, like Tiger, take their interactions directly to the fans.

The great upshot of all this is that the clowns who clutter up press conferences with questions like “how did you feel when you hit that great shot” will fall by the wayside, while true athlete-fan interactions and smart reporting and writing surface to the top. At least we can hope. And hangout in the meantime.

Filed Under: Golf, Google, Tiger Woods Tagged With: , ,

Vergence Labs latest with Connected Glasses

May 22, 2012 by

It seems that after Google made a short blog post about its Project Glass it has lit a match under the market and both new startups and established players are rushing to let you know about how well their individual efforts are going in this space as well.

The latest to appear on the radar is a company called Vergence Labs, and it is taking an increasingly familiar route to funding by appealing to individuals at a crowd funding site, and this one is using Kickstarter.

The funding here is seeking to raise $50,000 and the drop dead date is June 7th, so as of this writing it has 15 days to go. It also has already raised almost half of what is seeking as it now has $22,008 pledged.

I like the pitch which in part claims “become part of the future human-computer revolution!” I thought that I did that when I bought my first PC, an Apple II with not one but two floppy drives. The computer enabled eye wear will have the ability to record HD images and video from a first person point of view at the touch of a button. In addition they are being touted as the world’s first electric sunglasses with chromatic shifting conductive glass by which it means they darken when in sunlight.

The company sees the glasses as a social media tool and is establishing a web sharing site called YouGen.TV from which users can share experiences and export to Twitter, Google + and Facebook. I can see sports fans doing this and I wonder how the leagues will take to it.

MLB has been particularly tough about posting images from its games onto YouTube and I cannot believe that it is going to relent simply because computer powered glasses have made it easier to record the event.

Vergence also has pretty ambitious plans in the future hopes to make glasses that can perform a variety of tasks including sending information directly to a users eyes, and possibly develop interfaces for robotic devices that can be controlled with a gesture.

As with many of the Kickstarter offerings I love the creativity that developers are bringing to the market. Of course it is cracking the market that is the challenge. It is much harder, in my opinion, for hardware developers to do so that software. It is a snap to download a dozen apps in a few minutes, but most people I know, myself included, are concerned with how they look in glasses, just to take the lowest possible issue.

Then there is the competition. Google was very vague about its Google’s Project Glass remarks so it is hard to judge what it plans to do, and others have come out with, or at least talked about, connected glasses and goggles including Recon Instruments and Oakley. Still it looks like there is some momentum in this space and someone is going to break through and establish ‘glasses’ as a new computing device category.

Filed Under: Apps, Google, Kickstarter, Live Sports Video Consumption, Recon Instruments, Social Media Data, Startup, Vergence Labs Tagged With: ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Facebook buys Karma

May 21, 2012 by

Lost amid all of the noise about Facebook’s huge IPO was the fact that the company is continuing to address a shortcoming in the mobile app space. It has purchased a company called Karma that has developed an e-commerce platform as part of its overall presence.

The management team at Karma has already developed one successful app and the current focus, on gifting, seems to be a good match since Facebook has a huge amount of personal data on users and can now send alerts about anniversaries etc and recommend gifts and send users to Karma. The terms of the deal were not revealed in the announcement made on Karma’s blog but the company’s founders have had success in creating other successful apps.


Samsung’s Galaxy S3 sees strong preorder demand
Samsung, the leading smartphone developer in the world is about to see a nice spike in sales if reports are correct about pre availability demand for its Galaxy S3. According to a report from the Korean Economic Daily, forwarded by Mashable there is already a 9 million unit demand worldwide.

That is very impressive, especially considering the company’s factories can only crank out 5 million units a month, and I am assuming that is for all handsets not just this model. I hope they have been building the devices for the last few months.

China gives Google a thumbs up on Motorola
The long wait is over for Google with the company finally gaining approval for its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility. The approval, which came from China’s Anti-Monopoly Bureau, had followed a delay in which the agency had requested more information.

