Hit a Home Run With Your iPhone and Challenge Friends

My Batter Poses After A Strong Showing
I knew I was in trouble when I looked at the Apple Web site after their latest iPhone OS update and saw a screenshot featuring Com2uS's Homerun Battle 3D application. Combining two of my obsessions (baseball and the iPhone), it wasn't too long before I had opened up the iTunes Store and downloaded the game, for $4.99. What I found was more than just a simple game that let me swing for the fences, but a high quality video game with built-in social functions, letting me challenge people wirelessly from around the world, and the option to send my scores to Facebook and Twitter.


Hitting A Home Run in the Left Field Seats
The concept behind Homerun Battle 3D is a fairly simple one. In the classic version of the game, the pitcher throws the ball, and you tap the iPhone at just the right time to send the ball on a trajectory that may lead out of the ballpark. If it goes over the fence, you get a point. If it doesn't, you get an out - just like in the real home run derby you can see during every All-Star Break.


Checking My Home Run Records

Seeing How I Stack Up Against Other Players
Homerun Battle 3D is a lot more fun than "see ball hit ball". Depending on the pitch's speed and type (from fastballs to sliders and curves), you need to tilt the iPhone up or down to match the bat head to the ball and then swing away as the ball dives into the strike zone - which can be challenging. And it becomes even more involved when you discover additional options, such as an "Arcade" version that features contests in terms of hitting the ball to all fields, getting double the points on a single swing, or taking away an out if you find a ball with angel wings.


Going Down to Defeat After One Battle
The social elements in Homerun Battle 3D are reminiscent of those on some Nintendo Wii games. You can choose to challenge anybody from around the world who wants to do battle. If somebody of your rank is up for it, you and the opponent will both be swinging for the fences at the same time. If you hit more home runs or get more home runs in a row than they do, then you are the winner, and they are the loser. So far, I've only won once, but assume I may get better with practice. If you win, your ranking goes up, and if you lose, yes, it goes down.


I Can Send My Records to Social Networks
Should you be so inclined, you can send your current rankings on Homerun Battle 3D to Facebook or Twitter, and request that your friends add you as a rival, letting you take on your friends, rather than strangers, and yes, spreading the word about what is a very cool game for the sports junkie in each of us.

At Apple's recent event, Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller highlighted the iPod/iPhone platform's growth as a game device. While I still make plenty of calls and browse the Web from my iPhone, I'm also growing an impressive number of games in my application library. If you want to add Homerun Battle 3D to yours, you can find it on the iTunes Store here.

College Football's Debut Makes ESPN ScoreCenter an iPhone Must

This last weekend marked the beginning of the college football season at universities across the country. My Cal Bears managed to wallop the visiting Maryland Terrapins by a 52-13 margin, avenging last year's ugly loss at College Park. As I couldn't watch the game, traveling to Southern California, I kept tabs, using my iPhone, by using ESPN's ScoreCenter, a low-frills app from the self-proclaimed "Worldwide Leader in Sports" designed to get me the data I want quickly - with a clear focus on real-time game results, instead the more fluffy features you can find with just about any sports media.


ESPN ScoreCenter on the iPhone: Scores from Any League
ESPN has a long history of experimenting with its Web site - being among the first to embrace Java in the mid-1990s, and streaming video earlier this decade. (See also: ESPN.com Launches New Beta Site, Reduces Ads, Integrates Video from December 2008) It has similarly moved its tech leadership to the mobile Web, with a dedicated site for old-school cell phones and the iPhone, including fun games, like ESPN Cameraman, and ScoreCenter - a cute play on its famous franchise, SportsCenter.

ScoreCenter, like the ESPN Web site, separates out the day's scores by sport. MLB is separate from the NBA, which is separate from College Football, the NFL and so on. But what displays on your iPhone is up to your own preferences. You pick the sports you want updates from, and you pick your favorite teams. You can even select which sports appear first when you open the application, and you never have to see updates from sports you don't care about. These selections are helpfully titled "mySports" and "myTeams", as part of the company's My ESPN push.


Drilling Down on Top Teams' Games on ScoreCenter
Sports already plays a big role on my iPhone. There are dedicated applications out there for MLB, NFL scores or College Football scores, each of which I've previously covered. And yes, you can get updates on sports news from many media apps. But ESPN's ScoreCenter gives me a customized cut of all the information, providing me the top level answer I need in terms of current scores from all my leagues, and with a few clicks, I can see the boxscores or even live gameday action. And for those of us raised on the ESPN franchise through TV, you should be happy to see they even have the familiar "Bottom Line" bringing headlines from around the sports world.


ScoreCenter, Customized For Me, Also Goes Deep Into Data
The app is a welcome alternative to other non-custom apps that give me way too much information about things I don't care about. With college football kicking off last weekend, I know I'll be checking in to ESPN's ScoreCenter to see what every team in the Pac-10 conference is doing, or browsing the Top 25, and getting updates on every game as they roll from East to West. The application, supported by ads, which display alongside the scores, is free. Find it here.

MLB's iPhone App Lets You Watch Any Game In Ten Minutes

It's well-known that I am a big iPhone fan. It's almost as well-known that I'm also a huge baseball fan, and have been since I was very small. These two factors contributed to my buying the iPhone application from Major League Baseball a no-brainer before the season started. In addition to getting live "gameday" information for any game, box scores and a post-game recap for any contest, the application also features rich media, such as video highlights and audio coverage from both home and away squads - keeping me up to date to any contest, anywhere my iPhone can pick up a few bars from AT&T's 3G network, or over WiFi.


Condensed Game Recaps In Video Are Available Post-Game
At some point in the last two weeks, MLB updated their application, adding a new feature that is extremely valuable if you want to rapidly get a recap of a game you missed - posting video summaries of the contest after every game, lasting only ten minutes or less.

