Your Own NFL MiniCamp: Zephyr Offers Free Virtual Training Tool

Posted by Jonathan in EQUIPMENT, MOBILE on 07-08-11    No Comments

via Zephyr Portal

Dang! There goes my last excuse for being old, slow and fat.

Annapolis, Md.-based Zypher Technologies is now offering what amounts to the remote training and monitoring tools that the pros use on your Android phone. And pretty much for nothing.

The company’s ZephyrAnywhere portal is up and running. For little more than your name, email address and password, you can log into a remote training tool that offers more data than you could ever want on how dangerously out of shape you really are.

You will need to get a biometric harness, download some apps and otherwise tinker around to get this thing to work right. And there are always issues when you load up advanced workout tools. Still, for what amounts to a sales tool, this product is pretty darn cool.

Here are the links, company and portal.

Now Your Car Is Talking Baseball

Posted by Seth in MOBILE on 06-16-11    No Comments

Ford unveiled a new feature for cars equipped with the Sync entertainment system: fantasy baseball player updates.

A couple of verbal commands from you and the Sync system will read you a rundown of the hottest players in the National and American Leagues. You can check out a demonstration of it here.

Now, before you get too excited, it doesn’t seem like this will be all that useful to most fantasy players. More than likely, players on hot streaks are already taken in most fantasy leagues. And here’s hoping that some schmo driving his car doesn’t grab his smartphone and try to look at his league’s free agent list while he’s driving. Hey, if Ford could make a Sync app that could help you make free agent acquisitions by voice command, that would be cool.

But it is a neat little feature that, at the very least, can help you keep informed about who’s playing well. This might be even more useful for fantasy football, since the games are only once a week and making smart roster moves can make a big difference. The baseball updates will give you weekly leaders, which doesn’t help too much if you’re in a league that allows daily transactions.

Mobilewalla Scores With Sports Apps Rankings

Posted by Silissa Kenney in GAMING, MOBILE on 06-14-11    No Comments

You know what the world desperately needs more of? Apps. I mean, there’s only  around 700,000 apps, according to Anindya Datta, founder and executive chairman of Mobilewalla, a web platform that compiles and ranks all the apps on the market. Scores are based on an algorithm, “which computes ratings in each store plus the volume and sentiment of the social media conversation.” With Mobilwalla you can find the best-rated apps f0r each category and platform. I played some of Apple’s top scoring sports game apps and found some winners, and some losers.

Touch Hockey FS5 (Free) Score: 98/100

This was my favorite. Who doesn’t love air hockey? With Touch Hockey FS5, the puck glides around the screen just like it does on a real air hockey table. It’s fast and responsive and you can play with friend with Bluetooth or WiFi. It also has three levels, instant replay and awesome sound effects. You gotta love that clicking, smacking sound of the puck knocking around the table, I mean screen.

iBowl Score: 96/100

This bowling app is more interactive. You touch the screen’s “bowl” icon, while tilting the device forward than back to send the bowling ball down the lane. You can place the ball along the top of the lane to hit those split pins. You can compete in bowling tournaments over the internet. I wanted to like this one, but found it a little clumsy and repetitive. I know, that’s the nature of app games, but this one just got boring.

Finger Sprint Score: 96/100

I’m sorry, what?  The game is basically exactly what it sounds like. The image on the screen is a straight track. Then you “run” with your fingers. I ran 1 mile in 6.94 seconds. Ok. Really, I don’t know what to say about this one. I feel like I must be missing a cool gene that would allow me to see why this game scored a 96.

Arcade Hoops Basketball Lite Score: 95/100

You know how much fun it is to go into an arcade and play that basketball game where the balls just keep rolling at you, and you shoot as many as you can in a given time? This is the app for that. I haven’t played one of those in ages, but this app evokes that same eager excitement, albeit in a really compact way. You have a funny looking pair of hands on the screen, grabbing basketballs at your command and tossing them as quickly as possible. You can even play music from your iTunes library while you play. This just might be the laziest way to play basketball, but it’s fun.

Now get to gaming and let the time wasting begin.

Love To Run? Let Me Count The Ways

Posted by Anthony Mowl in EQUIPMENT, MOBILE, Uncategorized on 06-13-11    2 Comments

Not only are Americans getting fatter, but we’re also getting slower.

The last time an American won the Boston Marathon was Greg Meyer in 1983, and it doesn’t seem like we can win a Tour de France without some type of doping scandal. App makers are coming up with ways for us to use our iPhones to motivate us to get off the couches and start running and cycling. Let’s face it, we can’t do anything without an app these days, can we?  Fortunately, there are plenty of free apps that’ll help you find inspiration to hit those trails.

