Wireless Wednesday for 8/11/15: Tablet Computers Invade Sports

Rick has been using an iPad for almost 5 years now. The iPad has become more powerful and easier to use. And there is an "app for everything"

It's taken a few years, but the world of sports has taken to tablet computers in a big way.

Rick and Mitch talk about tablets in sports...

and part 2 with the app of the week!

1.   The NFL and their Agreement with Microsoft and the Surface Pro 3

Microsoft’s five-year, $400 million deal with the NFL is finally going to start paying tangible dividends for fans, and not simply put the company’s Surface tablets in the hands of players and coaches on the sideline.

Every NFL player will have a motion-tracking chip in his uniform this season, and the data will be collected to create (almost) real-time replays that go above and beyond anything previously offered during television broadcasts.

***The basics: three to seven minutes after a particular play, the field position and vector data for every player on the field will be available in replay form. (Not every play, but you know, the ones you want to watch again.) In other words, you’ll be able to view the Xs and Os version of a play with the actual speed of every player on the field, as well as some additional graphical elements to highlight specific players or data points. The actual view will look like the screenshot below, with Microsoft’s graphics in the main frame, game video on the top right, and player data filling out the sidebar. …

 

2.  iPads and Women's Tennis and the WTA Tour

Coaches can bring iPads on the court to show players their stats.

The women’s tour is experimenting with on-court coaching rules that already allow players to call a coach to the sideline once per set for a 90-second, mic’d-up pep talk that is broadcast to television viewers. At the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford this week, coaches can also bring along an iPad loaded up with data.

The tablet has software designed by SAP, the tour’s technology partner since 2013, that collects live data from matches.

There are standard tennis stats, like aces and first-serve percentage, fed to the devices from the chair umpire’s electronic scoring system. For matches played on courts with Hawk-Eye, the line-calling technology used to challenge calls, there is much more, including graphics that display court positioning for each shot, where serves land and other player tendencies. A coach might zero in on specific points—for example, every time the score was 40-15—to show that a player didn’t play from an aggressive position.
 

3.  Smaller College Football Programs - Players Using iPads Too

Case in Point: South Alabama Football

South Alabama's football program is making greater use of the cloud this fall, in hopes that it'll help them bring the thunder on the field. So, it's not just the big programs that are using tablet technology.

The Jaguars this fall are taking advantage of new technology from XOS Digital called ThunderCloud that will allow coaches and players to have access to practice and game film on their iPads or other personal devices and watch them at home.
 

4. iPad helps with concussions in sports

Let's look at the tablet's ability to help assess concussions, a previously difficult task that relied on subjective reporting methods.

St. Edward High School (Cleveland) athletic trainer Jason Cruickshank, who uses the iPad in conjunction with the C3 Logix concussion assessment app to precisely track and monitor symptoms for athletes under his care.

Cruickshank first logs baseline profiles for each student, which are sent to the cloud for storage. When an incident occurs, he runs the same tests and compares the results to the baseline. The information is then displayed in a hexagon-shaped graph that highlights differences in data points like reaction time and balance.

As part of the larger C3 Logix system, the iOS app collects a variety of cognitive player information via the iPad's hardware. For example, the app harnesses on-board accelerometer and gyroscope data for quantitative postural stability and uses the high-resolution multitouch screen to capture an athlete's movement. All processing is done on the iPad.
 

5.  Apple to hold an event on Sept 9 to announce new devices

Apple has plans to announce new devices and applications on Sept 9 and some may revolve around sports...
Like Apple fall events past, this one too will focus on the company’s next-generation iPhones, which are expected to arrive at market with a pressure-sensitive Force Touch display, an improved camera system, and a significantly faster and power-efficient wireless chip. Sources say Apple executives are likely to show off the company’s latest iPads as well, though that 12.9-inch “iPad Pro” seems to be a wildcard, still.
Does this date mean there will be something cool right before the start of football season?
Maybe even a bigger iPad.. .called an iPad Pro, which could have huge implications in sports and video games.
We'll find out.


App of the Week:

Whitepages ID

Free for iOS

Eliminate phone scams.
Whitepages is the leader in North America in protecting consumers against unwanted calls. The company sources 2+ billion contact records a month and their current call protection apps have been downloaded over 30 million times.  

Whitepages ID provides an easy solution to help iOS users detect unwanted calls and avoid being a victim of spam and phone scams. Whitepages’ ability to protect consumers from unwanted calls is backed by robust phone reputation technology and a dedicated team of researchers.  In July, the Whitepages Phone Reputation team tracked 308 million phone numbers and detected 11.3 million calls and texts engaged in spam or fraudulent activities.

“Cell phone users have the right to protect themselves from unwanted calls,” said Alex Algard, founder and CEO of Whitepages. “Starting today, we’re giving Apple users access to our database of over 600 million phone numbers, user-generated feedback on spam, and round-the-clock tracking of new and pre-existing phone scams. It’s all about giving people the necessary information to protect themselves.”
How it works: Whitepages curates a broad list of spam and scam numbers, which gets updated at least twice daily and automatically sent to the user’s address book. When a call is made, Whitepages ID’s up-to-date spam/scam log detects those unsolicited calls and alerts the user in real time.