Instead of some suit in a studio interpreting what they think are the best games to display, or the best highlights from each game for you to consume, you can see practically every play, condensed. If there was a hit, it will be there. A run, it's there. Strikeouts. Big plays. All of it.


This Yankees/Rangers Game Can Take Only About 7 Minutes
This is no three-hour time sink, that an archived game on TiVo would be. Today, I literally watched Saturday's Oakland A's game, from start to finish, as my wife drove to church. And with the abbreviated games, I can watch more than just my favorite team. I can see the Yankees play the Red Sox. I can watch the Tampa Bay Rays play their cross-state rivals, the Florida Marlins, or any rivalry, real or imagined. And I don't have to sit through stretches of well... stretching. Or spitting. Or scratching. I don't have to watch foul balls, or coaching visits to the mound. It's a rapid fire approach to the national pastime.


I Can See All the Plays, Big and Small, Quickly
If you are one of the many who already bought the MLB app for the iPhone, you've already got it. Find the condensed versions in the "Video" section of any game. If you don't have it yet, but love baseball, now would be the time.

Three And Out Takes Third Fantasy Football Trophy. Shrug.

As the Super Bowl wrapped up the year's NFL season, so to ended the year's fantasy football season - which on some days seems dramatically more important. And, now that the dust has cleared, my team has finished 1st overall, just like it did the last time I played, in the 2005-06 season, and the 2001-02 season, my rookie year. And while I should be elated, given my push to be competitive, and love of sports and all things statistical, ending up the winner is met more with a shrug than jubilation - partly because of the knowledge the competition is complete, with no more weekly battles, and also, as the margin of victory was already guaranteed, making today's game moot.

As I mentioned back on January 4th (See: Geek Leading Fantasy Football League During Playoff Push), I managed to take a lead after the 1st week of the playoffs, and knew I was well-positioned going into week two, but surprisingly, a lot of little things went right for my squad, and badly for everyone else - so while there were many upsets each weekend, the only real surprise in our league was that I managed to not only keep the lead - but score highest every single Sunday, increasing my lead.


By the time the Pittsburgh Steelers were crowned NFL champions this evening, I had finished the four-week playoff round with a total of 391 points, almost twice that of the second-place finisher, who had 217 points, followed by the stragglers at 190 points and 101. To give you an idea of how wild it is that I scored so many points, just three years ago I won it all with 281 points, beating out the second place team, who scored 239, and the prior year, I had finished second, losing 290 to 265 - much closer contests than the 2008-09 playoffs. (See: Kiss of Death League: History)

So how did this happen? As with any good fantasy squad, significant luck was involved. I had expected the Carolina Panthers to do very well, and possibly contend for the Super Bowl title. But as we were drafting one Saturday morning, I wanted to make sure I didn't post a zero in the initial Wild Card contests, and loaded up on the high-offense Arizona Cardinals, getting the quarterback and wide receiver pair of Kurt Warner and Larry Fitzgerald, as well as the San Diego Chargers' Darren Sproles, who I expected to rack up points returning kickoffs against what was supposed to be a superior Colts squad. But then Sproles became the primary running back as Ladanian Tomlinson was injured, and the Chargers beat the Colts. And virtually everyone knows what happened to Arizona. They went all the way to the Super Bowl, and both Warner and Fitzgerald set records along the way. It almost didn't seem fair as my team excelled while others were virtually eliminated by week one.


I'm torn because I love the fact I blew out the field. But I also would have liked some better competition, and to have been watching Sunday's Super Bowl with the knowledge my fantasy season could also be on the line. I love that I won by such big margins because I'm going to enjoy going through the stats, but it isn't exactly fun to talk trash (a major part of fantasy football) when you're ahead by 100 points, so for the last month, that piece has practically been eliminated.

How much did loading up on Arizona help me? According to the league statistics, Larry Fitzgerald and Kurt Warner were the 1st and 2nd highest scorers, garnering me 180 points between them. Add in the 44 points from Arizona special teams, and I'd be at 224, already ahead of the second-place finisher, and that doesn't even take into consideration the 74 points picked up by Sproles, who had an amazing first two weeks.

So now it's all done. At some point, I'll probably get a PayPal notification rewarding me about $200 or so, which is nice, but not life-changing. The first thing I'll likely do? Go out and see if I have to buy my own trophy to match the other two on my bookshelf. What's the fun in winning three times if you can't show everyone?

Vote for Your Favorite Super Bowl Ad on Twitter Using SocialToo

Watching and judging the best Super Bowl advertisements each year has become as traditional as the game itself. While the Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals will be battling it out on the field for the Vince Lombardi trophy, companies and advertising agencies themselves are looking for their own big prize - tremendous visibility in front of one of the world's biggest audiences.

Tomorrow, thanks to an idea spawned by Brian Solis, carrying on a tradition run by Jeremiah Owyang last year, we will be holding a Twitter-wide survey, using SocialToo, to get the opinions of thousands of people, live, during and after the big game. (Also see: Jeremiah's post)

To participate in tomorrow's big survey, and say which Super Bowl commercial was the big one, go to: http://socialtoo.com/survey/view/1221 and vote.

You can also discuss the ads, as they happen, just by posting your thoughts to Twitter and adding the hashtag: #superbowlads. When you use that hashtag, your comment will be added below the survey on SocialToo.

The results will be tabulated after the game. Participating to help spread the word are Brian Solis, Jeremiah Owyang, Guy Kawasaki, Jesse Stay, Chris Heuer, and others.

---

DISCLOSURE: I am an advisor to SocialToo.