The Nike+ iPod app works with sensors in Nike+ shoes and tracks your speed and distance while running. It lets you set workout times or distances and has words of inspiration from athletes like Lance Armstrong, who tells you when you’ve had a great workout at the end. Sensors cost about as much as dinner for two at Chipotle and a six-pack of beer, which likely explains why other shoemakers haven’t caught on yet.

RunKeeper was the first free GPS tracking app for runners and cyclists. It lets you keep track of your route, time and average speed and post your workout on social networking sites. It uses the GPS feature on your phone so you don’t have to buy any hardware, and can save your money for snacks. Long distance runners and cyclists couldn’t use RunKeeper because it would drain the battery by the time they’re halfway through a marathon. I wasn’t able to reproduce this issue and haven’t experienced this problem myself because I’m not able to run long enough, not by a long mile. I’ll try again without the beer next time.

Map My Tracks markets itself as a solution for the battery-draining apps. It calls itself a “light-weight, low-power app that is designed to make live tracking at long distance events a viable option.” It only saves on the battery because it turns the GPS on periodically and fills in the blanks, as opposed to RunKeeper which hums throughout your entire workout. While Map My Tracks targets the hardcore runners and cyclists, it’s also designed to be a social tool for supporters and organizers to track event participants.

All this innovation is fine, but it probably isn’t going to help us get off the sofa or take back the Boston Marathon. People who can’t run don’t need another app to tell them how quickly it takes them to get out of breath. And the last time I checked, there was no GPS coverage in the Kenyan desert. There’s some other trick up Kenyans’ sleeves. Maybe it’s that they don’t have Chipotle’s “burritos as big as your head.” What we truly need is an app that’ll let me write safely while I run or bike. Now that would get me moving.

Geocaching May Encourage Teens To Exercise

Posted by John Hamlin in GAMING, MOBILE on 06-09-11    No Comments

How do you get teens to put down the controller and go play in the real world? You turn the great outdoors into a video game.

Geocaching, a sort of GPS-powered treasure hunt, does just that, and according to a new study it may hold the key to getting kids to exercise. When surveyed, 56 teens, ages 13 to 17, said “geocaching sounded fun and would be more enjoyable than walking,” according to research presented at the American College of Sports Medicine’s 58th Annual Meeting and 2nd World Congress on Exercise is Medicine.

What’s more, the adolescents expressed exuberance not only toward physical activity and technology, but also toward being outdoors. In fact, they said they’d prefer to be outside. That separates geocaching from other attempts to trick teens into exercising, such as Dance Dance Revolution and the Wii Fit.

The study did not, however, test whether geocaching would actually lead juveniles to begin lifetimes of fitness. There’s a gulf of difference between getting a teenager to agree that geocaching sounds cool and proving that he will actually go out and do it.

“Overall, our results suggest that rural youth are not getting the daily physical activity they need to be healthy and fit,” said Rebecca Battista, the Appalachian State University associate professor who headed the study. “Considering the high levels of interest in being active outside and in using technology, it seems like geocaching could be the perfect activity to keep young, tech-savvy people active.”

So, ultimately, we’ve confirmed that teens are sedentary, like technology and find traditional exercise boring. It’s a good start, but I could have told you that geocaching sounds fun for much less than $4,955.

The Kentucky Derby Clip-Clops into the App Store

Posted by Alex Dalenberg in MOBILE, Uncategorized on 05-05-11    No Comments

You’d be hard-pressed to name a sporting event that’s more old-timey than the tradition-soaked Kentucky Derby, but, this year, joining derby hats, we have Derby Apps.

The Kentucky Derby’s new mobile app (free on iTunes and Android Market) does double-duty as a mobile brochure for spectators at Churchill Downs (with parking information, venue maps, etc.) and as a fan-guide to the race with TV schedules, video/photo and horse profiles.

If you’re new to racing it’s a good all-in-one primer to get through the race without being completely clueless. You can also find an interesting guide to betting on horse races, plus party planning suggestions (in case you were looking for the Derby’s official mint julep recipe) but the features are by and large basic and text-heavy.

There is also a video sing-along of My Old Kentucky Home, but I’d have a few mint juleps though before breaking into that feature.

In other words, this gets the Derby out of the horse-and-buggy era of the Web, but the app doesn’t leave its mobile competitors in the dust but hey, nobody can accuse the Kentucky Derby of putting the horse before the cart.

More MLB Stadiums Go Wireless As Baseball Competes With Your Living Room

Posted by Alex Dalenberg in INTERNET, MOBILE, STADIUM on 04-28-11    No Comments

geekgaz.com

Wi-Fi may finally be coming to a ballpark near you.

