sports

Turn iPhone into wide-angle action sports camera

There's a more secure way to capture your skateboarding and mountain biking exploits than by duct taping your iPhone to the top of your helmet.

Optrix, a company that once ran over one of its own cases with a very large Dodge truck, has now taken on the task of protecting your iPhone during extreme sports activities.… Read more

Can an algorithm win your fantasy football league?

Human judgment hasn't done much for human development over the last, say, 50 years.

This has allowed machines to take over and begin to dictate.

You'd think that there might be limits. You'd think that politicians were selfless.

The latest machine creation which tries to squeeze the human mind and reduce it to a grape pip is Artificial Intelligence software that picks the perfect fantasy football team.

This is the brainbaby of three academics from the University of Southampton in England.

Lecturer in Computer Science Sarvapali Ramchurn, student Tim Matthews, and visiting researcher and George Chalkiadakis have … Read more

NBC Olympics to stream games live on mobile devices

NBC Sports and Adobe Systems have teamed up to give fans two apps that stream the Olympics live on mobile devices, record footage for playback, and share the experience through social media.

The apps -- a live-streaming app for the more than 3,500 hours of content, and a companion app loaded with additional content launched today. The apps are now available for the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch via Apple's App Store, and select Android handset and tablet devices within Google Play. (For Apple users, the apps seems a bit hard to find in iTunes. Get them here and … Read more

Baseball fan updating Facebook gets smacked by foul ball

Priorities have changed over the last few years.

There was a time when you went to a baseball game, you bought beer and a hot dog and you watched the game, while chatting to your friends.

These days, though, there are higher demands to fulfill. You have to take photographs and share them with everyone. You have to pull out your iPad, so that you can have your own personal view of the stats and Bar Refaeli's latest modeling assignments.

You also have to pull out your phone and log onto Facebook.

This may, however, involve you in not paying attention to the game. So much so that, as occurred to San Diego Padres fan (or perhaps mere visitor to the stadium) Travis Decker, you get smacked in the shoulder by a foul ball. … Read more

Finally: Goal-line tech for English Premier League, World Cup?

There's a retrograde little sports event happening in England this week called Wimbledon.

The organizers still force players to wear predominantly white clothing. Yes, even on the practice courts.

And yet, way back in 1980, Wimbledon began employing Cyclops technology to make service line calls.

Meanwhile, soccer (or football, as most of the world knows it) contented itself with sad little men carrying flags, often somehow blind to balls crossing the goal line.

But that perhaps will soon be no more. For the BBC reports that the International Football Association Board has finally decided that it should experiment with goal-line technology, starting in December at the slightly insignificant FIFA Club World Cup (not to be confused with the World Cup).… Read more

Best waterproof rugged cameras and camcorders compared

The number of waterproof rugged cameras has exploded over the past few years. The segment was basically owned by Pentax and Olympus, but now all of the major compact camera manufacturers have a rugged model, if not two or three.

The upside to that is there is something for just about everyone at various price points, starting at just more than $100. The more money you spend, the tougher the camera, though, so make sure you get something that meets your needs.

And if you're more interested in shooting video than photos, check out the two minicamcorders that follow the camera list. … Read more

Skateboard down stairs with the Stair Rover

How do you go down a flight of stairs on a skateboard? Those with sufficient skill can usually grind down the supporting handrail like a champ, for one, while people such as myself tumble down wildly hoping not to break any bones.

Designer Po-Chih Lai's Stair Rover could alter the way skateboarders tackle the stair challenge.

Lai, a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, also refers to his creation as a stairboard. The device lets the user ride down stairs by tapping the unique balancing act found in the eight wheels and specifically designed set of aluminum Y-frames at each end of the board. … Read more

Red Sox pitcher's millions gone after gaming firm collapses

Sometimes, professional athletes aren't always as good (or lucky) in the real world as they are on the field, the court, or the course.

Some estimate that between 60 percent and 80 percent of NBA and NFL players go bankrupt within 5 years of retirement.

Famous names such as Allen Iverson and Mark Brunell have experienced huge financial woes.

Now former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling says he's "tapped out" after the demise of his video game company, 38 Studios.

ESPN reports that Schilling told WEEI-FM in Boston that "the money I saved during … Read more

Missile tracking cameras: The NBA's Moneyball data mine

It's clear that we are moving into a faintly disturbing period of human history. Thanks to technology, everyone is following us around. Thanks to Facebook, we're following everyone else around.

However, when it comes to the NBA, which tonight might enjoy the last game of its season, surveillance has reached a fascinating extreme.

For, thanks to cameras first developed to track missiles, each NBA player can now have his moves recorded 25 times per second. The system, from a company called STATS, is known as SportVU, which does not, I believe, stand for Sport Voyeurs United.

But perhaps … Read more