The Twitter 100: Influential Sports Twitter Accounts

Posted by Anthony Mowl in INTERNET on 07-18-11    No Comments


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It’s Twitter’s fifth anniversary. Although I could have sworn that Twitter was just 5 months old (I joined last month), I guess the cool people have been at the party all this time. Twitter has moved beyond being just a fad, and become a bona fide tool for journalists and information. It’s also penetrated the sports world on every level, which is why Sports Illustrated recently came up with the Twitter 100: A list of the Twitter accounts considered the most essential to reporters’ daily routines in finding news and information.

Here all this time I considered CNNSI to be the most essential source in my daily routine, I should have been checking these Twitter accounts instead. (Full disclosure: @anthonymowl did not make the top 100 for reasons unknown.)

Kevin Durant @KDTrey5. “The Decision” was upstaged by Kevin Durant announcing that he’d signed a new deal to stay with the Thunder on his Twitter account. A great example of Twitter becoming a platform for original sources in news.

Hikaru Nakamura @GMHikaru. Yeah, I thought “Who?” too. Turns out he’s a 23-year-old American chess grandmaster. Bobby Fischer never had Twitter, so here’s the next best thing.

Chad Ochocinco @ochocinco. Tops the Twitter 100 with 2.2 million followers, and leads the Twitter-verse in fines for Tweeting.

Old Hoss Radbourn @OldHossRadbourn.  Old Hoss, not to be confused with Pawn Star’s Big Hoss, was a pitcher from the 1800s. Somehow he manages to Tweet from beyond the grave, sharing his perspective on baseball today.

Jim Irsay @JimIrsay. The eccentric billionaire owner of the Indianapolis Colts is also an eccentric Tweeter. He has yet to lock out his Twitter account.

Steve Wilson @stevewilsonap. I felt bad. This Associated Press European sports editor had the fewest followers on the list with just 1,388 people keeping up with him. CNNSI seems to be helping him out though, saying he’ll be a must-read during the 2012 London Olympics, but it isn’t working. Somehow he actually has one less follower five days after the Twitter 100 was released (1,387). How is that possible?

Sports Law Guy @SportsLawGuy. Gabe Feldman, a professor at Tulane Law School gives legal analysis of issues regarding sports and law. Unfortunately with two lockouts, steroid rage, and athletes seemingly getting in trouble every week, this is probably the most important Twitter account in sports today.

These are just seven of the accounts on the Twitter 100, mostly made up of sports reporters, athletes, and other influential people in sports. The list is definitely worth checking out, as it is extremely diverse, covering a wide variety of sports and perspectives. Major props to CNNSI for adding a “Follow” button alongside every person on the list, making it extremely easy for me to follow the people I found interesting. The only flaw I could think of was that @sportscircuit did not make the list. But then again, considering Steve Wilson lost a follower after making the list, maybe that was a big plus.



Golfers Get Their Virtual Game On

Posted by Silissa Kenney in EQUIPMENT on 07-15-11    No Comments


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The 2011 British Open is going on right now at Royal St. George. The last time the Open was played there was in 2003. The champion was Ben Curtis, who was playing his first Open and whose odds were, like, 300-1. Your odds of winning — or even playing — in an Open may be closer to 3 billion-1, but if you’re serious about improving your game, there is some high-tech help out there.

The P3ProSwing, is a golf simulator and swing analyzer. You can buy the system for in-home use, starting at $599. But the Masters Studio version — which you could also buy if you’re willing to drop a cool $23,000 — is available to try in a few Sports Authority stores. Now you can pick out your clubs and try them out without leaving the store. Actually, you could stay and play a game on one of the simulated golf courses also. You know, do away with all that pesky walking and fresh air.

Kidding aside, this tool uses high-tech graphics and sensors to analyze your swing. Measurements include club-face angle, swing path, angle of attack, hit distance, club-head speed and swing tempo. This means you can find clubs that are customizable to your swing and see precisely where you need improvement.