This approval was the last before the deal can go through and give Google access to Motorola’s huge patent portfolio and manufacturing capabilities. According to a report from the AP the deal has a condition- Google must make the Android operating system available for free to mobile device users for the next five years.

Motorola faces possible ban in US
To counter the good news coming out of China, Motorola was on the losing side of a judge’s ruling the Motorola did infringe on a patent held by Microsoft. The ruling came from the US International Trade Commission and has the result of banning Android-powered smartphones made by Motorola from being imported into the US.

While the ban will not go in effect until July, it is likely that Motorola will seek a licensing deal rather than eliminate the technology. With Motorola having recently won a ruling against Motorola regarding different patents they could just sign a cross licensing agreement, but right now no word on what its plans are.

Apple seeks to block Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 in US
If this sounds familiar well… Apple is following up a win in US Appeals Court that said a ban should probably have been imposed on Samsung for copying features from Apple’s iPad, Apple is now once again asking for that ban in the United States.

It could be a negotiating ploy since as has been reported here and elsewhere the two have been ordered into a settlement talks that will feature the top executives from both companies and it appears likely from this piece at Electronista that no action will occur until after the settlement talks are over.

EU regulations will apply to Android and iOS apps
Apps that are downloaded to devices running both the iOS and Android operating system are subject to the European Union’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, officials from the Information Commissioner’s Office said.

The rules regulate, but do not prohibit the use of technologies such as cookies and require that users provide informed consent. This will require the apps to inform the user that it is downloading a cookie and provide them with the option to not have them loaded in their device, according to an article in Computing.co.uk

Is a 10-inch Kindle in the works?
Increasingly rumors are surfacing that the next generation of devices from Amazon will include a model with a 10.1-inch form. The move would make it a more direct competitor to Apple’s existing iPads as well as to the rumored smaller iPad that has been talked about for months.

According to DigiTimes the pad is expected in the third quarter of this year and that at the same time the company is likely to kill its 8.9-inch pad that has been on the drawing board. Around this time Google is also expected to bring out a pad to help heighten the competition even more.

Apple loses round in e-book case
A United States District Court judge has denied petitions from Apple and several of its largest e-book publishing partners to dismiss a lawsuit against them. The lawsuit claims that the companies conspired to illegally price fix e-books. This case is similar to, but separate from the one filed by the Department of Justice against the same companies.

New Kickstarter project trying to get light on a dark subject
A company called Scrap Pile Labs has developed a docking cable for iPads and iPhones that has a built-in LED that allows for easy use at night. Called CordLite it is now seeking funding at the site Kickstarter and the developer is seeking to raise $70,000. If it succeeds the company expects to ship the cables in September.

While the initial focus is on Apple’ products the company said that it plans to develop for other platforms as well and has a microUSB cable in prototype but that production costs are scheduling issues it will be some time before that sees the light of day.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Facebook, FTC, Google, iPad, iPhone, Kickstarter, Mashable, Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung, Startup, Tablets Tagged With: , , , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: Are Replacement Refs in the NFL’s Future?

May 11, 2012 by

Mashable does a nice job showing how fast eight technologies have penetrated the US market since the telephone was patented in 1876. The speed upon which each succeeding generation of technology grows is interesting as many of them piggybacked on older technology. I mean you cannot have these technologies until electricity reached all of the country.

I was interested to see how relatively slowly the Internet caught on compared to mobile phones, but I guess that is partly due to a number of issues from slow connections early on, lack of a substantial amount of meaningful content ( I mean at one time one of the most popular site on the internet was watching a coffee pot) and emerging rival modem standards that helped confuse non-technical users.

From the charts it looks as if it is possible that the two emerging fields, tablets and smartphones are headed to being the fasted technologies adopted to date. Smartphones make sense since they are an extension of an already known commodity but tablets are a relatively fresh start. The data covers the past five years and the numbers from the next five look to be very interesting.

