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Xsporture Makes A Play On Social Media

Posted by Silissa Kenney in Uncategorized on 06-29-11    No Comments


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If you use Facebook, you probably know that one of your friends is cooking dinner, that another is watching Glee, and another just loves their kids. Ugh, I’m bored just writing that sentence. Maybe sometimes you really do care, but if  you really wish everyone else was talking about sports, sports, sports, there’s a new social media platform to get your fill: Xsporture.

Xsporture is all sports, all the time for coaches, athletes, and fans. The platform includes sports-specific profiles, interactions between fans, athletes and coaches, and online video competitions. Now in closed beta testing, Xsporture just announced that it has secured angel funding from Atlanta tech entrepreneur Christopher Roland. They’ve also appointed David Eckoff as Chairman. Eckoff has an impressive resume in sports media, including working at Turner Broadcasting, and a stint as Senior Director at RealNetworks Inc., where he developed the company’s live online sports broadcast business and led the live online hit show “CBS Big Brother 24/7.″

“Vertical topic social networks are the next major wave of the social-web,” Eckoff said. “There have been large and profitable vertical social networks created for business, finance and even pets. Sports will be among the next great vertical social networks and it will be global in scope.”

Those are some grand expectations. But actually, Eckoff s right. Combining the explosion of social media use with a passion for sports seems like a winning combination. And instead of shunning traditional platforms like Facebook and Twitter, status updates made on Xsporture can be linked to appear in those feeds as well. This sounds like it just might be really fun, and could earn some revenue. And if you just can’t wait for the official release, you can request to become part of the beta now by going to their site.

Here’s a video with a little more about them.

 




Will NBA.com Do A Disappearing Act?

Posted by Seth in INTERNET, Uncategorized on 06-28-11    No Comments


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Imagine a major pro sports league website without any photos or videos of the league’s players. Later this week, it’s possible you may not have to imagine, because that’s what NBA.com might look like.

While the entire world remains breathless about the status of the NFL’s labor situation, the NBA is also getting ready to revisit its collective bargaining agreement. There could be a lockout coming, and if that happens it seems NBA.com as we know it will disappear with the old CBA. According to several sources, with no CBA in place the player’s association could force the league to remove all player likenesses from league and team websites. Apparently the league and teams have been scrambling their web staffers to get a redesign of every team’s page and the league page by the end of the week. We assume this means the NBA’s YouTube channel will go dark as well.

Wow … where to begin?

First of all, this is ridiculous. Why such a provision would even be part of a CBA is a major question. Obviously, the players have a right to negotiate the use of their likenesses, but forcing the league to yank all that content off the web in one fell swoop is just plain ludicrous. Even in the worst pro sports labor disputes — the 1994 baseball strike and the cancellation of the 2004-05 NHL season — the league survived. The need to promote the teams and players goes on. Indeed, that need is even more critical when you have a work stoppage. It took baseball forever to bounce back from 1994. Public relations is everything, and a vibrant website is a big piece of that.

Beyond that, it’s truly hilarious that anyone could be talking about wiping such a large swath of content off the face of the web. This is the digital age. You can’t stick the toothpaste back into the tube. Once it’s out there, it’s out there, baby. Just ask Anthony Weiner.

Either way, if you want to watch video clips of your favorite players, you’d better do it in the next few days.




Replacing Those Broken Ankles

Posted by Anthony Mowl in ALL, GENERAL, Uncategorized on 06-23-11    1 Comment


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For as long as sports have been around, athletes have been breaking ankles. Who can forget Michael Jordan breaking Vince Carter’s ankles when he was 40, or how about the time Allen Iverson pulled a double and broke two ankles with one move? The And1 street basketball tour has an unwritten rule during games: Get your ankle broken and you’re thrown out of the game.

Fortunately for Vince Carter and anyone else who has ended up flat on their ass, there’s a new technology in medicine that’ll put these people back on the floor. Podiatry surgeon Dr. Gerald Mauriello Jr. at the Advanced Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Institute came up with the Scandinavian Total Ankle Replacement system (STAR), a technology approved by the FDA just last year. The total ankle replacement has been in use around the world but only recently has the procedure been approved for use in the United States, likely in response to the increasing number of players thrown out of And1 basketball games.

The STAR procedure was developed to help those with severe arthritis and uses similar technology and materials used in knee and hip replacements. Patients who undergo the surgery usually walk normally and can hit the golf course or go hiking shortly after the ankle replacement. In a press release, Dr. Mauriello says that the STAR Ankle closely replicates the natural movement of the human ankle and has been proven to be a superior alternative to joint fusion procedures. Although the procedure probably hasn’t been used in younger professional athletes yet, it would be interesting to explore whether this is a viable alternative for saving someone’s career.  Who knows, we might see Brett Favre come back again and again if he decides to replace his ankles.