Expensive golf clubs? Check. Advanced technology as golf-guru? Check. This is the kind of thing that seems to take the fun out of getting out there and just playing. But let’s face it, we all want to be better at whatever game we’re playing. This could be a great way to beef up your skills. Who knows, maybe you will make it one day to play in your first Open. Or, at least, a virtual Open.

 



Who Needs TV When There’s MLB.TV?

Posted by Seth in INTERNET, TELEVISION on 07-14-11    1 Comment


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I’ve always been a little bit skeptical of watching sports on anything over than good old fashioned cable or satellite TV. Within the past decade, we’ve seen the rise of sports broadcasts on the web, but it never seemed like a particularly good option to me.

Until now.

I have seen the future of live sports broadcasts, and it’s called MLB.TV.

MLB Advanced Media is the clear leader in online sports packages. This we know. But you don’t get a full appreciation for it until you check out the MLB.TV package, which I’ve been doing since last weekend. I’ve been an MLB Extra Innings subscriber for several years, and I was disappointed earlier this year when I switched from DirecTV to Verizon Fios TV and discovered that Extra Innings on Fios carries very few games in HD and simply isn’t as good as it is on DirecTV. Well, I’ve made a determination: Starting next spring, it’s MLB.TV for me. Goodbye Extra Innings. Goodbye Extra Innings hefty $180 price tag — which is particularly galling, considering that Verizon charges the same for it as DirecTV does even though it’s a vastly inferior product on Fios.

But I digress. Let’s talk about MLB.TV, which is $119.99 for the full season and is $79 if you sign up now for the rest of the season. Here’s what there is to love:

Portability: First of all, like any good piece of entertainment content, they’ve made the package portable to a whole bunch of different devices. I’m running it to my TV via my PlayStation 3, but you can also watch on a PC, an iPad, Roku, Boxee, or through an app built into some newer Samsung and LG televisions.

Picture: Unlike the woefully fuzzy standard-def picture I get from Extra Innings on Fios TV, I’m getting an HD picture from MLB.TV. Occasionally there are some buffering issues, and my TV is a few years old and not a 1080p display, so I get some artifacts on the screen when there’s a lot of fast motion. I think there might be some compression issues as well that impact the look of the picture. But none of this makes the picture undesirable. Even at its worst, it’s better than the standard-def picture on Fios.

Functionality: This is where MLB.TV blows away Extra Innings like a Roy Halladay fastball. You’ve got full DVR capability and the ability to jump to earlier innings of any game whenever you feel like it. So let’s say you sat down to catch the Yankees-Blue Jays game tonight (July 14), and you were a little late, and were shocked to find out that Toronto scored eight runs in the first inning. How did that happen? Well, the short answer is that Bartolo Colon’s magic is gone. But you can punch up the bottom of the first inning at the touch of a button and watch it for yourself. There’s more. You can get home and road team feeds of each game, with your choice of the TV announcers or the radio crew. So let’s say you want to listen to Jon Miller call the Giants game instead of the TV team of Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow (who are very good, by the way). Again, touch of a button, and you get Miller’s dulcet tones. You can even choose the ballpark setting, which gives you the noise of the park — the murmur of the crowd, the crack of the bat, the umpire’s strike calls — with no announcer at all.

If you’re watching on a PC, there are a few other options that aren’t available if you stream to your TV. You can view up to four games at once on your PC screen. Streaming to the TV you’re limited to one at a time. That’s something they should fix, especially since a big TV screen is far more conducive to a multi-game view than a small PC screen. There’s also a fantasy player tracker available on the PC, although this isn’t that big a deal, since avid fantasy players probably have the live scoring page of their fantasy league site up and running on another browser tab.

There are a couple of minor quibbles. First, MLB.TV cuts the signal when a game goes to a commercial, and you get a message on the screen saying there’s a commercial break in progress. I sort of like seeing local TV commercials from across the country when I watch on Extra Innings. But I can live without them. Also, MLB.TV blacks out live broadcasts of teams in your home market. For me, living in Maryland, that means no Orioles or Nationals games, but of course they’re available as part of my Fios TV package. Your home team’s games are viewable as part of the season archive, starting 90 minutes after the games end.  But there are some parts of the country that are considered the home market of several teams, so that could be a drawback for some fans.

