Hey, remember GoPros? You might have one sitting in a closet or a drawer somewhere. Perhaps some well-meaning friend or family member got you one as a gift thanks to a great Black Friday deal, or you did the same for someone on your gift list. I have one. I can see it right now from where I’m sitting. It has footage of golf and curling and probably my dogs on it, but I wouldn’t know. To know, I’d have to unload the video files off the SD card onto my computer. And then what would I do with it? Shove it onto a hard drive somewhere? Back it up to the cloud where it will live a sad and lonely existence? Put it on YouTube? Much like the footage I’ve shot with my camera, GoPro is being left for dead.

Herein lies the problem with GoPro. It’s a great piece of hardware that provides output of limited value. It’s like if Gutenberg invented the printing press, but it was only capable of producing copies of Fifty Shades of Grey. A GoPro is one of things that seems like a good idea when you get it, like a wok or a pair of snowshoes. Any maybe you do use it for a time, but the novelty eventually wears off. It’s not GoPro’s fault. Its draw is the same as a wok or some snowshoes — GoPro isn’t just selling a product, it’s selling the idea of what your life could be like with that product. I’m gonna get my snowboard out of the garage and hook this thing up to it! I’m gonna strap this to my bike helmet and finally try navigating those trails! This is some Don Draper-level stuff. And then, like so many things in life, our hobbies of fantasy are put on the shelf. And the sales drop off. And that’s where GoPro sits. On your shelf, and on the sales lists of investors.

Sure, some people use GoPros for legitimate and genuinely great stuff. Some use them in very creative and engaging ways. And those people are really the core market of GoPro. But that market is niche and limited. The rest of use schlubs barely use the things. Even if we do, the cameras are so durable that we hardly have a need to replace or upgrade the models we currently own. GoPro has become a victim of its own success, it seems. And this is why the market is so bearish on them. GoPro might have hit its maximum saturation already. Throw in a new lawsuit and things start to get even more dicey.

But we should not mourn GoPro just yet. They have one very important thing going for them right now — they make really solid products. Startups are a dime a dozen these days, but one thing remains true; hardware is hard. With all due respect to software developers — seriously, many of them do amazing things — an app or a website can be set up with, all things considered, somewhat-minimal investment. A few laptops and a server instance can lead to great things in software. Hardware, on the other hand, takes a good deal more capital. There’s R&D. There’s prototyping. There’s contracts to be hashed out with manufacturers overseas and quality control and component sourcing. So when a company can break through all those barriers and produce a quality product, it’s a big deal. GoPro has already done that. They’re just having a hard time convincing the market to buy more of them. All the legit and wannabe thrill seekers have already procured GoPro cameras. GoPro needs a new gig, a new way to inject themselves into our lives. That’s where another company with deep pockets can come in and utilize the superior hardware into a new application.

So, who has the resources and possible need for such a thing? Here are a few ideas.

It should go without saying, but this is pure speculation on the author’s part and does not constitute advanced knowledge of the situation nor investment advice.

Google

This one seems like cheating since Google has enough money to acquire almost any company, but there could be a fit. Since Google spun off into a subsidiary of Alphabet, it’s clear that they’re not just in the search/advertising game any more. They are branching out. They already have a hardware company under their umbrella in Nest, and they own the biggest platform for GoPro content in the form of YouTube. Perhaps Google can package the cameras with a free software suite that allows GoPro footage uploads to be faster and easier. Maybe footage shot with GoPros can hit higher in the search ranks or be featured in promoted content. Could Google figure out a good solution to actually use a GoPro as a webcam? They have the engineering talent. Maybe selling these cameras as the all-in-one solution to create user content is how it comes into the hands of consumers again. And don’t forget that Google and GoPro have already collaborated on a new rig that will allow 360-degree filming for VR purposes.

Facebook/Oculus

Facebook made a big and somewhat unexpected splash when it entered the hardware market by acquiring Oculus. Oculus may be best known for making VR gaming hardware and software, but there is no reason it can’t get into the content-producing game. Much like the Google offering, Oculus could concoct a filming rig to produce content for their upcoming headsets, making it easier (and perhaps cheaper) for creators to create a VR environment. Why stop at gaming when the future of news and entertainment could hinge on the VR world?