---

Skyworks' iPhone Games Decrease My Need for Dave & Busters

The local Dave & Busters at the Great Mall in Milpitas can practically be called Chuck E Cheese for adults. Combine a sports bar with pool tables, and add a sit-down restaurant with rows and rows of arcade games, ranging from shoot 'em ups to racing games, slots and even simulation bowling, golf or boxing, and you start to get the idea. But no matter how amazing the graphics and simulation of some of the more top-line arcades, I have always found myself gravitating to a pair of old mainstays: Skeeball and Hoops. Both involve multiple balls, simplistic scoring, and the incredibly annoying feeling that you should do better, but you never quite master it.

As with practically all good things these days, Skyworks has moved both games to my iPhone, meaning I can now find myself rolling balls up the ramp in a futile attempt to hit the ever-elusive 100 point hole, or shooting ball after ball, and racking up the bricks.


The Familiar Skeeball In an Unfamiliar Place
Arcade Bowling, for a mere $1.99 will see you playing a lot more on your iPhone than 4 cheap 50 cent tokens at the real thing. The game offers two modes: Classic and Progressive. The Classic mode tabulates your 9 rolls, with points from 10 to 100 on each. The Progressive mode sets a goal of 200 points in the first round, and if you reach it, you go to the next round, and a new goal, as your points accumulate. Also, a fun wrinkle for Progressive has it so one ring is randomly selected for five times its point value - meaning if you need 130 points to get to the next round and the 30 point ring is flashing, you've got to be precise.


You Can Score Big Points in Progressive Mode
Arcade Bowling eggs you on as you make trick shots, saying "Nice Shot" or admiring your "Mad Skillz". It's a trip. And no matter if you nail the highest score, you always want to play again now that you think you've got the hang of it. But you'll never be fully satisfied with a "perfect" game.

Arcade Hoops Basketball, also only $1.99 replicates the rapid-fire feeling one has when they have to make as many baskets as possible in a sixty second period. As with Arcade Bowling, you have the option for Classic Mode, or you can do Progressive, which moves the basket forward and back, giving you the chance to nail some long-range shots for 3, but largely making you feel like a dork as you swipe your finger up and down the iPhone repeatedly.


Make All Your Shots Before Time Runs Out
Dave & Busters still trumps the iPhone when it comes to delivering healthy portions of unhealthy food, so until the iPhone can add to my waistline and not just hang on my belt, it does have that advantage. But when it comes to games, I'm finding I can leave the D&B behind.

Disgruntled NFL Fans Take Out Frustrations On Wikipedia

Like any good sports fan, tonight, I've been watching the NFC divisional playoff game between the Arizona Cardinals and the Carolina Panthers. The Panthers, despite a regular season record of 8-0 at home on their way to the playoffs, saw their season end, as the Cardinals put on a drubbing, winning 33-13. Making the problem worse was the Panthers' quarterback, Jake Delhomme, who turned the ball over an amazing six times, including a fumble and five interceptions. And while Arizona led by doing the damage on the field, angry Panthers fans have done even more damage, defacing Delhomme's Wikipedia page.



Delhomme's Wikipedia page has lain relatively dormant going into the playoffs, seeing only the occasional update for career statistics, and additions for the recently completed season. But as the game started to slip away, with the Cardinals going into halftime with a 20 point lead, his page started to be vandalized, with changes taking place practically every ten minutes over the last two hours. The changes, which you can see in the page's history, range from false definitions of his last name, including "pussy juice" and "asshat", to pure complaints about tonight's game.



One comment, since deleted, says, "Jake Delhomme sucks so much that he made is team lose to the Arizona Cardinals in 08. He sucks horribly!" (sic). Another adds, "Jake the fake sucks and I hope he gets fired!!!!", while a third refers to him as "the worst Q.B. in the league!" This of course, is not true, given his 15 TDs and 3,288 yards in the regular season, according to the still-intact NFL.com.


Wikipedia's live editing feature can no doubt be tantalizing to people who want to muck with a famous person's reputation. Stephen Colbert has had lots of fun encouraging watchers of the Colbert Report set up new pages on Wikipedia, or alter existing ones.


As noble as Wikipedia's initial goals were, to replace the encyclopedia online with a group-edited repository, its open rules have left it open for any nutjob to write that Delhomme "can't seem to do anything against the cardinals today. he's a female dog.", or change the pronunciation of his name to "Del-HOMO". It's no secret why many teachers, including my wife, tell their students to stay far away from using the site as a reputable source.

And if you're a professional athlete, be sure you never have a bad game, just to save face online.

Geek Leading Fantasy Football League During Playoff Push

At the end of August, I told you how I manage to take what should be an enjoyable, brainless, activity like fantasy football, and still 'nerd it up', reverting to laptops, Excel spreadsheets and Web-based databases. (See: The Even Geekier Approach to Fantasy Football) Now more than four full months later, the NFL regular season has ended, as have most fantasy football teams, who wrap things up before the playoffs begin. But not the one I'm in. The top four teams in the 12-team league completely start over, redrafting from the playoff rosters, and battle it out in a prolonged contest that lasts through the Super Bowl.

I thought I'd catch you up.

As I mentioned back in August, one of the benefits of not having a favorite team is that I can put my biases aside and pick who I think will do the best, not just who I wanted to do the best. Luckily for me, this led to a quick start, where I scored more than 100 points in 3 of the first 4 games, and at one point had a 10-2 record, having won seven straight head to head contests.

Despite a late-season fade that saw me finish 11-5 overall, a full game behind the league's first-place finisher, I won the division, and was among four teams that got to participate in the playoffs, which started yesterday.

