Live stats overlay a game streamed to the NBA League Pass mobile app.
(Credit: NBA)Not about to be outdone by baseball, pro basketball is getting in on live streaming to mobile phones.
The National Basketball Association will announce its first set of applications that let fans watch games live on a mobile device Thursday. NBA League Pass Mobile will be available for download for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android phones starting Friday, the third day of the league's regular season. BlackBerry users will have to wait a bit longer, the league saying that application will arrive "by the end of the year."
The NBA follows Major League Baseball, which introduced its iPhone- and iPod Touch-compatible live streaming application in July, and a beta version of an Android app Wednesday.
The NBA's application will cost $39.99 and let users watch up to 40 live games per week via their smartphone, though local TV blackout rules will still apply. The app also has an option to watch some games on demand for up to two days later and comes with game alerts and live stats.
Currently there is not added benefit if customers are already subcribers to the NBA's League Pass TV package. But bundling the two is something the league is looking at for the future, said Bryan Perez, senior vice president and general manager of NBA Digital.
Besides the live streaming app, the NBA already has its Game Time and Game Time Lite apps on Apple's App Store, the Android Market, and BlackBerry App World. The Lite version is free and comes with scores, stats, standings, and team schedules. The $9.99 Game Time includes some on-demand video, game highlights, live game alerts, stats, and access to an NBA Twitter feed.
Perez said the league has made an aggressive push into mobile this year, mostly because it knows who its fans are.
"We have one of the younger demographics of the major sports leagues," he said. "As we look to the future of our fan base, they're consuming content in a much different way, and in many ways the mobile phone is the connection to the world for the youth market. If we want to cultivate fans and be innovative, we need to follow our fans where they're going."
More screenshots after the jump.... Read more
MLB debuts its Android app for Game 1 of the World Series.
(Credit: MLB)Alex Rodriguez won't be the only big baseball name making its World Series debut Wednesday night.
When the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies take the field for the first game of the World Series, Major League Baseball will also introduce its popular At Bat mobile application for Android phones.
Previously only available for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch, the application can be downloaded from MLB.com's mobile site but not the Android Marketplace, since the league is still testing the app in advance of next season. For that reason, the Android version will be free.
At Bat for Android delivers live scoreboards, box scores, and pitch-by-pitch or play-by-play updates, along with updated video highlight reels. The big difference between the free beta Android version the full paid version now for iPhone is that there's no option for live streaming video. There will, however, be live streaming audio for the remainder of the baseball postseason.
MLB says for now it's testing the waters, and it doesn't mean there will definitely be an Android app for next season.
"We were intrigued by the adoption of Android and the recent announcements by carriers releasing devices in the coming weeks and months, and we wanted to take this opportunity during World Series" to test it out, said Adam Ritter, vice president of wireless at MLB Advanced Media. "The beta Android app will give us the feedback we need from a product and technical perspective to see what's possible for next season."
It's been a big day for Android, Google's free Linux-based mobile operating system, and MLB's embrace of the OS shows its technology savvy. While iPhone and iPod Touch sales have exploded, Android is also gaining momentum, as seen with Wednesday's high-profile launch of the Motorola Droid series. There are at least 10 Android phones available now or within the next week, and at least 10 more rumored models on the way for the holidays or next year.
MLB At Bat 2009 and MLB At Bat Lite (the free version) is currently on 1.2 million devices, according to MLB.
Going to be away from your TV and don't have an iPhone or Android phone? Check out a handful of other ways to keep track of every pitch of the series here.
More screenshots of the app after the jump.
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NICT's MSens technology: a practical use for 3D.
(Credit: Scott Ard/CNET)TOKYO--In the exhibition halls of a gadget trade show, the things that normally jump out are the wacky outfits the female booth attendants are forced to wear, the mammoth wall installations of TVs, and long lines for booth swag.
For better or worse, the enduring image of Ceatec 2009 has been the sight of suit-clad men waiting in twisting queues for the chance to don a pair of plastic 3D glasses for a five-minute TV demonstration. There are two reasons for that: because the major TV makers here couldn't miss out on the chance to show their prototype models of this trendy technology, and because there wasn't really much else going on this year.
There isn't yet a final, official count, but this year's show, which started Tuesday and runs through the weekend, so far seems far less crowded than in years past. Attendees could have been kept away by the sluggish economy, or the inclement weather, including a tropical storm that hit Tokyo midweek. Either way, the general vibe at the Makuhari Messe has been much more subdued.
In the past Ceatec has been known as the event where gadgets destined for store shelves showed up en masse, the last stop on the trade show circuit before they're packaged and ready for consumers during the yearly holiday sales period. However, the 2009 edition was shorter on practical products and very low on new stuff.
As at IFA in Berlin last month and at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, 3D was the dominant theme. Panasonic showed its very-close-to-being-ready 3D plasma TV here this week--this time, though, on a 50-inch set, a size that's far more practical than the 103-inch behemoth used at expos earlier this year. The 50-inch model, plus some sizes larger than that, will be unveiled along with pricing and shipping information at CES in January 2010. Sony is also readying its first 3D TV for the home, which is set to ship sometime next year, though the company wasn't specific about exactly when.
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Cute mascot madness at Ceatec 2009.
(Credit: Scott Ard/CNET)CHIBA, Japan--It wouldn't be a Japanese gadget show without overly cutesy mascots or robots would it?