Internet access at baseball stadiums should more than double this year with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves adding Wi-Fi to their stadiums.

To the best of my knowledge, only the San Francisco Giants and the Houston Astros offered fans Internet access before this year, with both stadiums adding the service way back in 2004.

This isn’t exactly a wireless explosion, but my gut tells that we’re going to see the number of these upgrades grow exponentially as owners compete with their fans’ home entertainment systems.  That means these services aren’t just offering Internet access for your tablet or smartphone, but  also offer replay, real-time stats and the ability to order food right to your seats.

Diamondbacks President Derrick Hall comes right out and says it in this article from The Arizona Republic:

“What we compete with is the quality of broadcasting now, and fans get in the habit of staying at home and being in what they consider the best seat in the house right behind the pitcher… We challenge ourselves to come up with ways that still give an advantage to the person coming in person to see that game. This new digital portal is just that. They’re going to have access to information, replays, videos, stats, etc., that nobody at home can get.”

So these ballparks are trying to one-up the multi-screen experience sports fans take advantage of when they take in a game at home. It’s a challenge more than one business model is facing: how does your brick and mortar business beat the convenience of home consumption?

If I knew the answer to that one, I wouldn’t be blogging, but this Wi-Fi thing is obviously a no-brainer. You can get Wi-Fi in every coffee shop in town so why not a major entertainment venue like a baseball stadium. By all means, these teams should give fans as much bang for their buck as possible. Teams need to create a real value proposition to keep fans in the seats.

But I’m not going to say this is even going to start to cure the lagging attendance problems it’s trying to address. Maybe we’re just not fan enough anymore, but no mobile app or online portal is going to let fans bypass finding a parking spot or upgrade their nosebleed seats to a luxury box.

Especially in the case of teams like the Diamondbacks which have struggled over the last few years, I’d think putting a winner on the field is going to do a lot more to solve attendance problems than this thing called the Internet. You don’t need in-game replay or real-time stats to tell you a team is mediocre.

As for in-game beer delivery, there’s a winner if I’ve ever heard one.

Boomshakalaka! NBA Jam for iPad is on Fire

Posted by Alex Dalenberg in GAMING, MOBILE on 04-24-11    No Comments

Anybody who played video games in the 90s should know that EA Sports reviving Midway’s realistic basketball simulation NBA Jam last year was a stroke of genius. The 2010 redux showed fealty to its venerable source material — Tim Kirtzrow screaming IS IT THE SHOES while LeBron / Kobe / Whoever dunks a flaming basketball from 20 feet in the air — while throwing in enough new wrinkles to keep things interesting.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited to see an iPad version of NBA Jam land in the App Store last week, joining the iPhone and iPod Touch versions released earlier this year. At $10 it’s one of the more expensive than your typical mobile game but, if you’re looking for new and better ways to waste your time, I can safely say that, like its console predecessors, NBA Jam for iPad is a slam dunk.

This isn’t a stripped-down version a big boy game that you can run at home on your tablet when you’re not at home to play the real deal. The essence of NBA Jam is all here: ridiculous arcade-style play, big-time stars with giant heads dunking basketballs from the free throw line, a quick-play mode and a 36-team campaign where you work your way up from the NBA’s scrubs (sorry Timberwolves) toward a showdown with the Magic/Bird Mega Team. And the whole thing looks and sounds awesome with plenty of little touches like the dunk-faces your players get after posterizing an opponent or your team’s mascot pumping its fist on the sidelines.

The touch controls take a little getting used to, especially if you’ve been programmed since age eight to mash down on the turbo button, but after a couple beatings from the likes of Kevin Love I found myself back in my early-90s groove, having the the big guy dish it in mid-dunk to my dead-eye shooter beyond the arc. The game makes some use of the accelerometer — you can shake the iPad to throw your elbows — but I found that sometimes my screen ended upside down which usually ended up with a 360 jam for the other guys.

In true EA fashion you can also unlock bonus players and abilities by knocking off certain teams or completing challenges like dunking 10 times in a game (Ronny Seikaly) or scoring 100 points in a game. You unlock Detlef Schrempf by just turning the game on for the first time, and the Beastie Boys team by adding your own music with the iPod feature (and if you play long enough you can unlock players that aren’t white). Of course, if you’re a lazy bastard you can skip all that and just buy packages of classic players or 99 cents apiece from the online NBA Jam store.

One downside: while there is a local multiplayer option (you can play on the same WiFi network or with a bluetooth) you can’t play online. So if you’re like me and you’re the only guy in the room with an iPad you’ll most likely be flying solo on this. That being said, seeing as the console version will cost you about $50 this is a more-than worthy substitute.