The only downside to the procedure is that it would not be able to fix your ego, a totally different matter. Here’s one more clip for good measure. My regards to the Denver Broncos defense.




Dude, That’s One Hairy Surfboard

Posted by Anthony Mowl in EQUIPMENT, Uncategorized on 06-20-11    1 Comment


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I think I should start investing in companies that make accelerometers. They’re finding their way in just about anything that moves, even where you’d least expect it. Surfing is one of the purest sports you can find, just a surfer on a board feeling the waves beneath them. It used to be the only thing a surfer needed was a wet suit and bare feet. Now, surfers might have to bring an extension cord and a power outlet to to the beach so they can charge their surfboard.

The dudes over at Pukas surf must have broken their boards on a nasty wave, because they tossed their old surfboard. They teamed up with tech company Tecnalia in an effort to gadgetize surfing and came up with a whole new surfboard, the Surfsens. The Surfsens project packs a surfboard with what seems to be the standard cache of toys for any new invention; GPS, accelerometer, and a hard drive that wirelessly sends data to Tecnalia’s proprietary interface in an effort to “change feelings into facts and figures.” Facts and figures? While surfing?

The Surfsens project is initially being used to build better surfboards by measuring torque and flexibility and gauging surfers’ performances on different types of boards and seeing which settings work best. I’m certain there will be major improvements in surfboard design thanks to the data from the Surfsens. Using an electronic surfboard to build better boards sounds logical, but it may not end there. As if surfboards weren’t expensive enough already, developers want the juiced up board to become the standard. They hope a version of the Surfsens will eventually be used in competition. Now, I’m all for innovation, but I don’t want to see judges base their scores on data sets that measure a surfer’s performance. This is where the line between improving a sport and overdoing something gets crossed.

Surfing used to be cool, tanned dudes taking a drop down the face of a wave and hanging 10. For the sport to be reduced to bits of code is one thing. But the idea of having pale nerds at the beach with their laptops potentially chasing the bikini beauties away? Now this, I take offense to. Let’s keep the computers off the beach, and keep surfing as natural and gnarly as possible.




The UA E39: Making Clothes Statistically Relevant

Posted by Anthony Mowl in EQUIPMENT, Uncategorized on 06-15-11    3 Comments


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Mark Twain said, “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little to no influence on society.” But Mark Twain had no idea that Under Armour clothes would someday make the athlete.

Innovators at UA came up with what they call “the Bug,” a circular device about half the size of a hockey puck and houses a computer, hard drive and accelerometer that goes into a UA compression shirt. Together they make up the UA E39.

What the UA E39 does, according to one of the people who developed the device, is “measure your potential.” But I think it does more than that. It adds a whole other coolness factor that will make even guys like Allen Iverson excited to go to practice. The Bug will measure and instantly send to your computer or mobile device data such as your heart rate, breathing rate, skin surface temperature and accelerometry. The UA E39 was recently unveiled at the NFL Combine where scouts raved about the technology. It clocked 40-times with pinpoint precision and measured the G-Force power of athletes as they burst during drills.

There are still some bugs to be worked out (pun intended). For instance, a player’s speed is measured using GPS, but isn’t as accurate indoors. While Under Armour works on these kinks before its 2012 release, it’s hard to argue that this isn’t going to change how athletes will train. It makes even the most informal practice session packed with data for athletes and coaches to review and analyze. Even team doctors and trainers can monitor an athlete’s body in real-time to make intense sessions safer. More importantly, it levels the playing field.

Previously only professional athletes or major college programs had access to this type of data, and it was only made possible by covering the athlete in wires and putting them on a treadmill in a lab. Now anybody can generate this data and use the UA E39 regularly whether they are doing sprints, shootarounds and drills by themselves or during a formal practice session.

For the more recreational athlete, the applications are endless. I can imagine my flag football league awarding prizes for the fastest player in the tournament, or television networks reporting on G-forces during a game should the UA E39 find its way into shoulder pads. It would add another dimension to watching games. I can’t wait to see how nervous a rookie is before their first playoff game, how a kicker’s heart rate measures up when he’s about to attempt a game-winning kick, or which quarterbacks really do have ice in their veins when leading a fourth-quarter comeback down the field.

As for the second half of Mark Twain’s quote, some things never do change. Thankfully, naked people still have little to no influence on society.

What do you think? What other cool uses can you think of for the UA E39?




Love To Run? Let Me Count The Ways

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


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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.