This year's show did not disappoint in that respect. We also caught a glimpse of giant TVs, a gold-encrusted desktop PC, and a seriously gross/awesome 3D surgery demo. Hit the photos below for more.
(Credit:
Erica Ogg/CNET)
CHIBA, Japan--What do President Obama, robots, comic book characters, and solar power have in common?
Not much. However, they were all spotted (in some form or another anyway) at Ceatec 2009, Japan's largest consumer electronics show taking place here this week.
Click the slides below for views from the second day of the expo.
Kohjinsha's transforming dual-display notebook.
(Credit: Scott Ard/CNET)CHIBA, Japan--This otherwise run-of-the-mill laptop from local PC purveyor Kohjinsha has not one, but two widescreen displays.
One of the 10.1-inch screens actually slides behind the other, so it's able to be closed like a normal laptop. When they slideout they form an admittedly odd-looking, but useful dual display setup.
Also inside the laptop: a 1.6 Ghz AMD Athlon Neo-MV40, 4GB of memory, Bluetooth, a TV tuner, and a biometric fingerprint reader. The OS will be Windows 7 Home Premium, graphics are DirectX 10 compatible, and the whole thing weighs about 4 pounds. More photos of the sliding screens in action after the jump.... Read more
CHIBA, Japan--Want to request a song from a creepy childlike automaton? There's an app for that.
At Ceatec 2009, Yamaha showed off its prototype HRP-4C robot, which can show a range of motions, strut down a catwalk, and now belt out tunes from a preselected list.
During the demonstration Tuesday, audience members were encouraged to use their iPhones to request one of six songs from the raven-haired robot, decked out in futuristic stormtrooper gear. The winning track is titled "Give Me Wings."
The HRP-4C was featured as part of Yamaha's Play IT initiative, which explores ways to incorporate music and information technology to teach and learn musical instruments. Check out the short clip of her performance below.
The NetWalker is part Netbook, part ultramobile PC.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET)CHIBA, Japan--The Sharp NetWalker comes off like a computer with an identity crisis.
It's part Asus Eee PC Netbook and part Samsung Q1 ultramobile PC.
And it's a little bit puzzling.
The NetWalker is dressed up like a super-petite Netbook, weighing less than a pound, with a five-inch touchscreen and a measly 512MB of memory and wireless LAN.
It's got a pretty robust battery life--up to 10 hours, according to Sharp--and runs Ubuntu. There's a Firefox browser, Thunderbird for e-mail, a Twitter app, and some open-source programs for word processing and reviewing spreadsheets, so you can perform some normal PC functions on a screen larger than an iPhone or BlackBerry, but smaller than the increasingly standard 10-inch Netbook display.
The way you use it, though, is more like an ultramobile PC. Holding the NetWalker with two hands, you type with your thumbs. On the right side above the keyboard is an optical pointer that, when you run a finger over it, functions as a mouse.
The price is a more Netbook-like $500, but it's unclear how consumers will respond. It's only been available here in Japan for a couple weeks, so there aren't any solid sales numbers yet to offer any picture of how customers are reacting.
Still, history shows that just hovering somewhere in between two established categories of computing can be an easy way to turn off a lot of potential buyers.
Sony's flexible OLED-based Vaio notebook--not coming to a store near you.
(Credit: Scott Ard/CNET)CHIBA, Japan--Perhaps to distract from the fact that it has no organic light-emitting diode TV on display here at Ceatec 2009, Sony is instead showing off conceptual uses for its flexible OLED technology.
Mind you, these are just prototypes, nothing even close to a real product, like the XEL-1 TV that Sony actually sells but is notably absent from its booth here. But the ways the company is thinking of perhaps using its flexible display tech are certainly cool.
Take the dual OLED screen Vaio notebook. It features the 0.2 mm OLED on both the screen and keyboard area. It's not a functioning prototype, though, so it doesn't do much besides sit in a plexiglass case and look pretty.
Also showcased here is the company's e-book Reader with an OLED screen and a futuristic update of the time-worn Walkman brand, in which the audio player takes the form of a wearable wrist device.
As cool as those are, they're just concepts. And none of them can make us forget that Sony was once the leader in commercializing OLED TVs and now seems content to let LG and Samsung take charge.
Vaio with flexible OLED screen.
(Credit: Scott Ard/CNET)
The Sony Reader and Walkman redone with flexible OLED technology.
(Credit: Scott Ard/CNET)
The winning design, titled 'Gesture.'
(Credit: Scott Ard/CNET)CHIBA, Japan--Out of 2,000 design concepts for mobile phones of the future, the winning entry in Fujitsu's Mobile Phone Design competition was not the flashiest or most forward-thinking. Instead, the grand prize was awarded to one that featured the most intuitive interface for users. What a concept.
Jin-Gwon Go, a South Korean college student studying design won the equivalent of about $20,000 for his mobile phone concept titled "Gesture." Of all the finalists, Go's design was probably the one that took the form of what most people would expect of a mobile phone. Fujitsu said his design stood out because of the gesture-based commands and touchable icons used to operate the phone using only one hand.
Back in May, Fujitsu asked for some input on phone design from anyone who was interested. Roughly 2,000 submissions and four months later, the company unveiled nine finalists on Tuesday here at Ceatec 2009, including Go's Gesture.
Ceatec is a treasure trove of mobile phone design, thanks to the sophisticated cell phone culture here in Japan. Tuesday is the first day of the show, so be sure to check back throughout the week for more. And for the rest of the finalists, click on the gallery above.