Unlike Yahoo! Sports, ESPN and other online leagues, which use the regular seasons' last weeks as the playoffs, we completely reset and start from zero - adding a new level of strategy, where which teams you pick are just as important as the players. Picking players from teams that get eliminated in the first week means you lose them from your roster, and there are no pickups - so choose wisely...

As a two time winner, having collected trophies in the 2001-02 season and 2005-06 season, I took on this week's draft hoping my experience would have an advantage. (See: Three And Out Takes Fantasy Football Title from February of 2006) But, after taking two full years off from the game, there was always concern I'd had my head so deep in playing tech blogger that I'd forgotten how to do it right. (See: An NFL Season Without Real Fantasy Football?)

Luckily, so far, things look good.

I filled my 13-person roster with three Carolina Panthers, including the red-hot De'Angelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart, three Arizona Cardinals, including the veteran Kurt Warner at QB, and a handful of players with huge upside, including the San Diego Chargers' Darren Sproles, who could score points for me as a rusher, receiver and kick returner, the Eagles' Brian Westbrook and the Falcons' Michael Turner at running back. (See: Roster with Scoring History)

Saturday and Sunday's games played out practically as I would have liked. San Diego staved off the favored Indianapolis Colts. The Cardinals beat out Atlanta. And the Eagles defeated the Vikings at home in Minnesota. As our league playoffs progress, this means I've lost a bare minimum of players after the first weekend, as my opponents lost some key talent. And as most sports fans know, Darren Sproles had an amazing game, garnering 42 points (in fantasy land). Warner contributed 18, Westbrook 17, and Larry Fitzgerald a solid 16. This helped propel my team to 129 points in the first weekend, with none of the other three teams breaking 100. (See: Standings)

My previous years in the league tell me that an early lead is good, but not enough. In order for me to sustain the momentum, I'll have to see my players stay active. If next week is a disaster, and is as bad as this weekend was good, it could be over in a matter of hours. But the start is good.

If you played fantasy football this year, how did you do? How did your league handle the playoffs?

See: Kiss of Death League Reloaded Playoffs

ESPN.com Launches New Beta Site, Reduces Ads, Integrates Video

ESPN.com's New Beta Site Is Tighter, Has More Features
For more than a decade, ESPN has been on the cutting edge in terms of experimenting with Web site layouts, integration of JavaScript, Flash, and video. While not every iteration to the valuable Web property has been met with excitement from its fans, the worldwide sports leader is looking to again make change, in an effort to declutter its front page, while continuing to add more features, and in an interesting move that speaks volumes, they have done away with banner ads on the home page - likely ceding that the run of site ads were not driving the revenue needed in exchange for damaging the site's look and feel.


The Current Site is Mostly Text and Links
The new beta site, made available to the site's paid "Insider" members starting earlier this week, is said to contain a "larger video player, advanced score boards, improved search and better navigation".


The Current ESPN.com Toolbar

The New Beta ESPN.com Toolbar
Many of the online sports junkies I congregate with via Sports Blogs Nation and Ballhype have two major complaints with the current ESPN.com Web site. First, there are too many ads, in just about every nook and cranny, and second, the site's embedded video player automatically starts playing, making the first move to turn it off, even before reading the day's news and articles. If the new beta site is to be believed, both of those issues are addressed.


The New Beta ESPN.com Shows The Day's Scores
The new beta site separates the online articles from the videos through the use of tabs, showing "Top Stories" and "Top Videos". This both tucks away the video, but also offers, as promised, a larger viewing experience, if that's what you're looking for. And, thankfully, instead of wasting valuable screen space in the top center of the page with an unrelated banner ad, the network has delivered with a full scoreboard of the day's events, much like their scrolling ticker seen on all television broadcasts on their family of sports networks.

The new redesign also reduces the total number of top sections, which had become burdensome in the current version of the site. What had once been a single toolbar with eighteen different menu items, each with their own dropdowns, has been replaced with seven top level items, and a subhead menu for the major sports.

While ESPN has been considered a leader in terms of embracing the Web and making it a major part of their editorial, alongside their magazine and multiple channels, not all their Web ventures have been pretty. Part of the Disney/ABC family, ESPN was part of the ill-fated Go.com experiment during Web 1.0, and has also previously integrated as a big partner MSN. The various domains have strayed from the basic ESPN.com to ESPN.Go.Com, and long ago, ESPN.Sportszone.com, which now redirects to the main Go.com page. But the latest move doesn't smack of such blatant commercialism. While ESPN.com clearly knows how to make money, they've killed the center banner ad, and tightened up the content, which should make its most loyal customers, the Insider team, happy. Should they deliver enough positive feedback, the new beta should make its way to the standard site soon.

Push Yourself to a Healthy Lifestyle With Web Communities, Tools

By Daniel J. Pritchett of Sharing at Work (Twitter/FriendFeed)

photo by nchenga

Has your career eased you into a sedentary lifestyle?  Are you keeping your mind sharp by tracking tech trends but losing your hold on physical fitness?  One of the big downfalls to wired life is the ease with which we can lose touch with our surroundings but the emergence of the social web is helping to change that.  Keep reading for some communities and tools that will help keep you informed and motivated in the never-ending journey to a healthy life.

Learn new exercises and proper form
Try YouTube and Wikipedia for demonstrations of proper form.  One of my favorite virtual personal trainers is YouTube's Scooby1961.  Scooby is a very modest and endearing fellow.

Real-world personal trainer Ross Enamait has a site full of workout information and a vibrant personal fitness community on his forums.  Ross's stuff tends to be geared towards the "combat athlete", so if you're not into boxing et al you might not appreciate the tone of the forums as much as you will enjoy Ross himself.

Share motivation through social networks

• Hit Traineo or Daily Mile to log your weight, diet, and workouts and to trade stories with other motivated individuals.
  
