MLB’s online offering has long been the technological leader among U.S. major sports. That’s no surprise given the size and financial power of MLB Advanced Media, but repeated issues with the service across devices this season have made MLB.TV look more like NBA League Pass
     |
Even in their recent state of repair, defensive metrics have always had a certain reverse-engineered, SABR-in-retrograde quality to them, even in a statistically mature sport like baseball. MLB Advanced Media just announced a new system that would slam the door shut on that era.
| |
The World Series is over, and it’s a long three months before Spring Training begins. What’s a baseball fan to do until then? Well, if you’re an Android user, you could pick up Franchise MVP, a new game released by none other than Major League Baseball. MLB’s no stranger to apps, of course, with its popular At Bat programs for iOS and Android, but mobile gaming is relatively new territory. Franchise MVP isn’t like MLB 2K13 though; instead of creating a team, you follow an individual player through his career in the majors. You can play any position on the field and for any MLB team, building skills like batting, pitching and fielding along the way and making key in-field decisions. The game is free to download, but if you want to hurry things along, you can choose to spend real money for in-game currency. So if your favorite team missed out on taking home the Commissioner’s Trophy this year, you can at least console yourself by using Franchise MVP to become the baseball player of your dreams.
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Software, Mobile
Via: Droid Life
Source: Google Play
It’s not just major broadcasters who are willing to take their fight against Aereo to the Supreme Court. The MLB and the NFL have jointly filed an amicus brief supporting the existing court case, arguing that the streaming TV service jeopardizes their licensing deals. Aereo’s ability to offer sports programming at no extra cost undermines the point of exclusive (and very lucrative) broadcasting arrangements, according to the brief. The leagues are prepared to back up their words with deeds — they claim that they’ll have to move their games to cable and satellite channels if Aereo wins. There’s no guarantee that the Supreme Court will sympathize with this supposed plight, but it’s clearer than ever that Aereo faces stiff opposition from the broadcasting industry’s status quo.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD
Via: GigaOM
Source: Variety
There’s been plenty of buzz about iBeacons and Bluetooth Low Energy radios — they’re supposed to do wonders for in-venue positioning, and plenty of companies have already expressed interest in deploying them in the field. But what is it like to actually stroll through a beacon-laden area? Curiously enough, Major League Baseball took on that challenge and recently decided to show off its vision of a Bluetooth-enabled ballpark at Citi Field in Queens, NY.
“What we’re moving toward is building a platform for any team to put their own custom Bluetooth beacons in their parks,” said MLB Mobile Product Dev SVP Chad Evans as he clutched his iPhone outside the venue.
Let’s be clear about something first: Very little about MLB’s big Bluetooth push is final at this point. It almost seemed that, with this experiment, MLB’s tech team was thinking out loud. A handsomely revamped version of the MLB At Bat app is perhaps the furthest along. Evans says the design language of the app, which now features a seemingly Googlean stream of cards that display your ticket barcode and seat locations (among other things) is near final and will roll out to consumers in the coming months. The visual polish of the software was balanced by the unfinished nature of the hardware that made all those whiz-bang features possible. At this stage it’s all prototype gear, small boards lashed together and housed in milky-white plastic cases to protect them from the elements.
With all that said, MLB’s little experiment shows plenty of promise. Walking across the threshold into the park proper prompted a notification on Evans’ demo iPhone welcoming us to the venue. Stopping in front of the old Shea Stadium Home Run Apple and holding that same phone to a demo stanchion kicked off a video that described the Mets’ home for 44 years. Once we passed into the park’s rotunda and paused in front of the escalator, the app recognized us as a first-time visitor and offered us $2 off a Nathan’s hot dog. Eventually, Evans said, the app and those Bluetooth beacons will be able to direct users to the closest route to their seats.
One has to wonder how much further MLB could take this concept. If you could track app users as they bounded from location to location in a ballpark, you could probably develop a pretty granular profile to help target for ads or other engagement opportunities. Repeat visitor to the Mets Team Store? You could get pushed a loyalty discount. Were you spotted making more than a few trips to the bathroom? Maybe you shouldn’t be pushed any more drink specials. Granted, the second example is pretty extreme, but Evans didn’t completely rule out the possibility of more fine-grained location sniffing… if the organization can figure out how to accomplish that sort of thing without creeping out the fans.
Once you start seeing what MLB (and plenty of other organizations like it) can do with iBeacons, it makes sense why Bluetooth Low Energy is suddenly so in vogue. The level of targeting and reach that a smartly assembled array of Bluetooth beacons provides could profoundly change how companies try to interact with us for better or worse. It certainly doesn’t hurt that support for Bluetooth LE is something both Apple and Google have committed to either — iDevices as old as the 4S can take advantage of these features if they’re running iOS 7, and Google confirmed that Bluetooth LE support would be one of the main additions to Android 4.3. That means a huge swath of the devices out there and in the pipeline will be ready to, well, play ball with this newfangled approach to interaction.
