SOMEWHAT FRANK

Video: Fantasy Football Aggregator

With the NFL football season just getting underway there are lots of fantasy football junkies placing their bets that they have the best team on the Web this year. Keeping track of a fantasy football team can be difficult sometimes due to the distributed nature of the information and tools related to managing your players and teams. Ultimate Football Network, a fantasy football social aggregator product, just launched this week and I got a chance to chat with founder Jonathan Joseph at TechCrunch50 conference.

Check out video episode 45 on SOMEWHAT FRANK (below) as we talk fantasy football.

Filtrbox Does Widgets For Olympic Team USA

With the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic games ready getting underway you might be looking to stay up to speed with the action. Filtrbox, a Boulder, Colorado based TechStars startup and previous TECH cocktail demoer, is looking to help you keep track of all the USA Teams' news by launching a new widget offering. The widget is not just your normal feed widget as it showcases the power of persistent search and noise control to offer up everything it can find about the USA Olympic team. There is lots of stuff from lots of sources ranging from NBC to bloggers point of view and everything in between.

The new widget launched is a desktop widget that runs under Adobe AIR, and a Flash widget for your blog. Both are totally free and easy to install. Check out the Team USA widget as you cheer Team USA on to gold or create your own custom widget based off your filtrs.

SkiSpace: Bode Miller's Skiing Social Network

You may recall Bode Miller, the USA Olympic silver medalist skier and 2008 Alpine Skiing World Cup Champion, apparently he is doing more than just skiing these days as he has teamed with PathConnect to create SkiSpace, a social network for skiers and  snowboarders. SkiSpace, not to be confused with MySpace, launched in December 2007 and offers a place for skiers and snowboards online.

FantasySportsMatrix Launches Into Beta

Are you gearing up for Super Bowl this weekend? Or better yet counting down the days till pitches and catchers report to another MLB Spring Training? I am. FantasySportsMatrix (FSM), a Sunnyvale, California startup, launched into beta today to offer the typical suite of social networking features to create a place for sports fans to interact.

With blogs, wiki's, forums, polls and a host of other types of content I could see sports addicts entering the social media conversation via a site like FSM since it offers a gentle way to introduce the "Average Joe" to wiki's, blogs and other user-generated content. As a sports fan, all I can think of is - Go Cubs!   

ArmchairGM Blends In Social Features

ArmchairGM, a wiki platform devoted to sports, which was acquired by Wikia has decided to go totally social by adding a blend of social networking features. ArmchairGM leveraged a wiki format to form a community but felt it was missing something. 

SportSnipe Aggregates Sports Content

SportSnipe, a San Diego-based startup, recently launched to offer an aggregation of sports content from across the Web. SportSnipe aggregates over 1,360 feeds and looks to be expanding is collection daily. All feeds for NCAA football will are said to be coming soon. SportSnipe is aimed to provide users a way to get all their sports content on a single site. SportSnipe also pulls in video content from about every site that allows a video thumbnails (i.e. MSN, YouTube, Google, Metacafe, etc.).

Brothers and co-founders, Adam and Brandon Eatros, started the site, and plan to include a full user integrated forum, user blogs, user submitted stories, user competitions, an updated design, among many items. 

Currently, SportSnipe has personalized homepage-like qualities which stacks it up with some tough  competition (i.e. myAOL, iGoogle, MyYahoo, etc.) however, SportSnipe plans look to steer towards becoming a platform for the sports conversations (blogs, forums, etc) positioning itself as a Topix-like site for sports lovers.

 

Should Technology Change Sports?

The wonders of technology...  At work, it can make us more efficient and it can even make us seem smarter.  At home, it helps us navigate trips, stay in touch with friends, and opens up an unending mall right on the screen.  On the field, it makes us faster, more precise, or stronger.  Simply stated, technology helps us perform better.

But what happens when the line between man and machine gets blurry?  When does “supplement” become “synthetic”?  We hear often about steroids – and what are they but biotechnology?  And when does it all become obsolete?  A few years ago there were controversial second skin-like swimsuits at the Olympics.  But the Games came and went with the typical tight races and record breakers inherent in any athletic cycle.

An interesting article recently discussed the latest round of controversial sports equipment, training strategies and apparel, and how the incorporation of these new technologies may influence athletics for better or for worse.  There is also a slide-show showcasing what lies ahead or sports technology.

Should technology be allowed to change sports the way it changes business?

Happy Father's Day From Tiger and Nike

Nike launched a moving commercial today both online and on television sending happy Father's Day wishes to Dads everywhere. The advertisement features home video footage of a young Tiger Woods with his father who recently passed. The New York Times reported it as tribute to Tiger's dad.

To view the commercial check out the NikeGolf.com.

Happy Father's Day!

Video iPod Finds a Spot in the MLB Dugout

Major League Baseball has a new addition to its bench - the Apple Video iPod. The Colorado Rockies and few other ball clubs have adopted the use of the Video iPod to watch prepare for baseball games by dissecting player swings and pitcher mechanics.

According to a report by CNN.com, Brian Jones the Rockies assistant video coordinator came up with the idea and had this to say:

"It wasn't like we invented the wheel. We're using Apple's technology as best we can. We figured if you can watch music videos by rock 'n' roll and by country, why can't you watch at-bats by San Francisco and pitches by Jason Schmidt?"

As a former baseball player who used to have my at bats video taped to become more mechanically sound, I think this is an excellent usage of new technology. It could help a player be better prepared and sometimes thats all you need to have an edge. As Brian Jones stated, watching game tape is really not a new concept but it is a new handheld usage that makes it unique.