• Search for #twit2fit on Twitter for an easy source of motivation and a simple way to log your workouts.  There's also a Ning community built around Twit2Fit where you'll find forums and better opportunities to talk with people.
• Search photo host Flickr for photos tagged fitness or motivation.  Upload some of your own!

Track your progress with gadgets and web tools

My daily walk plotted on GMap Pedometer

• Some new runner-oriented GPS devices can log your daily run to the web for later analysis.  If you're training for a marathon you might really like one of these!  Thanks @fraser for bringing these to my attention.
• For a free alternative you can track the length of your walks or runs after the fact using Google Maps mashups like Treksee or GMap Pedometer.
  

Nutrition help
You'll want to keep your diet on track, too.  Check up on the nutrition content of your favorite foods using any of a number of online resources like NutritionData.

Your turn!
What keeps you motivated?  What are your favorite online health resources?  I'm sure LouisGray.com readers can chip in with your own personal fitness anecdotes, favorite health tips, and best-loved social networks for exercise help.  I'd say the one thing that really got me thinking about fitness in manageable terms was BripBlap's article titled 101 thoughts on losing 100 pounds.

Read more by Daniel J. Pritchett at Sharing at Work.

SportsBlogs Nation Raises Funding Round to Expand Platform

Long-time readers of louisgray.com know that behind tech, one of my most avid passions is that of sports. Be it baseball, college football, or basketball, I'm a huge fan. I have my team loyalties and want to know all I can about my favorite teams. As part of this sports obsession, I found Web communities like SportsBlogs Nation and Ballhype to help me get the latest and best sports news from fellow fans around the world, as well as engage in community around our shared passion. As I recounted in July, the Ballhype team was acquired by Future US for $3 million, and yesterday, the SportsBlogs Nation team announced they raised a funding round in the single-digit millions of dollars, without more details being disclosed. The funding round was led by Accel Partners, the same team who helped bankroll Facebook, and by Jim Bankoff, former AOL programming chief. The funds will be used to further expand the rapidly growing sports blogs network, and help improve the platform.

Overnight, I connected with SportsBlogs Nation president Tyler Bleszinksi, who I've known through his family of sites since 2005, and consider a personal friend. Below is part of that Q&A done over e-mail:

LG: How large is SportsBlogs Nation today in terms of individual sites and users?

TB: We currently have 152 and we are growing that number weekly. We are very deliberate in our approach in that we only invite the highest quality bloggers, with established track-records, to join our network. Therefore, we will never rush to launch sites just to grow our blog numbers. We don't release any details about our registration base. I can tell you that internal numbers show that we have about 2.5MM people using the sites each month and that we're seen explosive growth across our entire network in all metric categories (in some cases doubling our metrics every six months.)

LG: What is helping to drive the growth of the network?

TB: The growth is likely driven by several factors:

1. positive macro-trends as new people discover and engage with our blogs each day
2. more engagement with our existing users as we add great new writers, features and technology - including our new blogging platform which is a huge success. Just last week for instance, we added two of the top sports bloggers on the web: Jeff Clark/Celticsblog and James Mirtle/From The Rink
3. the declining investment by newspapers and other media in local sports coverage, which makes us the go-to source, particularly for mid and smaller market teams like Oakland for instance
4. the traffic-driving network effect of intelligent cross-promotion across our network and the general sports and blogging ecosystem
5. our team/tribe focus where we enable fans to publish and discuss within specific communities built around their passion.

On that note, one important and overlooked fact is that we are the leading regional independent sports network in many areas. For instance, in the Bay Area we have the top sites (Athletics Nation, McCovey Chronicles, Golden State of Mind, Niners Nation, etc) for just about every team, add it up and we're bigger than just about any other media property focused on Bay Area sports. Same can be said for other markets like Chicago, Texas, etc.

LG: How much funding did you raise, and what will it be used for?

TB: We're not releasing the amount, but we basically went after an amount that would allow us to become the top sports social community on the Internet. We're still cheap, even more so in this economic climate, and running this company on a shoestring, only spending where there is a measurable return.

We plan on using the money to further advance our sports-centric social media and publishing platform, which is already, in my opinion, the best blogging platform ever created for sports publishers, contributors and audiences. We want to iterate on it and continue to invest in advancing an open platform for sports fan activity streams.

It will also allow us to expand our leagues much more quickly by getting more man hours working on bringing the best bloggers on board. Our aim is to truly have the best team blog for every team in every sport and we need our league managers to be spending more time working on bringing the best bloggers in.

The other thing is that it gives us a talent like Jim Bankoff on board. And Bankoff is a supremely skilled executive who is laser-focused on making SportsBlogs Nation a large and profitable business. He knows this space well considering his past experience at AOL. He's already working to bring aboard other executives who will be focusing on business partnerships and generating revenue opportunities.

---

I have been an active participant on SportsBlog Nation for the better part of four years now, and have enjoyed the community at sites including Athletics Nation, Sactown Royalty and California Golden Blogs. My user ID can be found here: http://www.sbnation.com/users/louismg.

Also see:
SportsBusiness Journal: Tech Leaders Back Sports Blog Network

Stay On Top of the College Gridiron Using Only Your iPhone

Last month, I highlighted an iPhone application that let you see near real-time scores of NFL games in progress, see current game situations, statistics, news, or even exchange "smack talk" with other fans. (See: Is Your iPhone Ready for Some Football?) But football isn't just played on Sunday. Today, like every other Saturday in the fall months here in the States, dozens of college teams faced off around the country, some fighting for a position in the BCS series, others jockeying for a position in the Associated Press' Top 25, and even more, fighting just for pride. And Plusmo, the same company that provided Pro Football Live has made an app for fans of those teams, similarly called College Football Live. It's just as good and just as free.

