Google’s Awful World Cup Page

Posted by Jonathan in INTERNET on 06-14-10    No Comments


You would think the world’s biggest search engine could do a little better  covering the world’s biggest sport. But you would be thinking wrong.

Over the weekend, Google tossed up an oh-so-feeble FIFA World Cup coverage page. Their linked-directly-from-their-core-search-engine site consists of nothing more than custom graphic designs for one’s iGoogle account, game stats, info and video from FIFA.com, Google Maps links for local bars where you can go watch the games — like I need Google for that — and a Street View app, a la the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. You can click around the empty venues and streets and get a feel for the stadiums when nobody is around.

Honestly, Google needs to realize that sports are about exactly one thing: Games. And just like everybody else, they will have to line up and pay to have access to those games. The sooner this stumbling media company does that, the sooner they can get on with their sports ambitions.

All they’ve done is send  folks browser graphics and links to organizer content. Not even the most powerful Web brand on earth can add much value doing that.



The Tech Nihilist: I hate instant replay

Posted by Seth in GENERAL, TELEVISION on 06-10-10    No Comments


Allow me to introduce myself: I am Seth. And I am a sports tech nihilist.

And after listening to Jonathan’s take on instant replay in baseball in this week’s The Sports Circuit podcast, I can stay silent no longer.

First of all, just to clear this up, every team has a regional sports network — even my beloved, woe-begotten Pirates. They don’t all have networks that are owned by the teams, like the Yankees with YES, but every game is televised. Jonathan is correct that from team to team — or from regional sports network to regional sports network — the assets may be different. Frankly, I don’t notice that much difference from broadcast to broadcast as I watch games from across the country on MLB Extra Innings. But not everyone has a slow-mo cam for each base, etc. So I agree that if baseball is to implement instant replay, there must be a standard system that is in use by every network that televises games.

However — and this diverges from the idea of solutions — I hate instant replay. I want to like it. I like it in theory: Get the calls right. Great idea. But the irony here is that advances in technology have made me hate it.

If you’ve been watching the NBA Finals (and if you’re not, you should be — it’s Celtics vs. Lakers) you know that in both Game 2 and Game 3 there were out-of-bounds calls that were reviewed to see who the ball last touched. Both times, in my opinion, the refs got it wrong after looking at these super slow-mo, high-definition, frame-by-frame replays. And do you know why? Because when you slow something down that much and look at it one frame at a time, you can see whatever you want to see.

Tuesday night Kevin Garnett clearly had the ball slapped out of his hands and out of bounds by Kobe Bryant. Should have been Boston ball. But then they went and looked at it one frame at a time and managed to find a frame that shows Garnett with the tips of his fingers still touching the ball as it left his grasp. You’re talking about a fraction of a second here. And that’s ridiculous. He lost the ball because Kobe knocked it out of bounds. Boston ball. End of story. But the ref gave it to the Lakers.

These high-tech replays are at odds with the way a play unfolded in real time.

This has become rampant in football on plays involving fumbles, where they slow it down frame by frame and look to see when a guy’s knee hit the ground and whether the ball was coming loose at that point or not. How can you tell if the ball is loose when you’re looking at one frame? You can interpret one frame any way you want to. These things have to be looked at within the context of a game that happens at high speed.

The only place where I think it works in football is determining whether a receiver had both feet in bounds, because that’s not a judgment call. He either did or didn’t, and the replay can show that. In basketball, replays that show whether a shot beat the buzzer are OK. The National Hockey League doesn’t get much credit for it — heck, the NHL doesn’t get much credit for anything — but they’ve done a good job with video replay to determine whether the puck crossed the goal line. We saw an excellent example of that Wednesday night, when the overhead camera clearly showed the Chicago Blackhawks’ Stanley Cup-winning goal crossing the line, despite the fact that it happened so quickly that the on-ice officials never signaled that the puck had gone in.

But other than these specific uses, it’s tough to make a case that replay is a good thing. Ultimately, reviewing the play in the Armando Galarraga game comes down to a judgment call: When did he have the ball in his glove? That particular play was easy to see. But if you have to do frame-by-frame analysis, as if it were some terrorist video being broken down pixel by pixel in the bowels of the CIA headquarters, then the technology has overstepped its bounds.



World Cup In 4G: GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLL!

Posted by Jonathan in MOBILE on 06-07-10    No Comments


World Cup 1, Tech World 0.

After almost 40 years of development, the nation’s first truly fast wireless phone, the Sprint EVO hit stores last week. And while most of the world, for most of the past decades, could have cared less, suddenly with soccer on the thing, people woke up.

Mobile phones gets sports! Duh!

The World Cup will be streamed live on the EVO and I cannot wait to test it on my test unit. And I am not the sole soccer nut here. There are close to 2,000 articles on the World Cup 4G within the last few hours. And the notion that you can get a soccer match on your phone might just catch the national imagination.

Obviously, what is going on here, is the mobile-savvy, rest of the world is demanding here what they already have overseas: live sports on phones. So in many ways cell operators and promoters have no choice. But still, Sprint gets some credit for being first to bring soccer to phones in any scale.

Again, sports continues to drive awareness in mobile devices. Amazing.



A Sports Tech Father’s Day: A Titanium Wrist Watch From Origo

Posted by Jonathan in EQUIPMENT on 06-02-10    No Comments


Go ahead, channel your inner Iron Man this father’s Day. Get that Dad or grad in your life a titanium sports watch from Origo. (Titanium Man/Iron Man. Get it?) The Origo is a decent, if a bit bland, mainstream sports watch that looks good, is made of indestructible titanium and comes with enough features like a barometer, compass, altimeter and other bells and whistles to pass sports geek muster.

The thing costs $260.

Besides being a decent looking watch, the model shows how durable the sports watch has become as a category. Now, not only do traditional sports watch makers like Casio and Suunto make bad ass gizmos for the wrist, larger sports makers and watch companies compete here as well. Nike, Adidas, Timex and most other makers are pushing some sort of hip, uber geek watch in the line.

It’s getting downright hip to be a sports geek.



Sports TVs Of Tomorrow To Bend And Flex

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 06-01-10    No Comments


Looks like the world of watching sports is going to get well, flexible.

At last week’s Society Of Information Display “Display Week 2010,” up in Seattle, most of the major panel vendors were on hand showing screens that were not only brighter, thinner and more colorful, they showed screens that bend, flex or otherwise act unstiff.

And boy, does all this bending and stretching have an impact on the future of sports.

Sure, TVs in about two years will be thinner, brighter and offer bigger display sizes for 3D sets; but the fact that these displays will be able to bend is now clearly a major trend in sports technology. I was talking to one of the companies that sells TV screens and displays to sports TV shows on cable and broadcast, and he said that several major sports show producers will be ordering flexible displays for on-set images.

Fans can also expect to see flexible displays at stadiums as well. TV screens will not be limited to the massive, stiff units that now dominate Cowboys Stadiums. Instead, live sports imagery will be able to be wrapped around columns, posted on outfield walls or otherwise retrofitted into venues.  And certainly for mega events, like The World Cup and The Olympics, the flexible display will affect how those games are perceived on-site and around the world.

To paraphrase the Dos Equis guy when it comes to sports, “Stay Flexible, My Friend.”