Sports imPULSE

Charles Barkley launches official website

Charles Barkley is not on Twitter. That would be a great platform for his verbosity. The popular NBA TV analyst has however launched a new website, charlesbarkely.com.  The site went live a couple of weeks ago and includes the following features:

 

• Live Chats: Barkley will answer questions from fans during regular live video chats.
• Movie Reviews: Barkley will put his own spin on movie reviews including rankings of “Really Turrible” to “Not Turrible.”
• Rant and Rave: Barkley will provide fans with his colorful opinion on current topics in the news.
• Inside the NBA: Now fans can view their favorite clips and bloopers of Charles from Inside the NBA.
• Video clips: Fans can view the best of Barkley outside the paint from his late night show appearances, charity events and more.
• Weekly Poll/Photo Gallery: Fans can view a photo gallery of Charles throughout his storied career as an NBA All-Star and analyst.
• Spanish Word of the Day: Continuing his quest to master Spanish as a second language, Charles will provide fans a chance to learn with him through his “Spanish Word of the Day.”

But it's still not Twitter.

How To Watch The Olympics LIVE Online (Because NBC Won't Show Them To You)

Are you one of the millions of Americans infuriated that NBC is preventing you from watching the Olympics as they happen?

We are, too. 

Most of the fun of watching live sports events is the suspense of not knowing who won -- and NBC's habit of tape-delaying daytime events is ruining the Olympics for us and millions of other sports fans.

But here's some good news.  NBC owns the rights to broadcast the Olympics in the U.S., but it does not own the right to prevent you from watching the Olympics live (though it's trying its best to make sure that you don't).

Those who have the good fortune to be in other countries during these two exciting weeks can watch all the Olympics live anytime they want, just by turning on their TVs or going online (lucky them!).  And if you're willing to do a bit of technical work, you can do the same.

Sites like this Canadian one stream video of the Olympics live.  Unfortunately, you can't just go to these sites and watch using your local US Internet connection, because NBC's friends have blocked access from US ISPs.  What you can do, however, is access the Canadian site from a Canadian ISP, using a virtual private network.

What is a Virtual Private Network? In this case, it is a virtual connection that routes your entire Internet session through a server somewhere else in the world--allowing you to watch, say, Canadian Olympics broadcasts that are available to people in Canada. And it's perfect for watching the Olympics live, when NBC is refusing to show them to you.

Setting up a VPN

requires some technical work, and you might have to pay a modest amount for it.  But if you're a frustrated sports fan, it's a great way to take matters into your own hands.

Guide to 2010 Winter Olympics Online

The 2010 Winter Olympics kick off in Vancouver tonight, and for those of you who can’t be tied to your TV every night to watch the opening and closing ceremonies and competitions, here’s a compilation of sites where you can not only watch video highlights of the events but also see pictures, scores, medal counts and news from the Olympics:

1. NBC Olympics:NBC, which is covering the Olympics on TV, has also set up a site where you can catch the latest scores, news and select video coverage of the competitions (powered by Microsoft Silverlight). You can also see profiles of athletes and streams of Tweets from athletes on the U.S. Olympic teams. Unfortunately, it appears that NBC is severely limiting the streaming of competitions and the ceremonies to the general public, so video will most probably be comprised of short highlights.

2. Vancouver 2010: Sponsored by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the games, this site offers schedule of events, up-to-date results and maps of the various event sites in Vancouver.

3. Google: Google has optimized its mobile search to provide better results for Olympics searches. On Google’s mobile search interface, you can search for the name of your favorite sport, and the engine will give you the latest info about game results, schedules, medal count and more. On Android and iPhone devices, the search engine’s real time search feature will show you the latest updates related to the games within the same search results.

4. Twitter: For real-time updates from the athletes, Twitter has complied a list of verified Olympic athletes. A site called Twitter-Athletes also provides the handles of many of the Olympians at the winter games.

5. Facebook: On Facebook, there is a dedicated page for the Vancouver Games from the Organizing Committee as well as a page from the International Olympics Committee, which will collects Facebook updates from athletes and post up-to-date photos from the various events.

6. Flickr: Flickr has teamed up the International Olympic Committee to create an official photo group on the photo sharing site. The IOC will also use the Flickr group to publish its official event photos, as well as upload images to its own Flickr photo stream.

7. Yahoo Sports: Yahoo Sports has launched a Winter Olympics site that will offer news coverage, photos, videos, medal counts and statistics. This week, Yahoo announced that it has also optimized its search engine for Winter Olympics news and stats.

8. Yahoo Mobile:  Yahoo has also rolled out a mobile web site to allow users to news, event schedules, stats and pictures on the go.

9. iPhone Apps: Apple has recommended several iPhone apps to help you keep up with news, schedules and more, including NBC’s official Olympics App, Canadian TV channel CTV’s Olympics App, push notifications-enabled Vancouver Games, and  Olympic Games news aggregatror Winter Games Grub.

Soccer TV Coverage Soon To Get Tracking Technology

Last week ESPN experimented with some new tracking and statistics technology during their coverage of the MLS Cup.  The system gives the viewers new insight on player movement throughout the game.  Stats like distance traveled, speed, and player spacing can all be easily delivered to the home audience. 

