The NCAA Basketball Tournament is just days away. And now that the teams are ranked and ready to play, we have you covered. Not only can you join our Webware Bracket Challenge, but we've compiled a list of online services that will help you get the most out of the tournament. Whether it's creating brackets, researching players, or just watching the games online, it's all right here.
Stream, stream, stream
CBS (which owns CNET News and the Webware blog) is the television host of all the NCAA men's basketball games this year, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that the company is poised to unveil streaming options for every game in the tournament.
By surfing to CBS' March Madness On Demand page, starting Thursday at 12 p.m. EDT, users will be able to watch every single game on their computers for free.
Bracket it up!
CBS Sports You can join our Webware Bracket on the CBS Sports site. Along with choosing your winners, you can also engage in forum discussions or send e-mails to participants in your group. And if you want to go it alone and try to win cash and prizes by picking the best bracket, you can do that too. Disclosure: We'll say it again. CBS owns both CBS Sports and CNET News.
ESPN ESPN also offers an outstanding bracket service. Much like CBS Sports, ESPN's brackets are open to the public, and users can create their own groups. Picking teams is simple. The service is free, but if you want scouting reports or help with your picks, some ESPN content requires a subscription.
NCAA If you're the type who wants to use the "official" bracket for the NCAA Tournament, you'll need to use the NCAA's bracket service. It's easy to sign up, but I wasn't too pleased with how the bracket picking was implemented, and it was difficult to work my way through the process. But it is one of the best-looking offerings in this roundup.
Yahoo Pick 'Em Yahoo Pick 'Em is, one of the best tournament bracket services. It allows you to quickly choose winners by clicking on a name in the bracket, and regardless of the match-up you create, it provides you with a full look at the teams, including their record, points scored, points allowed, and the "Yahoo Outlook."
Extra goodies
AllBallers If you want to engage in some basic research or find out which teams others are picking for the tournament, AllBallers might be a good place to start. It's a community designed specifically for basketball fanatics and its forums are hopping with discussions on basketball in general and the NCAA Tournament in particular. It's a great resource to find out what others think about teams before you make your own decision.
CollegeHoopsNet CollegeHoopsNet is the best source for everything you ever wanted to know about college basketball. From national player rankings to scores and team evaluations, the site gives you the lowdown on what to expect from teams throughout the entire tournament. And although it's designed specifically for die-hard fans, you shouldn't worry: the articles and player details are so useful and worthwhile that novices won't have any trouble understanding them.
InfiniteHoops Maybe this has little to do with March Madness or the NCAA Tournament, but InfiniteHoops is a unique site that lets you find others in your area who might want to start a pickup basketball game. Users input where they will be playing a game and when, and others who want to play can join the game. It's a great way to connect with people around town when the tournament makes you want to play some hoops.
KlickSports If a simple bracket isn't for you and you want to engage in a head-to-head competition, look no further than KlickSports. The site recently unveiled its College Basketball Championship Challenge game, which will allow you to play one game against another user in each region in the first round and then continue to play one regional game in each round until the tournament ends. Even better, you can play both online and on mobile phones and the top players will win prizes when the tournament is over.
Pickspal Pickspal might look like any other sports news site, but it's actually a great resource for those who want to see some of the best college basketball news stories on the Web. Pickspal searches across the Web for basketball news stories about teams, players, or game results, and makes them available on the site. Although all the news and information is available elsewhere, Pickspal is one of my favorite places to find news, simply because it does all the legwork for me and puts all the top stories in one place for my consumption. It's also a handy tool when trying to figure out which team to pick.
Has all this bracket talk gotten you in the mood to pick your winners? If so, join our Webware Bracket Challenge! Simply sign up for a CBS Sports ID, follow this link, and input the password, webware, into the appropriate field. You'll then be able to pick your winners for this year's bracket.
Pick 'em before it's too late!
(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET Networks)Are you getting ready for the most exciting season in NCAA Basketball? So are we. And that's why we've created a public bracket for Webware writers and readers to create their own brackets and see who stands above the rest as the best March Madness performer in our community.
If you want to sign up and compete, sign up for a free CBS Sports ID, and once complete, follow this link to get to the Webware invite page.
You'll be asked to input a password. Type webware into the password field, and you'll be able to pick your winners. You can modify your picks until Game 1 on Thursday, March 19.
After each round, I'll be writing a quick update post, filling you in on who's winning, and once the tournament is all said and done, we'll announce the winner right here on Webware.
So what are you waiting for? Sign up for CBS Sports, and join our NCAA Bracket. Good luck!