Get Up Off That Couch: EA Sports Titles Coming to Kinect

Posted by Seth in GAMING, Uncategorized on 06-08-11    No Comments


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We don’t know if Microsoft or Electronic Arts have any business connections in the field of orthopedic medicine, but if either one of them does, they may be poised to get ridiculously wealthy — like, even more ridiculously wealthy than they already are.

At this week’s E3 video game conference in Los Angeles, news came out that EA Sports is developing a few games that will utilize Microsoft’s motion-sensing Kinect system for the Xbox 360. There will be versions of Madden NFL football, FIFA soccer, and Tiger Woods golf that will require you to get up and start flailing your arms and legs.

Now, we’ve been down this road with the Nintendo Wii. Playing Tiger Woods on the Wii is cool for a while, but frankly do you really want to be standing and swinging your arms around for 18 holes? And let’s not forget the collateral damage that occurs if your room is not motion-gaming friendly. It was one thing to send your Wii controller flying into your TV screen because you didn’t use that stupid little wrist band like you were supposed to. And admit it, you didn’t use the wrist band, did you? Me neither.

But do you suppose FIFA for the Kinect is going to be downright dangerous? I’m seeing a lot of broken foot bones in the works because Joe Gamer got a little too close to the coffee table while he was trying to line up his shot.

Madden on the Kinect should be a pretty neat experience that may make the game easier and more accessible for some people. Remembering all the damn controls and getting all the button and stick combinations right is a huge pain that — to me at least — has made Madden less enjoyable over the years. But standing at the line of scrimmage, dropping back, reading the defense and actually making the “throw” rather than having to remember what buttons to push? Sounds like something I want to try.

It’s cool to see sophisticated sports titles being developed for the Kinect. When you look at the library of games currently available, the lack of good sports options is glaring. Sports is an obvious direction for this genre of gaming to go. So start rearranging your room and get that coffee table out of the way.

And maybe think about finding yourself a good orthopedist, just in case.




Take Me Out To The Ball Game: And Make Sure There’s Wifi

Posted by Anthony Mowl in STADIUM, Uncategorized on 06-07-11    No Comments


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How many of us actually go to a game just to watch the game? If new stadium perks are any indication, few teams want us to.

Stadiums all over are coming out with new ways to enhance the experience of watching a game in person. Yankee Stadium teamed up with Cisco to “futureproof” everything and rolled out apps that let fans order hot dogs from their seats. Livestrong Sporting Park in Kansas City is working with Google to install 146 miles of 10-gigabyte fiber optic cables to do… who knows what yet. The Minnesota Vikings’ new stadium proposal promises to make it the most technologically advanced facility in the NFL.

With ticket costs soaring, networks providing better coverage of games, and ESPN3D expanding its offerings, teams are forced to compete with the at-home viewing experience. Free wifi networks are becoming a basic requirement, and apps are helping fans buy peanuts and Cracker Jack. Teams are cramming in as many flat-screen TVs as they can fit, even when the game is going on just a few feet away. It’s safe to say that even more people will be able to sing along, “I don’t care if I ever get back,” because they’ll be able to look up the lyrics from their seats.

As much innovation as there is, there doesn’t seem to be enough of the sort that’s going on in Philadelphia. The Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field spent this offseason going green, installing 2,500 solar panels, 80 wind turbines, and a biodiesel generator that will not only make the stadium completely energy self-sufficient, but also will reduce the electrical bill by at least 25 percent. While it doesn’t make the fan experience any better, fans do appreciate the team’s effort to minimize its impact on the environment.

While ticket prices aren’t going down, teams also are using technology to increase profits and cut down on waste. The Jets monitor sales at the Meadowlands with their Command Center system, “The Pocket,” which allows the team to have real-time information about every dollar that is spent and every beer that comes out of taps.

With so much technology going into a stadium, the fan who goes to an occasional game is going to be overwhelmed and likely won’t take advantage of everything that a stadium has to offer.  There’s only one surefire way to make sure that casual fan goes home satisfied, and it doesn’t require high-speed Internet access or high-definition screens. Simply put together a good team and win games. No matter how many bells and whistles there are at a stadium, fans aren’t going to pay to watch a miserable team in person. After all, everyone has wifi and high-def at home.

 




Ronaldinho Got Hacked

Posted by Dan in Uncategorized on 05-17-11    No Comments


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We have all been paying to much attention to athlete’s Twitter accounts lately and how they or may not have been responsible for what appeared on them.  It seems that everytime something cool shows up they have been hacked and didn’t say it.  Well this weekend we were treated to a good old-fashioned website hack and I found it somewhat refreshing to see. Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho’s website was attacked by a hacker known as the Terrorist MC with some, as you can see, interesting results.




The Kentucky Derby Clip-Clops into the App Store

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


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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.