Stop The Bracket App Madness!!!

Posted by Alex Dalenberg in MOBILE on 03-09-11    No Comments

Have you been staying on top of the apps for NCAA basketball? I don’t know what every developer in the world is thinking — maybe they’re just trying to take advantage of this — but there have never been more bad, questionable sports apps. So this year, there is going to be NCAA Fan Zone for March Madness (that’s new), PocketBracket from Pure Concepts, FinalMadness, March Brackets from KC Gradgets.

How many bracketology apps is the world actually going to need? All these apps do the same basic thing — update your bracket — and there is no need to video these apps up with end game highlights because that along with entire games are already going to be available streaming from March Madness on Demand, and you can also flip between every game just as easily on TV this year, which is what people really want.

Enough already.

HockeyGPS.com: Who Knew There Were So Many Lost Hockey Players?

Posted by Jonathan in MOBILE on 03-06-11    No Comments

via hockeygps.com

It looks like your average hockey player can find the blue line better then they can find the check out line.

Hockey Science & Technology, a Canadian-based hockey management and marketing company, feels that the world needs an easy way for hockey nerds to find their way to and from rinks. The company has developed a navigation app for hockey players. The idea is, you enter your personal information, where you are and what sort of hockey asset you are looking for, and HockeyGPS finds it for you. Most of the coding is elemental. The data is being grabbed from other nav services like Google. But still, it’s not a bad way to find a rink, hockey store or other local hockey stuff.

Now, if it could figure out how to help players find their way to scoring a couple of goals, that would be cool.

Episode 73: The TSC Zombies Live!

We celebrate our final show at Hothead Studios by breaking down sports video games from E3;  talkin’ through some dang sports video baseball cards and then go getting into the fallout from Derek Boogarrd’s untimely death.  Finally, what we have all been waiting for: Dan on latest on with Posada’s crazy, tweeting wife. Share this [...]

Episode 72: Dan’s Cool Rugby Shirt

Blum breaks down 42 miles on a bike with no chain. Evans reports on the Oprah/Nike summit. Dan’s got a rugby johns he would like to share. And some high tech tricks to baseball scouting. (26.8 KB, 27.10 Minutes) Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg

Episode 71: The NFL For President!

Dan breaks down the body blow online poker just took from regulators. Blum talks up the new book about what the NFL has to teach capitalism. Seth hates yet another video game. And finally ESPN on your iPad. (25.3 mb, 25.4 minutes) Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg

Episode 70: “Are You Ready to Rumble?”

MLB TV’s online service is legitimately cool. The Masters will be a non-event online. Tiger Woods plays with crappy equipment and Blum compares betting on Wrestlemania to trading corn futures. Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg

Episode 69: “A Podcast Unlike Any Other”

The organizers of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar seek to bend nature to their will with artificial clouds. Blum gloats over the NCAA Selection Committee’s epic seeding failures. Blackberry “Super” Apps underwhelm and Dan takes a crack at the new Masters video game. Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg

Episode 68: “Revenge of the Nerds”

Seth and Blum mix it up with MIT over sports data. Dan reviews EA’s Fight Night Champion (virtual boxing is better than the real thing). Amar’e Stoudemire’s goggles get explained and the guys tour some physical fitness web sites. All that, plus, the week in review. Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg

Episode 67: “Follow the Bouncing Blum”

Dan’s on the injured reserve this week, so Blum’s flying solo (with an assist from Seth the Tech Nihilist). In this episode: Seth breaks down March Madness On Demand, Blum wonders what gives with the crap-tastic apps that are dominating college athletics, a look into the NFL’s financial picture, plus the week in review at [...]

Episode 66: “It’s Hockey Night Tonight!”

It’s all hockey all the time for this week’s episode. Dan and Blum look at the cross-border battle between the Winter Classic and Heritage Classic as well as the Buffalo Sabres ownership change. Dan and Seth the Tech Nihilist reminisce about the classic NHL video games. Plus, how did a trade between the Stars and [...]

Episode 65: “Take This Job and Shove It”

Blum pitches his wild-eyed plan for NFL players to use social media to circumvent ownership. Seth the Tech-Nihilist gives his report on the new MLB.Com. Dan reviews NHL ’11 (it’s awesome) and digs into some racing tech at Daytona. Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg

Episode 64: “Jets Fans are Damaged Individuals”

As Blum gloats, Dan lets the Jets know they can go straight to hell. Also, the best televisions for your Super Bowl party; Dan discovers Broadcast HD; Blum shares his illicit passion for wooden baseball bats; PLUS, the best sports e-books for your e-reader. Share this post:ShareEmailPrintStumbleUponRedditDigg