With soccer finally gaining more momentum as a spectator sport in the US it seems ESPN is ready to capitalize on their coverage of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.  It will be interesting to see how this affects viewership and how it could be implemented as a quantitative tool for player evaluation.

For the full story see Sports Business Daily

MLBAM Averaged 350,000 Live, Paid Video Streams Per First-Round Game

As baseball gears up for round two of the 2009 playoffs—the Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Dodgers take the field tonight—we have the first peek at some stats you won’t see in box scores. Major League Baseball Advanced Media served an average of 350,000 live streams during each game in the first round of the 2009 baseball playoffs through its Postseason.TV subscription. The video split: 314,000 streams via PCs on MLB.com and 36,000 to iPhone/iTouch devices via the MLB At Bat app.

With other multi-round events like March Madness or the more recent U.S. Open, live streaming is usually at its highest in the early rounds. Baseball might be a different story, though, particularly if the series are really tight—not sweeps like three of the four division match-ups—and especially if the New York Yankees make it past the Los Angeles Angels. There’s no way to tell how high the usage might be if AT&T’s 3G service had better, more consistent coverage.  I'm just saying....

Sports Technologies We Love and Sometimes Take For Granted - Instant Replay

Major League Baseball took its first, hesitant step into the 21st century last season by implementing instant replay on home run calls. Unbelievably, a sport that features advanced cyborg technology such as Barry Bonds had previously refused to implement a simple video replay system to determine whether home runs were called correctly. Safe and out calls on the base paths are still subject to flawed human umpires.

Luckily, the NFL implemented replay years ago, preventing many (though not all) football games from being marred by referee error. Perhaps the best replay system belongs to professional tennis, where player challenges can be resolved accurately and within seconds. If tennis replay existed in the 1980s, even a malcontent like John McEnroe would have been a perfect gentleman and never complained during matches. (OK, that last part is just wishful thinking.)

Thanks To US Open.org Tennis Fans Were Able To Watch Saturday Night's Great Match

No way was CBS going to pre-empt its Saturday evening line-up to show tennis--tennis!--so it cut away from the Andy Roddick - John Isner match as scheduled Saturday night at 6pm.

So everyone turned to ESPN 2, which has been showing the matches all week.

No joy.

ESPN 2 didn't have the US Open TV rights last night.  The Tennis Channel did.  (As if this should be your problem to figure out).

But The Tennis Channel is a pay channel.  And thanks to some infuriating greed-dispute, it's not available in Cablevision households.  Which meant that, as the Roddick-Isner match progressed toward a thrilling primetime conclusion, it was basically off the air for Cablevision tennis fans.

Thankfully, the future of TV has arrived.  The US Open has maintained the rights to show a live feed of most matches direct from the U.S. Open.org site.  So tennis fans could just flip open their laptops, circumvent the byzantine rights system that often prevents them from watching the most exciting moments of major tournaments (or shows them on tape delay, when the results are already known), and watch the end of the Roddick-Isner match with no help from their cable company, the Tennis Channel, ESPN, or CBS.

When will the day come that TV viewers can finally forget about the idiotic "channel" and "network" and local-monopoly system and just watch what they want to watch when they want to watch it?  Unfortunately, with the TV industry doing everything it can to protect the lucrative status quo, the transition to full Internet-based delivery will still likely be years. 

Isn't it about time to create new business models 

Hologram Technology From ESPN - It's Just Like Being There

ESPN is working on virtual set technology that allows anchors or players in distant locations to appear as holograms on-screen. The cable sports giant plans to start using the technology on-air in the spring.  This is actually pretty cool, check out ESPN's hologram technology here.

To demonstrate the virtual technology at a media briefing, ESPN assembled longtime anchor Chris Berman and EVP of technology Chuck Pagano in a conference room, seated some eight feet apart, with a series of large HD displays behind them. Then longtime anchor Bob Ley magically appeared, seated on a chair between them, in hologram form on the TV screens.

Ley's virtual appearance onscreen was remarkably realistic, without the significant image blurring seen in previous versions of hologram technology, such as what CNN used on Election Night last fall.

I imagine there will be a number of interesting applications such as allowing ESPN to bring images of players directly into the studio for analysis or interviews.

Sports Technologies We Love - Streaming Internet Video

Let's say you're a Boston Celtics fan who lives in Scotland. Or a Celtic Football Club fan who lives in Boston. (It's a Scottish soccer team, trust me.) Twenty years ago, watching all the games would have been a near-impossibility. But now, with league- and team-sponsored video services, fans can catch live, high-quality game feeds no matter where they live, with an Internet connection and a fast enough computer.

Sports Technologies We Love - High Tech Stadiums

Sure, old-time ballparks like Fenway Park and Wrigley Field have their charm, and even my beloved Veterans Stadium had it's own unique characteristics that only a Philly fan could love, but fans today are being treated to some really cool, interactive technology at state-of-the-art arenas such as the new Yankee Stadium and Cowboys Stadium. Both facilities make use of Cisco's StadiumVision, which allows fans to interact with the event experience by taping and accessing instant replays on a handheld device and sharing it with other participants, or with anyone on the Internet.  The Cowboys stadium also features the world's largest HDTV and 3,000 HD displays featuring customized game footage and real-time information.

Now only if they would do something about the parking.....