Tag Archives: Football

Philips Hue and FC Bayern Munich

December 30, 2014Home AutomationFootball, home automation, Hue, lighting, Philips, soccerAndrew

This is going to be a challenging post for a large chunk of GNC’s audience. Not only is it about football with a round ball, it’s about German football too. Anyway….Philips have partnered with one of the biggest club’s in Europe, Fußball-Club Bayern München to promote Philips Hue LED lighting system (German / English)

With names familiar to soccer fans worldwide, the promotional video shows off the footwork of Xabi Alonso and Rafinha, the skills of Arjen Robben, Jerome Boateng and the safe hands of Manuel Neuer. The video’s short lighting sequences illustrate the wide range of options and lamp colour changes, all controllable via an app available for both iOS and Android.

“The eye-catching and visually impressive campaign with the FC Bayern stars underlines Philips Lighting’s leadership,” says Thomas Fine, Head of Brand, Communications and Philips Digital DACH. “It also shows how the future of lighting looks in your own home, and how light brings emotions into our everyday life.” Light Magic is the 20 second, emotional spot that runs on all major private broadcasters in Germany from mid-December onwards. There’s a longer version of the advert here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aWeqqjlAuw

In the coming months, the Munich football stadium will also be equipped with comprehensive exterior LED lighting. Its 380,000 light spots will allow dynamic colour changes with a range of 16 million colours, just like Philips Hue bulbs. The partnership between Philips and FC Bayern Munich is long-term, designed to increase awareness of light as an emotional product and position Philips as the leading innovator in the field of LED lighting.

You can read GNC’s review of the Philips Hue lighting system from last year.

Are You Ready For Some Fantasy Football? Yahoo and Android Are

September 12, 2011Android, mobileAndroid, Apps, Fantasy Football, Football, Mobile, YahooAlan

If you play fantasy football, and many people do, then there is a fairly good chance that you use Yahoo to manage your league. Yahoo Sports has been a great resource for news for a number of years, and their fantasy league software has been the best for quite some time, topping even NFL.com.

A lot of people may not know, though, that Yahoo also has an incredibly good mobile app for fantasy football. It’s available for free in the Android Market. Just use your Yahoo log-in to set it up and you are off and running. Logging in will only have to be done once at set-up. After that the app opens to your homescreen automatically.

Once you are up and running, you can check your current score under “matchup”, which also shows individual players and how they are performing.

You can check all of the scores from around your league.

Click on a player to get more in-depth information.

You can even check the current standings in your league.

There’s a lot you can do with this app. It’s a must for any armchair coach to check their team’s progress and manage, or micro-manage, their roster. You can get Yahoo Fantasy football ’11 free from the Android Market. Good luck this season!

Google Search gets Football News, Stats, Standings, and More

August 30, 2011google, searchCollege, Football, google, NFL, searchAlan

It’s almost my favorite time of the year, otherwise know as football season. And, today Google revealed that all sorts of football information, both NFL and college, is now available right in Google Search

Last week Google began bringing MLB results, but football is America’s number one sport, so it’s nice to see this partnership with ESPN evolve. The simple announcement from Google came from software engineer Itay Maman and reads as follows:

“Just as the NFL season kicks off and you have your fantasy football league ready to go, you’ll be able to get useful information such as the latest scores, schedules, standings and stats for football-related queries in your search results. Last week, we started showing MLB results in partnership with ESPN and we’re now expanding sports live results to include the NFL. In addition to information on the football league, teams and players, you’ll also have direct links to previews, live streams, updates and game recaps. We hope to add more and more sports information on google.com, so stay tuned. “

You can try it out by doing a Google search. A simple search for NFL yielded results such as the schedule, fantasy football, news, players, news, and more. Adding ESPN to the search gives you box scores right in the top your results. You can see screenshots of both at the bottom of this post.

This is a handy way to get quick information and news without trying to navigate the NFL web site, or an app app on your phone or tablet. As you saw in the Google announcement, they are promising even more integration is on the way. So….Are you ready for some football?!

google nfl espn search — Google NFL ESPN search

NFL Brings Preseason Games to the Internet

August 3, 2011Streaming, videoFootball, NFL, streaming, videoAlan

It looks like the NFL, the last bastion of technology-phobia in sports, may be starting to come around. While they haven’t announced anything regarding regular season games being available online, they did send out an email announcement today that all preseason games will be broadcast live on the internet. I find it to be a step forward, while also still displaying their lack of understanding of modern media.