Evans admitted that MLB has explored a few other location-based content delivery systems in the past, but solutions like NFC’s stop-and-tap-and-wait approach never reached the level of ubiquity and reliability to make it worth a major rollout. Even platform-agnostic modes of interaction like scanning QR codes and AR applications apparently just weren’t elegant enough to get the job done. But with iBeacons, MLB may have finally found exactly what it’s looking for.
For now, though, the name of the game is fine-tuning. Evans noted these Bluetooth-powered experiences will start rolling out sometime in 2014, but it’ll be some time before the functionality spreads to the rest of the nation’s major league ballparks. After all, there’s a lot to consider when it comes to crafting a smart location-centric experience like the one demoed on that warm September afternoon. Part of the plan, naturally, has to encompass the sorts of content that users are given access to, but there are plenty of technical concerns to tackle, too.
Consider the issue of range, for one. MLB doesn’t want to accidentally trigger a response within the app if you’re too far away from an attraction or a point of interest. Even the materials used in the construction of the park can affect these radios’ reach, so each one has to have its power output and transmission rate tweaked so they can collectively hit the right spots. You can bet that Fenway Park — opened in 1912 and festooned with architectural holdovers from years past — is going to require a significantly different layout of Bluetooth transmitters than my native Citizens Bank Park (go Phils!).
If this sounds like a painstaking process, you’d be right, but Evans is convinced that taking the time to meticulously hone the hardware is well worth it.
“We’re baseball, we’re not a small startup,” Evans conceded. “We want to be nimble and quick and take new opportunities, but we also don’t want to roll something out that’s going to confuse fans.”
Major League Baseball is becoming very iPhone-friendly: it gave iOS 6 users Passbook ticketing this season, and it’s now planning a treat for iOS 7 users. A 2014 update to MLB’s At the Ballpark app will use iOS 7’s iBeacon feature to guide sports fans as they pass by low-power Bluetooth transmitters in the stadium. Enter the ballpark and you’ll get seat directions; visit specific points and you may get coupons or highlight videos. Only the New York Mets are testing the feature at Citi Field, but the league believes that other teams are likely to follow suit.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple
Source: Mashable
We know you’ve likely had your fill of app updates for iOS 7, but bear with us — this one’s likely worth your attention. Major League Baseball has updated the MLB.com At Bat app to both support Apple’s new software and introduce host of postseason-friendly features. Sports fans can now watch live Wild Card games, division playoffs and National League championships from multiple camera angles. The updated app also brings a full suite of postseason info, complete with dedicated news and stat sections. If you’re worried that you’ll miss a crucial game on the road, you’ll want to grab the new At Bat release from the source link.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile
Via: 9to5 Mac
Source: App Store
The boys of summer are about to come home, but that doesn’t make developer Aaron Draczynski’s Google Glass baseball app any less rad. Blue uses geolocation to determine what park you’re at and feeds all manner of ball diamond-data directly into your eye. Whether it’s displaying play-by-play descriptions, who’s on the mound or how fast and what type his last pitch was, sitting in the stands no longer means missing out on the info you’d get from a TV broadcast. While this might seem like it’d be a better tablet or phone app, wearing Glass to a ballgame does have a distinct advantage: it lets you hold more than two $15 beers at a time.
Via: Buzzfeed
Source: Papermodelplane
Are you worried that you won’t get to follow big league baseball from your Lumia 1020 this year? Don’t be: MLB At Bat 13 has just launched for Windows Phone 8. The new release covers familiar ground in a fresher-looking package, letting sports aficionados watch both free and MLB.tv Premium-only live games, pin their favorite teams to the home screen and check Live Tiles for the day’s games. At Bat 13 is free to download, although you’ll have to pay for a Premium account ($25 monthly or $50 yearly) if you want to watch full access to MLB.tv’s game broadcasts and archived footage.
Filed under: Mobile
Via: Windows Phone Blog
Source: Windows Phone Store
Twitter announced Twitter Amplify this morning, the official name of its program to partner with video creators to embed video directly into the company’s social stream. Knowing that a name simply isn’t enough to get our blood pumping, the company also revealed a variety of new content partners to bolster its already strong relationships with the NBA and ESPN: A&E, Bloomberg TV, Major League Baseball, and Warner Music are just a few of the many new partners signed up for Twitter Amplify. And yes, we should all expect more Amplify partner announcements in the coming months, as Twitter’s actively seeking said partnerships. A video is worth a whole lot more than 140 characters, eh?
Filed under: Internet, Software
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Twitter
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