Some other camera company

The analog company Fossil just got into the wearables game when it acquired Misfit. What’s to say an old-school camera company can’t make a similar push into the video field with GoPro? Canon and Nikon already are neck deep in the digital photography and video world. There are good reasons for bringing GoPro into the fold, either to bring the durable cameras into their product line or integrate GoPro tech to make SLR cameras more feature-rich. A hyper-durable SLR that can shoot HD video with the push of a button? Not a bad market to get into.

Samsung

Samsung has been trying to introduce their own ecosystem to rival Apple’s with limited success. They have their own VR division, of course, and everything they make seems to tie into the Galaxy family of products. If they could offer a piece of dedicated hardware that paired with both the consumption and production of VR content and have it specifically tie into the Galaxy line of products, they could bring another bargaining chip to the table when trying to covert iPhone users. Yeah, the iPhone camera might be good, but check out what you can make when you pair a Galaxy GoPro with a a Galaxy phone! Samsung has the capital and engineering chops to make a partnership like this work, if they chose to.

I don’t see the GoPro going extinct any time soon. I do see it becoming a product offering for another company, however. GoPro did all the heavy lifting here. It made the rock-solid product that’s easy and fun to use. They just need a little help from another entity to make a better use case for their cameras. It may be one of the companies mentioned above, it could be another entirely. But hardware is still hard. When an outlier like GoPro comes along, it doesn’t die a quick death. Like their cameras, GoPro can take a beating and still end up in great shape. Exactly who ends up with the final say in that shape they will take remains to be seen.

You know technology is a pervasive force in sports if the seemingly-tranquil game of curling is getting involved. Yes, it seems as if the roaring game is mired in its own back and forth over technological advances. No, no one has installed remote controls in the rocks, but — at least according to some people — recent changes in the sport mean that comparison isn’t too far off.

To explain the scientific changes going on in the sport, one must first understand the science behind curling itself. If you are a veteran of the sport, please forgive my high-level overview.

I won’t go into the intricacies of scoring in curling, but suffice it to say that the point of it is for the person delivering the stone to get it to stop exactly where they want on the other side of the ice. That ice is covered in tinier bumps of ice called pebble. Essentially, a watering can of sorts sprays droplets on a flat surface of ice. Those droplets freeze to the surface and create a bumpy texture. It’s this bumpy texture that allows the curling stone to move as far as it does. The stone glides along those bumps, rather than on a flat sheet of ice. If curling were played on hockey ice, the stone would barely move as the concave bottom of the stone would create a suction. The pebble is also how the sweeping comes into play, and that’s what everyone is up in arms about.

If you’ve ever seen a picture or video of curling, you may have noticed two people flanking the rock while holding weird looking brooms. The person throwing the rock has the most influence on what happens, but the sweepers are there for the fine tuning. Sweeping the pebble momentarily melts it. This allows the stone to move farther down the ice while also decreasing its rate of curl. Sweeping makes stones go farther and straighter.

Way back when, the sweeping was done with good old-fashioned corn brooms — you know, the kinds witches ride around on. But in the last quarter of the 20th century, broom technology began to see upgrades. The handles went from wood to fiberglass to carbonfiber. The broom heads went from corn to horse hair to synthetic fabric stretched over a type of cushion. Brooms got lighter and more effective, meaning sweepers could influence the stone more and more. But for the most part, the changes were incremental. Things got better over a long period of time. Now, it’s an arms race.

Teams these days — and I’m talking about the tops teams that play for cash prizes and sponsorships in Canada — put a very strong emphasis on sweeping. While teams certainly still work on strategy and delivery, sweeping is now a big part of the game. The reigning men’s Olympic champion and 2015 Canadian National runner-up squad from Northern Ontario knows this. That’s why their front two players (those that sweep the most) look like this:

Technique and physical fitness are now part of a sweeper’s training regimen. Teams with great sweepers have an advantage. But fitness and technique can only take one so far. Eventually, the tool has to be upgraded.

The synthetic brooms from even a few years ago were all pretty similar. They all had lightweight handles, and the pads were made of a sort of nylon material — not dissimilar from a boat canvas. It was durable and swept quickly and smoothly. Different companies made variations of course, but they were all fairly similar.