ArmChairGM For Sports Your Way

With the MLB baseball season in full swing, World Cup soccer kicking into gear and the NBA Finals heating up I think it is appropriate to shed some light on ArmChairGM, a sport resource site that any sports fan can edit.

ArmChairGM a wiki solution aimed at the sports lover and appears to be built on customized and AJAX enhanced version of MediaWiki, the same wiki software, which powers the popular Wikipedia and it's sister site Wikia. However, ArmChairGM takes interactivity a step further by also incorporated voting similar to Digg and comments which mirror blog comments to each piece of content.

According to co-founder Aaron Wright:

"ArmchairGM is a decentralized bliki - a blog and wiki combined with non-hierarchical editorial control (think Digg).  We give passionate sports fans the ability to write blog entries or news articles, which are given depth by linking to our growing sports wiki, and have the results sorted democratically by other users."

If you are a sports enthusiast or if you just want to find out more about how it works be sure to check out this step-by-step ArmChairGM tutorial - and let the games begin!

Google Powers Nike Soccer Community Site

Google has teamed up with Nike to create an online community for soccer (football) players called Joga. According to the site:

"Joga is an online community created by Google and Nike for anyone anywhere in the world who shares a love for soccer, the world's most popular sport."

This sounds like an online community social networking site. Google has some experience with Okrut but is not known for teaming with anyone to create community sites so that makes Joga's launch a little more intriguing.

Is Google getting into the business of building community web sites?

I would not be surprised if these types of Google powered online communities continue to pop up. Google has the technology and the online presence to generate buzz with anything they put out. Not to mention, Nike - just did it.

For additional blogosphere perspective check out these posts on Inside Google, Micro Persuasion and Google Blogoscoped.

UPDATE: The official Google Blog now has a post about Joga.

NCAA Basketball to Go on iTunes

CBS has teamed with iTunes to offer downloads of the NCAA basketball tournament games in a condensed version for $1.99 a game or $19.99 for the entire 63 game tournament. I think that there are going to be some of the March Madness tournament obsessed who will love this offering. Personally though, I will probably not be interested in downloading the games. I have filled out my NCAA tournament bracket though via Yahoo's Tournament Pick'em. I know Duke has had a rough last couple of weeks but I picked them to win the tourney, we will see if it happens.

Who did you pick?
 

TeamSportsBars.com Ning App Is Born

I recently created a new site called TeamSportsBars.com using the Ning platform. The site was a result of a Thanksgiving break lunch conversation between my family  and some out of town visitors (which happened to be my girlfriend's family). This question came up:

"Where can you watch and cheer for the Florida State Seminoles while visiting Chicago?"

Being a resident of Chicago, I knew that Kincade's in the heart of Lincoln Park was the place to go for the big game to cheer on Florida State but visitors from other areas may not know where to go. After a group discussion the idea of creating a site that list all of the cities and the sports bars with the sports team they are affiliate with. I felt this was a good idea but a very labor intensive data entry project therefore I took the idea a step further blending Web 2.0 features thus empowering the sites visitors.

TeamSportsBars.com is a site where the online sports fan community can help by contributing team sports bars that they know of in their local area. The goal is to collect as many team sports bars as possible so that the next time you are visiting another city and the big game is on, you can find a place to cheer on your team with fans of the same team.

I chose to use Ning because I wanted to become more familiar with the platform and I was curious to see how easy it was to use after reading Michael Arrington’s post on Ning here, not to mention I highlighted Ning back in October 2005 on Somewhat Frank. I wanted to leverage the Google Maps API as well thus creating a mashup application plotting the team sports bars (i.e. HousingMaps.com).

In developing with Ning, I must admit my knowledge of PHP was essential since the templates that are given to you with a basic roll-out consist of PHP code so I am looking forward to the improvements that Michael Arrington recently reported were in the project pipeline for Ning.

When I ran into questions or Ning issues, Yoz Grahame, Ning Developer Advocate was a huge help with sorting them out. For example, some of my friends who I initially showed TeamSportsBars.com to were unable to get to the site. We think we traced it back to the browser they were using since HTTP cookies and JavaScript are necessary to view the Google Maps on the page. So if you are having issues getting to the site I apologize, I am still trying to work out some of the wrinkles with the help of Yoz and Ning.

Please visit the site, sign up and enter your favorite team sports bar in your area to help connect fans with a place to cheer on their team!

To visit the site go to: http://www.teamsportsbars.com

Tracking Super Bowl Buzz With Technorati

Technorati added the activity chart feature in mid-January like the chart below. I have yet to put one to use but I thought it would be a great way to display the blogosphere buzz leading up to the Super Bowl thus showing us a "bird's eye view" of the Super Bowl XL conversations monitored by Technorati. 

Posts that contain Super Bowl XL per day for the last 30 days.

Of course checking back on this post 30 days from now may display a different story of activity since the chart is dynamically generated and the Super Bowl talk may have quieted down.

Find Super Bowl Commercials Via Yahoo Video Search

With the Super Bowl XL bringing the NFL football season to an end in Detroit this Sunday (February 5, 2006) I am looking forward to the game between the Steelers and Seahawks but I am also anguish to see the Super Bowl commercials!

According to a post on Inside Yahoo! by Guillaumeb Yahoo is teaming up with iFilm to allows visitors to find them via Yahoo Video Search.