College Football Live, like its big brother, lets you view the scores of games in progress, select favorite teams, see recent news and talk smack with other fans.


Not Watching the Game? You Can Get Caught Up Quickly.
But given the differences between the pro game and the college game, College Football Live also tracks the Top 25 polls, and standings by conference.


The Week's Polls and Conference Standings are a Tap Away
Within each game, you can dive down into seeing most recent statistics, quarterly play by play, and previous scoring drives. And as with Pro Football Live, you can give a thumbs up or down to each team and see just how many other fans have the same preferences you do.

This Saturday evening, my California Golden Bears are leading the Arizona Wildcats 24-14 at the half, in game they are expected to win. But with the American League playoffs on TV, as well as many other Top 25 college games, the Bears haven't found their way to my TV set. Luckily, I have College Football Live on my iPhone to fill the gap.

SB Nation Launches New Mobile Sites and Postseason Hub

With more and more sports fans wanting to get updates on the go, on their iPhones, BlackBerries, SideKicks and all other mobile devices, sports sites like ESPN and Yahoo! Sports are having to give extra focus to customizing their sites for these smaller screens. Sports Blogs Nation, a network home to more than 100 sports blogs for all professional teams from the four major sports, dozens of college teams, and other events, recently launched a new initiative that delivers customized mobile sites for all blogs, as well as a new postseason hub, dedicated to the teams in this year's baseball playoffs.

      
The New Mobile Athletics Nation Site
If you're as obsessed with your favorite sports teams as I am, you might find yourself feeling disconnected from the site when you're on the go. But over the last year, the SB Nation technical team updated the foundation of the hundreds of Web logs under their stead, in preparation for taking the day's posts and comments outside of their sites, and new devices and streams. The new foundation allowed users to sign in to all blogs using a shared account, and combines all user comments into a single stream, which hints at future projects. Who knows, maybe even a FriendFeed-like site for sports?

For example, my stream is here: http://www.sbnation.com/users/louismg

      
Fan's Photos and Comments Via Athletics Nation Mobile
If you're at your computer, you can get a sneak preview of SB Nation's new mobile interface by pointing your browser to any of the network's sites, including: http://mobile.athleticsnation.com/ for the Oakland A's, http://mobile.bleedcubbieblue.com/ for the Chicago Cubs, or http://mobile.aroundtheoval.com/ for the Ohio State Buckeyes, for example.


Also new with SB Nation is a new hub dedicated to following the Postseason. The new hub, found here: http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/postseason, has the latest posts from the active teams' blogs, as well as linescores of each game. It's a great one-stop page to get caught up on what the fans of this year's postseason clubs are saying, so check it out.

I had a long conversation yesterday with Trei Brundrett, who is leading the development team at SB Nation, and you can expect many big things coming. But for now, check out the mobile sites and the SB Nation Postseason hub. The official SB Nation blog: Blog Huddle, can be found here: http://blog.sbnation.com/.

Is Your iPhone Ready for Some Football?

For much of the United States, and increasingly, other countries, Sundays in the fall and winter months are dominated by one thing - football. And just because you happen to be of a geeky mentality doesn't mean you can't nurture your jock side through using your iPhone to get updated in near real-time to all the happenings in the NFL. One of my favorite free apps on the iTunes application store is "Pro Football Live", which provides score updates, play by play, current game situations, photos, news, and even the ability to talk back to other users through a feature called "Smack Talk".

Apple's most recent iPhone ads have highlighted the application store, and specifically, some of the games that have been developed for the nascent platform. But there's more to entertainment than video games and high scores.


You Can See Updated Scores from Around the League

With Pro Football Live, I don't need to go to ESPN.com or Yahoo! Sports to get all the scoring updates, and even if I'm away from the TV or radio, I can get the feeling of watching a game, by seeing the current game situation, including who has the ball, yard markers, downs and yardage.


You Can Talk Smack And Check Current Standings

And while I'm not getting streaming video, by using the Pro Football Live app, unlike TV, I have access to all the games at once, not just those being broadcast in my area. So if you're a fantasy football junkie, like me, you can toggle between today's Raiders/Chargers contest, and that of the Texans/Jaguars or Jets/Cardinals. You can, with a couple clicks of the phone, be on top of your game, and you can jump into "Smack Talk" to share your thoughts with other fans.


You Can View Recent Photos and News from the NFL

Pro Football Live also features "News" and "Photos" feeds from the leading sources, letting you get updated on which starters are expected to play or which players set personal records.

iPhone applications like Pro Football Live and MLB.com's At Bat have helped me be closer to all games when away from home, taking pro sports mobile. It's all part of how products like the iPhone can better reach across the digital divide and get into America's living rooms, or at least, entertain those who would rather be in their living rooms, instead of slogging along behind their significant other who won't let them watch the game.

The Even Geekier Approach to Fantasy Football

You would think with trying to keep the blog regular, working a full-time job, keeping active on all kinds of social networks, and raising two month old twins, I wouldn't need yet another time sink. But, clearly not knowing my own limits, I agreed to return to the world of Fantasy Football after taking a two-year hiatus, re-joining the league where I was active from 2001-2005, even though I haven't been paying attention to the NFL at all, and couldn't tell you the starters on just about any squad. So, why do I think I have a chance taking on a group of couch potatoes who have bye weeks and depth charts memorized? The answer: Because I'll be the biggest nerd in the room.