Then, about five years ago or so, a company called Hardline came out with a new kind of pad. They call it the icePad. It’s a little smaller, much thinner, and the material that covers it is much different than previous broom. Hardline broom material is more like something found used to make a tent or winter coat. It’s much thinner and the weave is much tighter. The broom as a whole is very light and easy to sweep.

In the past couple years, the use of Hardline brooms among top competitive teams has grown quite a bit. They can be seen in almost every major event. Hardline sponsors many teams in hopes that exposure will convince recreational curlers to buy their product. They are fine brooms that make sweeping easier and are competitively priced. And some people want them banned.

The controversy revolves around what’s now being called “directional fabric.” There’s a lot of bickering and conjecture involved, but here’s the gist. Hardline started making a serious dent in the curling industry. This, theoretically, cut into the profits of other equipment manufacturers like BalancePlus. This year, BalancePlus released their own version of a “directional” broom that can do some really amazing things to a curling stone. In case you’re interested, here are two videos put out by BalancePlus.

The first shows a BalancePlus broom essentially changing the curl direction of the stone:

The second shows a stone being held incredibly straight down the line:

Basically, BalancePlus took Hardline’s broom concept and cranked it to 11. Now, people are calling foul saying that these new brooms make the game too easy, that simple sweeping techniques and new brooms are taking the art of shotmaking out of the game all together. They debuted these brooms earlier this year, and some teams and fans got pretty peeved.

Now, some teams have agreed to a pact where they will not use any of the “directional” brooms in competition, including both the BalancePlus and Hardline brooms.

Hardline believes that BalancePlus is playing the part of a bully — making an absurd product to garner vitriol over all makes of these brooms in an attempt to get them banned. As of this writing, these brooms are legal. But if that were to change, teams would have to go back to using more traditional brooms. One of the biggest makers of traditional brooms? BalancePlus.

Hardline doesn’t make traditional brooms. They are a smaller company (they were even featured on the Canadian version of Shark Tank) with limited resources. These types of brooms are their bread and butter. They can’t go back to making other kinds without incurring significant costs. Even further, they claim their heads don’t even perform in a directional way — that their brooms aren’t even capable of the things the BalancePlus offerings are.

At some point, a committee will have to be set up to sort all this out. Some independent testing will have to be done and some rules will have to be put in place. But until then, what’s being dubbed as BroomGate (cue audible eye roll) will remain the talk of curling clubs all across the world — after the requisite drinking stories and dirty jokes, that is.

(Header image via RyAwesome)

A very happy and very spooky Friday to you, fair TechGraphs reader. As you get all your tricks and/or treats in order, feel free to check out all the sports-tech stories that we found interesting this week.

Public service announcement: NBA League Pass is available for free through November 3rd. If you are on the fence about subscribing, or if you just want to check out some out-of-market games this weekend, now’s your chance.

If you are a data wizard interested in breaking into the baseball world, the Astros are currently hiring a research and development analyst. For some, getting a job with any big-league club is a win, but jumping on with a stat-friendly team on the rise is an added bonus.

Yahoo! aired the first ever regular season NFL game over the Internet last weekend, which is a pretty big deal. Wired has a nice look at what went on behind the scenes. Everything seems to have gone pretty smoothly, even if not as many people watched as Yahoo! would have you believe. It makes sense that a bunch of people tuned in for at least a little bit of the game, considering how hard Yahoo! was pimping the thing.

On a similar note, the Golden State Warriors streamed their first game of the season via virtual reality. Anyone with a Samsung VR headset and compatible smartphone could tune in to experience the game in real time.

Remember how the two big names in daily fantasy (DraftKings and FanDuel) came under scrutiny for insider antics and general skullduggery? Well, it looks like a governing body is being set up to monitor these shenanigans going forward.

Speaking of, TechCrunch has an interesting take on how daily fantasy could be used to launder money.

FiveThirtyEight ran a great piece about how camera systems and machine learning is changing the sports landscape. Or, at least I think that’s what it was about. It’s pretty long.

Sports data startup Sportsradar got a big influx of money from investors that include both Mark Cuban and Michael Jordan. It looks like Sportsradar’s next push will be into the world of fantasy and gambling.

That’s all for this week. Have a fun and safe Halloween, and make sure to be excellent to each other.