On the plus side, the NFL is actually broadcasting games live on the internet – all of them – every single preseason game. On the negative side, you have to buy them all. Granted, it’s only $19.99, which is pretty cheap for 32 teams each playing 4 games, but where is the per-game option? What if I want to watch only the 4 games of my team? Can we have a per-game price (read $1.99 or there abouts)?

In fairness, at least they are taking this step, and we should be happy with the progress. And yes, I will pay the $19.99 and probably watch only 4 games. But, I will also consider it as progress for the sport Americans love more than any other. Maybe they still have a regular season surprise in store for us. To subscribe, you can visit NFL Preseason Live.

The NFL Takes a Baby Step

July 31, 2010Media, videoFootball, NFL, Paid content, Sports, Streaming Video, Subsciption contentAlan

Not long ago I wrote an article wondering if the NFL would join the media revolution that the other major US sports are already in.

Apparently a couple of recent emails I have received are answering that question and the answer is, well, kind of.

Will they provide a way to purchase games online? Yes, and No. Will they provide a way pick and choose what game(s) you want to buy? No.

This is what they are doing. First, they are, for the first time ever, providing an online subscription to games. It’s not A la carte though. Instead, you have to buy a subscription to all of the games. And, it’s only for the pre-season. That’s 50 games for $39.99 and you can sign up here. And here’s what you will get:

“ALL NEW! Watch over 50 preseason games live and on-demand* with enhanced features like Big Play Markers, home and away game radio broadcast*, and multiple-game viewing. Scout for your fantasy team all preseason long and never miss a rookie’s breakout moment or your favorite veteran’s return to the field.”

This news was encouraging. While it didn’t imply that I’d be able to get just my team’s games during the regular season, it did seem to imply that I would at least be able to watch games on my media center PC and not have to resubscribe to my DirecTV service, which I dropped a couple of months ago.

Then I received a second email. For $99.99 (regularly $129.97) you get the aforementioned pre-season game package and, get ready for it, audio only of regular season games and you can watch video replays of all games, which will be available AFTER the game happens. Details are here.

“Watch over 50 preseason games* in HD with enhanced viewing options. Listen to every NFL team’s official live radio broadcast, wherever you are. Replay every NFL Regular Season game and customize it to your specification – in HD and commercial-free. Enjoy unlimited access to Preseason Live, Audio Pass, and Game Rewind when you buy Game Access.”

Well, great. It’s a step forward, but still far behind the other major sports. I would guess, at this point, that this is it for the 2010 season. It’s really not any substitute for their exclusive and pricey DirecTV deal. And that deal also still requires you to pony up $300.00 for every game – still no team packages for a lesser price.

Basically the NFL still has not learned how to deal with the modern world of online content. They still don’t realize how much money they are leaving on the table. How many people could they add to their subscriber list if they added online regular season games? If they added a team package to their DirecTV Sunday Ticket? Even the Olympics, that bastion of stodgy, sue-first technophobes, have allowed online broadcast of their events for the past 2 or 3 Olympics. Maybe 2011 NFL?

Will the NFL Join the Media Revolution?

July 11, 2010Media, videoFootball, NFL, Paid content, Sports, Streaming Video, Subsciption contentAlan

The NFL is the last major US sport holding out. MLB, NHL, and NBA all have deals in place to bring you whatever game you want, live, on your PC.

But, if you’re a football fan, and want to see the game of an out-of-market team, then you have one option. Get DirecTV and then, on top of that, shell out $300 for NFL Sunday Ticket. What if you don’t care about the other 14 games going on? Too bad. Pay for them anyway. Want a package to just watch your team? You can’t have one. Want to buy a particular game and, heaven forbid, watch it on your PC? No way!

Oh, unless you live outside the USA (Game Pass). That’s the one caveat the NFL has allowed. You can watch a game, online, pay-per-view style, if you have an IP address that exists outside the borders of this country. Yes, you can watch it via….ahm….let’s say….non-sanctioned streaming services. I won’t list them, but they aren’t hard to find. Or, if you do live in this country, they will sell you a radio (IE audio only) broadcast of your team that will stream live.

Will they change this coming season?

That’s what I have been trying to look into. And, the short answer is, there is nothing being said at this time. I emailed the NFL and got no response. I checked with a couple of fellow fans/bloggers/online TV users and they have heard nothing. The season is still a couple of months away from beginning and a lot can change, but at this point it doesn’t look promising.

Right now they seem to be steadfastly stuck in the 1990’s. While the other major US sports pass them by, the NFL continues to leave revenue on the table. Do these corporations never learn? Will they continue to push their old, broken business models all the way into irrelevancy? Does the NFL really think they are immune to this? They may be sadly mistaken. Not that I think the NFL will fade away, but they need to get their online act together before it starts biting them in the wallet.