Click here to get to the Webware Bracket Challenge page, and don't forget the password: webware.
If you're a college basketball fan, March clearly holds a special place in your heart. It brings the NCAA tournament (also known as March Madness), along with the occasional bit of that annoying thing called work or school. If you're somehow in a position of being unable to make it to your giant, high-definition television, Joost's got you covered. The software-based video content network is streaming all of the games (with limited commercial interruption) live, as they happen.
The resolutions for the live streams is expected to fall in line with the rest of Joost's programming. This is aided by the fact that the stream is being given a hand by distributed P2P instead of a typical server farm--a system that's prone to fail or slow down without heavy infrastructure investment. Using distributed content serving can help, which is where Joost's P2P technology can show its chops for something other than prerecorded content.
To see how well the new system would handle the load, the company ran a stress test earlier today, utilizing the live user chat hooked up to a video feed from the company's offices. It didn't last too long though, as the streams were discontinued about an hour after their start at 11 a.m. PST.
The move is an important step in differentiating Joost from some Web-based content providers--notably Hulu, which left private beta yesterday and serves up archived television content (just like Joost). With the right participation of content providers, Joost could serve up live television streams (not just this test run with the NCAA) as they happen.
Live video streams will show up in the content source bar in Joost. Seen today are two of the five live feeds used to stress-test the new system.
(Credit: CNET Networks)- NCAA tournament clips on YouTube. Just because Viacom has gone lawsuit-happy with YouTube, that doesn't mean CBS wants to keep its content off Google's video-hosting service. CBS will be adding highlights, press conferences and specials available "immediately" following live TV coverage. YouTube users will also be able to vote on and rank their favorite game clips.
- Google adding search privacy protections. Google will be "anonymizing" search queries connected to your IP address and browser cookies about 18 to 24 months after they were created. Currently, all three pieces of information are grouped together and archived indefinitely. The new policy will be in effect by the end of the year. (CNET News.com)
- The New York Times to provide "reader" service for non-subscribers. The The New York Times reader, a small application that serves up a digital copy of the newspaper's printed version, is rolling out the service to the general public later this month. The The New York Times reader service has been available as a free beta app since September. From now on, the service will be free for paid print subscribers and will cost $14.95 a month for everyone else. (The New York Times)
- SkypePrime and SkypeFind now out of beta. Ether-competitor SkypePrime and social bookmarking tool SkypeFind have left beta and gone into the most recent version of Skype as built-in features. SkypeFind is the more interesting of the two for the casual user, adding a user-built directory right into the service, complete with user reviews like you'd find on Yelp or InsiderPages. (CNET News.com)
- Cisco serves up $3.2 billion to buy WebEx. Cisco Systems is purchasing WebEx, the business communications company. Cisco intends to utilize WebEx's technology to serve small- and medium-size businesses with its hosted collaboration tools, a subject we've ranted about previously. (CNET News.com)
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CNET Networks)
March Madness finds a way into offices, schools, and between friends faster than most of us can imagine. Nearly everybody knows someone who is either running or a part of a betting pool. Download.com has put together a handy set of March Madness software tools to help you create your own pool or keep track of all the data that will be flowing in during the coming weeks. But what about Web services that can do the same thing? We've put together a roundup of some of the handiest services to keep track of all the money you've lost all things basketball.
Note: Webware does not encourage illegal betting. This guide is purely for entertainment purposes.
Facebook. Last year, Facebook put together a really easy way to create and track your bracket with friends in private pools. This year, things are a whole lot better. While there's not a betting element in place, you can easily keep track of who's doing the best, using statistics and rankings. This year Facebook has added a reason to use the service with a $25,000 grand prize for people who predict the entire tournament correctly. There are also cash and Facebook apparel prizes for people who win in the first four rounds.
CBS Sportsline is laying it on thick this year. Not only does it have the Bracket Manager service, which lets you create and share your bracket in a private pool with forums and customized scoring, you also can watch the actual games (first three rounds only) on your computer with the March Madness On Demand viewer.
Pickspal is a really simple bracket site where you can compete for a variety of prizes, including a Mini Cooper. You also can invite friends and manage private pools like you can with Facebook and Sportsline. Its interface is incredibly simple, with clickable team names and a neat faux-hardwood court. [via TechCrunch]
Yahoo's Tournament Pick'em may be one of the oldest bracket services out there, with some pretty simple group management. What separates Yahoo's prize system from some of the others is that it rewards private group leaders and lets you compete in five different groups with a different bracket for each (you also can reuse the same one in all five). Did I mention there's a cash prize of $1 Million dollars?
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