Here's what I do to keep myself challenging for the league title each year:
(I've won the 12-team league twice in five years and finished second once):

1. I don't pick favorite teams or favorite players.

When I was growing up, the San Francisco 49ers were the team of the decade. They won four Super Bowls, and Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott and Roger Craig were superstars. But in the last decade or so, the team might as well have fallen into the Bay, and I don't really care. As a result, I'm not drafting them too highly or unfairly promoting my hatred of their rival.

2. I only bring a laptop to draft day, not a pile of magazines and highlighters.

While some guys show up with their dog-eared copies of ESPN the Magazine and Sports Illustrated or Football Weekly, and six colored markers, as well as the year's bye week schedule and an up to the minute injury report, I just bring my laptop and have Microsoft Excel ready to go. While they shuffle papers around and debate how their home mock drafts differ from the real deal, I'm ready to sort and click between tabs to find my data.

3. I believe past performance is the best indicator of future performance.

I don't need to see teams play or practice to believe a quarterback and a wide receiver have "chemistry", or need to see if a guy has had a good off-season regimen. Instead, the most important data is how well they performed relative to their peers at the position in previous years, according to the rules of the league you are playing.


My 2004 Data Set With 2003 Results
That said, I use the tools that are available to get the data I want, and it all goes into Excel, including:

• A worksheet that shows the previous years' league results, sortable by position, name, team, total points, overall points ranking, and average points per week.
• A worksheet that shows the bye weeks
• A worksheet that shows the most recent injury report, by team
• One or more worksheet with the proposed draft order from ESPN or USA Today

I then create two net new tabs, including:

• A worksheet that will display the team I have drafted.
• A worksheet that tracks the entire league's draft for the season

Once all the data is in there, I'm ready to go to work, as soon as the draft starts. As picks are made by each other team, I quickly highlight those who are off the board in multiple places - on the tab showing last year's statistics, and on the mock draft boards from ESPN and USA Today. At this point, the draft isn't that much different in Excel as it is on paper, but as time progresses, and the all too typical first few rounds get chewed up by running backs, quarterbacks and the occasional wide receiver, my preparedness has an advantage.

If your fantasy football league was online last year, all you usually have to do is go to last season's end of year report, and do a copy/paste into Excel, which will recognize all the columns and set you up for sorting nirvana. If at first you don't succeed... keep trying until you do. Worst case, save the pages as HTML and you can bring them to the draft day on the laptop.


The 2004 Draft, A Down Year for Me
Where others are deciding whether to take a team defense or their third running back, I can go and use Excel's Sort option to its fullest. I can take the highest players available based on their points per game average from the previous season, or do the same to fill a position I need. I can know whether taking a good quarterback will mean all that much relative to the next highly rated option, or if I should keep filling the backfield.


My 2004 Roster, For Example
And the latest rounds are where I make a killing. At this point, especially as most drafts are on Saturday mornings, and guys are joking around about taking players who are injured, or complaining about how the guy just before them snaked Fred Taylor or Torry Holt, I can sneak in and find players that were rated highly last year or by the major sports publications, yet haven't been drafted.

In 2004, my 10th round pick ended up being Willis McGahee of the Bills. In 2005, I got Larry Johnson of the Chiefs in round 12, who ended up being excellent injury protection for Priest Holmes, scoring 17 touchdowns on 1,549 yards rushing. As the rest of the teams use all the allotted time, often accidentally drafting players that have already been taken, my turn comes around every 12th pick, and I look to my Excel sheets for the answer. Yes, they overlooked my secret weapon, and I'll be setting myself up for the win, again.

This year's draft time is 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, and I've made it a little more fun by getting Drew Olanoff of ReadBurner and Strands to be part of the festivities, as well as two friends from work, all of whom are joining the league for the first time. We'll see who wins the battle of Fantasy Football geeks.

BallHype Acquired by Future US In Attempt to Join Big Leagues

After 18 months of progressing beyond the rookie stages of product development, Ballhype, the sports story discovery, submission and voting site, announced this morning that they have been acquired by Future US, a San Francisco-based media company. The purchase, for an undisclosed amount, enables the company's properties, including BallHype and a sister site, ShowHype, focused on entertainment news and gossip, to continue, but with a partner to help increase their monetization as traffic and engagement grows.

As an early Ballhype user in the first half of 2007 (See: Hype It Up: Ballhype Is Here to Change the Game), the site quickly became a go-to for me in terms of finding the best sports news from around the blogosphere, without being married to the front page of ESPN. More than just a news discovery site, BallHype also offered community engagement through votes, comments, and contests, for game predictions and tournaments, like March Madness.

By October, the husband and wife team of Jason and Erin Gurney, saw the growth BallHype had delivered, and pointed their knowledge to Hollywood's glitz, with ShowHype (See: ShowHype Connects Hollywood With Silicon Valley Geekery)

When my wife and I met with Jason and Erin during a viewing of the NBA All-Star Game festivities at their home this last year, they told me despite its later start, ShowHype's traffic eventually eclipsed that of BallHype, soon becoming the primary driver of engagement, page views, and advertising. But the pair didn't want to reinvent the wheel again and again, making customized sites for the more mundane topics of technology, politics, or religion, choosing instead to keep focused on those things they themselves liked.

The purchase of BallHype by Future US shouldn't mean any dramatic changes for the pair of sites. They are still going to be running, and finding the best of the Web's news for sports and entertainment.

In an interview with AOL Sports' FanHouse, co-founder Jason Gurney said, "Our traffic had reached the point where it was substantial enough to prove the value of our model--but we weren't monetizing well, and didn't have enough resources to take advantage of some of the opportunities we saw."

The Gurneys built BallHype and ShowHype almost single-handedly, alongside some technical help, and partnership with other smart sports folks, including Tom Ziller of Sactown Royalty, as well as advice from Gabe Rivera of Techmeme. The pair reside in the Bay Area with their two young children, a boy and a girl.