NFL still not produced evidence on Saints bounty program, NFLPA claim
The NFL Players Association continues to claim that it has not been given “specific, detailed evidence of player involvement in a pay-to-injure program.” Domonique Foxworth, president of the NFLPA has an opinion piece in USA Today in which he stated that punishment demands evidence and the league is not willing to produce it.

He claims rather than produce the evidence the league has used media leaks, pr campaigns and character assignation to manipulate public opinion.

Apple wins one
Apple, on a recent losing streak in the legal department won a case this week when a judge threw out the Proview Electronics Co.’s trademark lawsuit against Apple. The case, which has bogged down Apple in China, has ruled that Proview cannot sue Apple in California.

The case revolves around Apple’s purchase of the iPad trademark from Proview and then Proview claiming it did not sell the rights to the iPad name in China. The two are reportedly looking at a cash settlement but are far apart on the terms.

St. Louis Blues sold
The NHL Board of Governors has approved the sale of the St/ Louis Blues hockey team to Tom Stillman, a beer distributor, for an estimated price of $130 million. Stillman has been a minority owner of the team since 2007, Yahoo! reports.

The team has been for sale for the last two years, ever since the current ownership group, led by Dave Checketts and his Sports Capital Partners Worldwide, started to look around. It had originally been looking for investors to buy out Towerbrook Captal Partners which held 70% of the team but could not find investors.

Google wins a bit more in trial versus Oracle
After a jury ruled that Google did infringe on Oracle’s API copyrights but could not reach a decision on if that action was protected by the ‘fair use’ doctrine that allows copyrighted material to be used Oracle asked the judge to throw out Google’s ‘fair use’ defense.

The judge declined saying he did not think that it would be correct for him to rule in favor of Oracle. Experts now expect at least a partial retrial of the first portion of the case.

Who do Crowdfunders Invest in?
We have started talking a lot about crowdfunding, but mostly in relation to just a very few efforts, and yet that industry is starting to emerge as a huge source of funding for startups, enabling a wide variety of developers to get seed money and more to launch products.

Well if you were interested in a breakdown by category of where the money is going at Kickstarter wonder no more because there is now a great graphical breakdown of the effort. A few interesting facts-50,000 projects have sought funding since it opened its doors in 2009 and film and video is the top pledge earner, with $60 million pledged to date. There is a host of interesting information so head on over and take a look.

Replacement officials in the wins for NFL season?
Fox Sports is reporting that the NFL has started to look at replacement officials for the upcoming season in case it cannot reach a new agreement with the NFL Referees Association- currently the talks are at an impasse.

The league is asking its officiate scouting department to help identify potential replacements with an eye out for recently retired college officials as well as current officials at a variety of levels of the sport including semiprofessional leagues. The NFL used replacement officials in 2001 at the start of the season.

Smart Shoes the next trend in computing?
Computer scientists from e Telekom Innovation Laboratories, the University of Munich, and the University of Toronto have taken a step forward on a research paper on the next generation of wearable computing with the publication of a joint paper entitled “ShoeSense.”

The gist of the paper apparently calls for the development of sensors that would be placed in shoes that have the ability to understand customizable hand and arm gestures that are then relayed as commands to a smartphone. Users would be able to then send messages without appearing to while in meetings, at dinner and other places that it is not always appropriate to do so on the handset.

Nielsen looks at smartphone owners in US
A recent report from Nielsen shows that smartphone ownership continues to rise in the US and is now the preferred handset of more than 50% of Americans, actually 50.4%, up from 47.8% in December 2011.

Android is the dominate operating system with a 48.5% market share then followed by Apple’s iOS with 32%. Research in Motion’s Blackberry platform has 11.6% followed by Windows Mobile, Windows Phone and then others.

Filed Under: ABC, Android, Apple, Fox Sports, Google, Kickstarter, Lawsuit, Mashable, NFL, NHL, Nielsen Ratings, Oracle, Smartphone, Yahoo Tagged With: , , , , ,
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