Simply put, MLB Advanced Media has created a streaming package that is more worthwhile than watching on TV. It’s the future of sports broadcasting. And it’s here now.

 



GoPro While Retaining Amateur Status

Posted by Anthony Mowl in ALL, EQUIPMENT on 07-14-11    No Comments


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Amateur action sport athletes are looking more and more like professional athletes with GoPro’s Hero camera sets. The GoPro Hero is a relatively inexpensive camera that packs a powerful punch. Priced as low as $259, people are getting one of the most versatile video cameras anywhere.

The GoPro Hero is a little bigger than a deck of cards, but produces 1080p HD-quality video, and up to 5 megapixel photographs. Buy the most basic model at $259, and you’ll get a waterproof case that you can scuba dive with up to 180 feet, a helmet mount and a flat-surface mount. Spend $40 extra, and you can get either surf, motor sports or helmet mounts and take the Hero along for a ride on your surfboard or dirt bike, or get amazing footage as you skydive.

While the camera is priced for extreme sports enthusiasts, professional filmmakers are finding the Hero to be just the right solution for their needs. Kayaking documentary maker Five2Nine is producing amazing videos with the Hero, and the maker of the March of the Penguins movie has modified the camera to make a “Critterpak,” putting the camera on animals to get stunning footage. But perhaps the coolest thing is GoPro’s latest addition to the Hero family: a 3D kit that puts 3D production capabilities in the hands of even the most amateur of filmmakers. Simply purchase two Hero cameras at $259 each, and a 3D kit at $99, and you’ll be competing with James Cameron in no time.

The 3D kit is a waterproof case that houses both cameras side-by-side, and with the software that comes in the 3D kit, you’re synchronizing your cameras to make instant 3D footage that looks like this. While you’ll need glasses to view the 3D video, you have the option of outputting the same footage in 2D. YouTube has added the ability to upload and stream videos in 3D, making the potential for 3D to become much more widespread and within reach of anybody with $600.

Skydivers, surfers, kayakers, stunt bikers and scuba divers now all have the ability to produce amazing footage at an extremely affordable price, turning backyard action sports stars into viral celebrities if they happen to capture themselves wiping out and breaking a leg in 3D. While I probably wouldn’t want to see a bone sticking out in 3D, I’d definitely want to have the Hero 3D kit with me the next time I go skydiving or bungee jumping. I’d slap a pair of 3D glasses on my grandpa, and take him along for the ride.



The Sports Tech Nihilist: I Don’t Get Apps!

Posted by Seth in INTERNET, MOBILE on 07-14-11    No Comments


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Is it just me, or does this whole urge for apps not make any sense?

The way people talk about apps for smart phones and the iPad, you’d think these things were complex or were really doing something special. There’s one TV commercial running right now with a woman eyeing a smart phone in a store window and we hear the thoughts in her head: “Hmm, I could use a smart phone with social apps.” Aside from being horrible dialogue, they make it sound like “social apps” are far more important than they are. An icon that takes you to Twitter and another that takes you to Facebook … wow! Give me a minute to catch my breath.

When I got my BlackBerry — which admittedly has a far less extensive app market than the iPhone and iPad — I found a couple hundred sports apps. Two of them are worth having. Sports Illustrated has a nice one, and there’s ScoreMobile, which can be a little cranky at times, but has plenty of information. Both of them are free, and I wouldn’t dream of paying for them.

Apparently some iPad users don’t have the same attitude. I got a kick out of a couple of comments from people complaining about ESPN’s ScoreCenter XL for the iPad, which used to cost $4.99 and is now free. The iPhone version was free, but they had been charging for the iPad version, which made no sense.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great-looking app, jam-packed with information. The problem is it’s pointless. If you’ve got an iPad, you’ve got web access. There’s no reason you can’t just point the iPad’s browser at ESPN.com — or CBSSports.com or SI.com or Yahoo Sports or The Sporting News or FoxSports.com or The Sports Network or the league websites … or any number of other places — to get the scores and info you’re looking for. OK, so it’s a couple extra taps of the touchscreen.