You can learn more about the acquisition on the official BallHype blog or at AOL Sports' Fanhouse.

Missing a Few A's Games this Year, and Turning to MLB.TV

For the last two baseball seasons, my wife and I had signed up to approximately 40 games a year. We didn't make all of them, but we made a good amount. We spent a lot of Friday evenings and Saturday mornings going up and down I-880 in the East Bay, headed to Oakland. But when news of the twins hit, we knew we had to adjust, taking the total package down to what we thought would be a more manageable 20 games a year. I even planned ahead by leaving a big gap in our ticket schedule around when the kids are expected to show up.

Even this looks like it may have been optimistic. Now that my wife and I have passed the 26-weeks mark, her fatigue level is very real. The idea of going to games on back to back days is unreasonable now - something along the lines of approved marital torture, with every stair step or stand up/sit down routine. So tonight, we're eating the price of our tickets, and staying home.

But to fill the baseball void, we're going online. I've been chairing the Thursday activity on Athletics Nation (See from yesterday's activity: How Do You Help Convert the Casual Fan? and One Can Be The Loneliest Number). Also, during last week's trip to Florida, I invested in MLB.com's video package, letting me watch any major league game in fairly good quality live, so long as the contest is not blacked out.


A scene from tonight's games (and the available schedule)
Last night, part of why I was up so late, blogging at almost 2 a.m., was due a marathon 22-inning game between the Colorado Rockies and the San Diego Padres. Hearing the game had gone to the 18th, I logged on to MLB.TV and saw the game unfold, inning after inning, stretching deep into the night.

The quality of MLB.TV is remarkably better than the jittery, buffering, versions I remember from previous years. I can stream any game on one side of my monitor, and keep working on the other side, without parallel apps slowing down. With family looking like it just might get in the way of some of our in-person sports, MLB.TV is a great alternative. Soon, hopefully, I can start talking about taking our kids to their first ballgames.

Baseball's First Pitch Is Aimed at the Head of Insomniacs

Baseball is a sport with firm roots in tradition. Statistical leaders can be compared across decades and generations, as the rules are pretty much the same as they were more than 100 years ago. There are still three strikes to an out, three outs to an inning, and nine innings to a regulation game. But as the game becomes more of a global sport, not just a North American phenomenon, some traditions are fading into memory, like the once-acceptable spitball, and leaving one's fielders' gloves on the grass instead of taking them back to the dugout.

One such tradition that's passed its time was that the major league baseball season would start every year in Cincinnati, a nod to the Reds' position as the first professional squad, debuting in 1876. Amazingly, this year's season isn't starting in Ohio, or anywhere on the continent at all. Instead, our Oakland Athletics are set to do battle with the reigning World Champion Boston Red Sox in Tokyo, Japan, for a two-game series played when most of the team's fans will be completely asleep.

You see... tonight's game starts not at the familiar times of 1:05, 4:05, or 7:05 p.m., but instead, at 3:05 a.m. Pacific Time and 6:05 a.m. Eastern Time, giving New Englanders some entertainment to go with their morning Dunkin' Donuts. And for those of us on the West Coast, we have the unenviable position of needing to stay up late, wake up early, or just skip Opening Day altogether. Tradition indeed...

While I could simply find the game on TiVo and record it, the true baseball fan in me says that's not right, and that I should be seeing the game live. So, with only six hours separating the off-season with the regular season, we're stocking up on Diet Coke, and preparing for a Tuesday full of fatigue. Hopefully, the A's can make this new tradition one to remember well.

Heading To Arizona Tonight for Spring Training Vacation

Excerpted from my post on Athletics Nation:
"At What Point Do They Stop Being 'Former A's'?"

In just about four hours, I'm leaving (on a jet plane) to sunny Arizona, to see the A's play for four straight days, from Friday to Monday, first seeing the club take on the White Sox in Tucson, and then three straight home games, in Phoenix, where they play the Giants, Rangers and Royals. I can't wait. This is the third year in a row my wife and I have been able to see Spring Training, and I hope we'll continue to go for years to come. It's a mini-vacation of sorts, one that wraps around the weekend so I don't miss too many days of work.

But while we're very excited to see the A's play this year, and I'm cautiously optimistic about our chances with a healthier roster, not to mention full seasons of Jack Cust, Kurt Suzuki, Travis Buck and Daric Barton, one of our biggest attractions this week will be seeing the recently-departed Nick Swisher.

While we'd seen Nick play hundreds of times at the Coliseum or on TV, we didn't expect to lose him so fast. One of the young stars of the team, we expected Nick to be part of the A's nucleus for years to come. We never really got to say goodbye, and tomorrow, with equal helpings of lung power and my wife being cute (at five months pregnant... with twins... but still cute), we hope to get the chance to do more than just wave and clap mildly in our seats.

Does this mean the blog will go silent until Tuesday? Absolutely not. But that's because I don't consider blogging work. It's fun! So, I hope to have a little more variation in our posting schedule, and you'll see a good mix of baseball in with the rest of our content for a bit. Go A's!

A's Spring Training Kicks Off Today

Though the games still don't count for a month or so, we're excited to know the Oakland A's are getting the spring training campaign started today, with a noon game against the Milwaukee Brewers. It's been far too long to go without baseball, and we can't wait to resume our regularly scheduled obsession with the Green and Gold. My wife and I have a trip planned in the second full week of March to head down to Arizona for our third consecutive year, and that should be a lot of fun. Until we're down there, though, we'll be staying tuned to Athletics Nation for A's news, rumors and game live blogging.

Hope you don't mind our occasional forays into fandom. I was an A's fan decades before I got really into RSS feeds and link sharing!