sport

New software could create computerized sportscasters

Could a computer replace this era's crop of clownish sportscasters like Dick Vitale or Lee Corso? We can dream--while a Swiss company works on software that could create artificial intelligence systems to call sporting events.

Computer researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland are working on a system that can track multiple athletes on a football field, a basketball court, or a soccer pitch via multiple cameras and advanced scanning algorithms. These days, computers can track human athletes, racing cars, and other sporting elements via GPS. But that's illegal in many sports as the introduction of such technology threatens to overpower the human element of athletics. The EPFL technology uses visual cues instead. … Read more

The circus comes to town

The CBS Sports College Football crew is the best in the biz.

Verne Lundquist, Gary Danielson, Tracy Wolfson, Coordinating Producer Craig Silver, and Director Steve Milton and the troop of dedicated professionals at CBS Sports make it look easy. It's not. It takes technology, teamwork, and talent. Our team is on the road through the Southeastern Conference all fall, bringing the excitement of college football and the Saturday tradition to living rooms across America. "It's really like the circus," says Silver. "We roll our trucks into town. Set up for a few days, do the … Read more

Lexus gives its GS sedan an 'F' in performance

LAS VEGAS--A letter F on a report card is usually a bad thing. However, when Lexus slaps an F-badge on the back of one of its vehicles, you should know that the automaker means fast and not fail.

Actually, the F stands for finesse, but let's not split hairs. The GS 350 sedan with F Sport package that Lexus debuted at the 2011 SEMA Show is no mere appearance upgrade, it should also be faster than the standard model.

However, the extra performance comes in the form of suspension, aerodynamic, and chassis upgrades, as the GS 350's 3.… Read more

NBA slaps Heat owner with $500,000 tweeting fine

Today, on El Dia De Los Muertos, the NBA season should have enjoyed its annual rebirth.

Instead, the corpulently wealthy types known as owners are battling with the lengthily wealthy types known as players for an extra slice of, well, cash, leaving fans gameless.

Not all owners support the stance of NBA Commissioner David Stern. Revealing this on Twitter has cost one owner $500,000, believed to be the biggest tweeting fine in history.

This weekend, Micky Arison, he who brought LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh into his Miami Heat franchise, turned to Twitter to explain, with consummate … Read more

Siri on older iPhones; Apple not listening

Siri may be most at home on the brand new iPhone 4S, but she's up for a little adventure and willing to explore other iOS devices--if you're willing to port her over, at least.

Since the new iPhone and its integrated voice assistant were introduced two weeks ago, there's been talk about getting it up and running on other iOS gadgets, including the iPad and of course, the plain old vanilla iPhone 4.

At first it wasn't looking too good, based on early experiments attempting the portage using an iPod Touch and the Gold Master build of iOS 5. A few of the Apple hacker genius-types out there appealed for patience--just wait until we actually get our hands on the new iPhone, they told us.

They were right, kind of.… Read more

The 404 924: Where we open the pod bay doors (podcast)

iOS 5 reviews are coming in from around the Web, but the Siri voice control application is grabbing everyone's attention with a clever answer to nearly any question you throw at it.

Apparently it'll tell you everything from where to hide a body to how to secure paid company for the night, and explain the meaning of life. Strangely, it seems the only thing it won't do is call the police. Siri needs to get her priorities straight!

Today's 404 features CNET's Scott Stein and Bridget Carey; read on for the news highlights.… Read more

Scott McNealy's startup: Hash tags, polls on steroids

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif.--Everyone wants to know what groups of people--large and small--are thinking in real time. But there has never really been a good way to figure it out.

That's the proposition behind the new startup from former Sun CEO Scott McNealy, called Wayin, which thinks it has the answer.

Wayin, which launched last night, is a system that aims to give people a way to share their thoughts about things--be it a question related to a live baseball game, a political debate, or the passing of a tech titan--in real time. Essentially, said McNealy at a … Read more

Hard Candy bet on iPhone 5 goes south

There you go; there's no iPhone 5, at least not yet. For most of us, this is a typical case of much ado about nothing, a huge hype followed by a letdown. For Tim Hickman, the CEO of Hard Candy Cases, it's also a business gamble that didn't work out. The company sent out an embargoed press release to the press a couple of days ago about its new cases for the iPhone 5, information that was leaked earlier today by the Cult of Mac.

It turned out Hard Candy wasn't sure that there would be an iPhone 5, nor did it know the actual design of the product. Just a few minutes ago, like the rest of us, Hickman was watching the live event from his home, but with much greater trepidation...… Read more

Create personalized news feeds with ChannelCaster

ChannelCaster for Android lets users create and publish personalized "channels" that aggregate news from thousands of supported news sources. In addition to all of the expected big-name publications and blogs, ChannelCaster can pull feeds from Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter. Its design is clean and visually appealing with its sharp, vibrant thumbnails, and its navigation is incredibly simple with only three main tabs along the top of the app.

The Favorites tab is really the heart of the ChannelCaster experience. This is where you save your most frequently visited channels, and presumably where you'll spend most of … Read more

NFL Sunday Ticket on PS3: Second take

On opening weekend of the NFL season, I gave NFL Sunday Ticket To Go, DirecTV's NFL game-streaming service, a spin on the PlayStation 3. Or, at least, I tried to: service outages for Sunday Ticket To Go plagued everyone and killed the excitement of NFL game-watching on a console.

Two weeks later (I was tailgating at the Jets-Jaguars game last week), I returned to my first-gen PS3 to give the service a second go. Thankfully, this time it worked as well as advertised.

Sunday Ticket on the PS3 acts and works nearly identically to how it functions on devices like the iPad. After entering login information and waiting several seconds, a dashboard of all the available Sunday games appears for browsing, optimized for use with the PS3 controller (stats and standings can be browsed with the left/right shoulder buttons, but if you use a PS3 Bluetooth remote you'll need to fumble for the equivalent "L2/R2" button). Sunday Ticket starts you off on the Red Zone Channel, which cuts to the most interesting action among all games. From there, clicking on the others will load the appropriate game, after a delay of 10 seconds or so. … Read more