Anybody who felt a need to pay $4.99 to avoid that needs their head examined.



Computer Chess Record Books, Meet the Asterisk

Posted by John Hamlin in GAMING on 07-13-11    No Comments


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The world of computer-versus-computer chess competition took its first step toward becoming a modern sport, and maybe even being interesting.

In quite possibly the nerdiest controversy outside of Dungeons & Dragons, the International Computer Games Association stripped Rybka, a chess-playing computer program, of its four World Computer Chess Championship titles. In a 5-0 decision, the ICGA ruled that Vasik Rajlich, an American-Czech dual citizen living in Poland, used code from two other chess programs without attribution in writing Rybka.

“Vasik Rajlich is guilty of plagiarizing the programs Crafty and Fruit, and has violated the ICGA’s tournament rules with respect to the World Computer Chess Championships in the years 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010,” said an ICGA press release. ”Furthermore, it seems to the ICGA that Vasik Rajlich clearly knew that he was in the wrong in doing so, since he has repeatedly denied plagiarizing the work of other programmers.”

Rybka will be erased from the record books, more like an opponent of Joseph Stalin than a juiced-up MLB slugger. Plaques will be revised, and trophies will be sent to the newly determined champions.

While big computers don’t cry, Rajlich’s tear ducts may well be working overtime. He is banned for life from ICGA competition and must return all trophies and prize money. The total is unknown, but in 2010, he won about $1,400. Moreover, the news should cut into sales of Rybka, which goes for about $100 online.



Football Season Begins Now: NCAA 12 Rocks With New Features

Posted by Seth in GAMING on 07-11-11    No Comments


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The unofficial start of football season comes Tuesday when NCAA Football 12 hits the stores. It hardly seems possible, but EA Sports keeps coming up with new tweaks and innovations that make this game a richer experience each year, even though the gameplay stays largely the same.

The first thing that caught my eye about this year’s game is that the Road To Glory mode has been expanded. In layman’s terms, this is the career mode, where you create a player and guide him though his college career. Except now your career starts with your senior year of high school, which is a playable mode in the game. Your performance in your senior season dictates what types of college programs recruit you. Play well, and you’ll end up with a school in a BCS conference. If you’re mediocre, you’ll end up in college football’s hinterlands.

If you’re more interested in coaching than playing, there are new features on that front as well. At the end of each season in the dynasty mode, there is the Coaching Carousel, where schools offer you and other coaches new contracts. You can re-up with your current school if they make you an offer, or you can hold out and see who else wants to throw a deal your way.

But the features I like the best are the ones that give you seemingly limitless flexibility in the way you manage your dynasty. First of all, you have the ability to set up the schedules and the conference alignments any way you want them. Think Pitt should be in the Big Ten so they can play Penn State every year? Move them there. Want to make the SEC the ultimate super conference? Move Texas and Ohio State in there. In a way, this sort of thing takes video gaming into the realm of fantasy gaming. There are communities out there with people setting up their own leagues.

Last year’s NCAA Football game allowed you to manage your recruiting from your PC. Now you can play your games from there too. This I love. You can be sitting at work and calling plays. You don’t actually control the players’ movements like you do when you play on a console, but it’s the next best thing and a hell of a cool idea. EA Sports would do well to implement more of this sort of thing in their other titles.

To top it off, the presentation, which has fully integrated ESPN content, is getting rave reviews by everyone in the gaming community. Long story short, there’s a lot to love about this game.



Your Own NFL MiniCamp: Zephyr Offers Free Virtual Training Tool

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


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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.



Adding A Third Dimension In Sports

Posted by Anthony Mowl in TELEVISION on 07-08-11    No Comments


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The BBC had its first 3D broadcast last weekend, adding a new dimension in its airing of Wimbledon’s men’s and women’s semi-finals. It was a hefty endeavor, with two huge broadcast trucks, dedicated staff and specialty cameras all brought in for a 10-day test run leading up to the actual broadcast.

While tennis is probably one of the most 3D-worthy sports (think about a tennis ball flying toward your face at 120 mph), you have to ask yourself if the effort was worth it. The broadcast was shown live in just 200 theaters worldwide, and less than 200,000 televisions in the UK support 3D. While sales of 3D televisions are picking up, movie theaters around the world are literally making customers sick of 3D.

3D started off with a bang when 80 percent of people who watched Avatar in theaters saw the movie in 3D. But newer movies are averaging only 35-45 percent 3D viewership. Moviegoers are literally getting headaches and feeling sick from the 3D effect, balking over the $4 to $6 premium to watch a film in 3D, and in some cases they’re complaining about the diminished quality of the movie itself. It turns out that some theaters, in an effort to save money, are dimming the bulbs on their projectors so the picture does not come out as bright or as sharp. While director James Cameron believes 3D is here to stay, moviegoers are saying otherwise with their wallets and opting to see movies in 2D instead.

This makes us wonder whether Wimbledon’s 3D broadcasts were simply an experiment or an assertion of what is to come in future sports broadcasts. If performance in movie theaters is any indication of the public’s interest, is it worth pursuing a third dimension in sports broadcasts? 3D is expensive, technically challenging, and not everybody likes it (including The Sports Tech Nihilist). Sure 3D might be a neat gimmick, but is it commercially viable?



Twitter: Killing Sports Journalism 140 Characters At A Time

Posted by Seth in INTERNET on 07-06-11    2 Comments


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Holy crap, has Twitter ever royally screwed up the sports journalism business.

Depending on your perspective, this may be a good thing. As a career sports editor, I have a tough time getting on board with the whole social-media-has-changed-sports-journalism-as-we-know-it vibe. But my old-school journalistic sensibilities are being overrun by the ever-increasing evidence that my species is becoming irrelevant.

The latest example comes courtesy of a blogger named Nate Dunlevy, who runs an Indianapolis Colts site called 18to88.com. That’s 18, as in Peyton Manning, to 88, as in Marvin Harrison, in case you’re completely oblivious. Last week, longtime NFL writer Len Pasquarelli wrote a story that got syndicated to many outlets on the web, claiming that Colts’ defensive end Robert Mathis is planning to hold out of training camp once the NFL labor situation is settled.

Pasquarelli reported “with some degree of certainty” (whatever the hell that means) that Mathis won’t show up for camp without a new contract. While he quotes an anonymous source saying so, he does not quote Mathis. He also makes no reference about having attempted to contact Mathis for comment. Forgive me for criticizing a writer infinitely more accomplished than I will ever be, but that’s News Reporting 101. When you make a claim about someone, you owe them the opportunity to respond. Even a line in the story that says attempts to reach Mathis were unsuccessful is better than nothing.

Well, it turns out Dunlevy decided to do what Pasquarelli didn’t. Dunlevy tweeted Mathis to ask him about the report, and what do you know, but Mathis responded with a denial.

So here’s a guy sitting on his couch in his underwear somewhere in Indiana — and we say that because we have some experience with blogging and it involves couches and an unbelievably relaxed dress code — who got an answer that a well-respected football writer didn’t.

Now, the one thing that bothers me about using social media as a reporting tool is that it’s impossible to be certain that the person you’re interacting with is the person you think it is. It takes no skill to set up a Twitter account and pretend you’re an athlete or celebrity. Just do a Google search for “impersonated on Twitter,” and that much becomes obvious.

Assuming for the moment that this really is Robert Mathis’ Twitter account — which it apparently is — this is a striking example of the way a simple web-based tool has circumvented the sports media establishment. Of course, it’s not every athlete who is going to respond to random tweets from people they don’t know. But with an endless stream of chatter being churned out by sports websites and talk radio and TV, you can understand athletes getting fed up with misinformation or misrepresentation and using their own means to get their message out.

Don’t be surprised if little old Twitter kills sports media as we know it — 140 characters at a time.

#SportsJournalismIsDoomed!