We all know about StatCast and all the amazing data it (usually) collects. We’re still in a bit of a honeymoon period with this new system. We realize the importance of it, but we’re not quite sure what to do with the data. We don’t yet know what a good route efficiency rating actually is. We don’t know how fast outfielders or infielders should be throwing the ball, or what an optimal speed while base running is. This information is all very new. In ten years, we’ll almost certainly be laughing at how little we knew about the relevance of these numbers. While we sort all this out, however, MLB is working on new uses for StatCast that has more direct relevance to fans and perhaps even the game itself.

Amazon recently held their AWS re:Invent conference for developers that utilize the Amazon Web Services platform. AWS is a very powerful tool, and is a big driver in making Amazon actually profitable. Developers utilize Amazon’s plethora of computing and storage power to run their web sites, data processing, and file storage through AWS. It powers Netflix. It powers Spotify. And, if you’ve watched any modicum of baseball on television, you’ll know that it powers MLB’s StatCast product.

During the re:Invent conference, Amazon held a keynote address that featured some of the new uses of the platform as well as some words from some of their biggest clients. The last presenter (and the most relevant to sports fans) was MLB Advanced Media. You can see MLBAM’s presentation here, but much of it is a rehash of what StatCast actually does — the data it collects, the uses for it, etc. However, Joe Inzerillo, EVP and CTO of MLBAM, did take some time to show off some future updates coming to StatCast.

The first featured using StatCast to enhance the MLB At Bat app. At Bat and its Gameday feature is great in a pinch — if you want to see pitch-by-pitch results of a baseball game, but can’t catch it live or on TV. It’s a pretty neat service that is offered for free for anyone with the At Bat app or online via a web browser. But for all it’s usefulness, Gameday hasn’t changed much since its inception. The graphics are a little better, and features like box scores and play summaries have been added over the years, but it’s still basically a picture of a batter and a strike zone with text-based updates regarding the results of the play. Now that StatCast is being brought into the fold, MLBAM is hoping to up the Gameday experience.

Inzerillo hinted at some new ways Gameday will be able to integrate StatCast data into both the visual representation of the play and the corresponding statistics. Now, rather than seeing a simple “In play, run(s)” update, fans will be able to see the flight and location of the hit, its speed off the bat, and all the other numbers that StatCast tracks.

The exact integration of this feature has yet to be announced, and perhaps yet to be determined. Will these graphics just show up in the Gameday feed or will they be separate videos? Will this be a significant hit to people’s data limits if they’re watching on their phones? These new Gameday features certainly seem promising, but proper implementation will be key for fans to get the most out of the experience.

Another StatCast implementation has more to do with the video presentation. MLBAM is planning on ways to incorporate 3D camera technology to get a better look at plays in the field.

Every regional sports network has their own instant replay system, of course, but MLBAM is hoping to enhance that by giving their view on close plays. The example from the keynote is a little vanilla, but this could have big ramifications for plays at the plate, out/safe calls on the base paths, and even trap calls in the outfield.

This might also be a huge boon to the instant replay system. Right now, umpires are tied to using TV broadcast footage to review plays. If MLBAM had their 3D system in place in every stadium, they could leverage that system to better help umpires get the view of close plays from every possible angle. It might not be the silver bullet that totally redeems the maligned system, but it shows promise as a very solid feature addition.

MLBAM hints that some of this tech might be ready for the 2016 season, though I personally am not holding my breath. Regardless, it shows that MLBAM is committed to leveraging StatCast to do more than just present fancy numbers that we don’t understand or enhancing a few choice highlights. If they continue this push to utilize their technology to create a better presentation of the game, we may soon wonder how we watched baseball without it.

(Big shout out to MK for the link to the video)

Not so long ago (read: last year), fans who didn’t  feel like ponying up for a NFL Sunday Ticket TV package to follow their favorite out-of-market teams had an option to listen to radio streams from around the country via a service called NFL Audio Pass. The idea was similar to what MLB offers with their Gameday Audio package — pay a nominal fee (NFL Audio Pass was thirty bucks for the season) and get the ability to listen to the football team of your choosing via the web or an app. Things have changed a bit this year, but a third party service is stepping in to provide affordable NFL audio streams.

NFL Audio Pass was killed off this season, instead being rolled into a new service called NFL Game Pass. Game Pass costs $99.99 and allows subscribers to stream television feeds of all NFL teams as soon as their games conclude. It also gives access to games from previous seasons and includes audio streaming features that Audio Pass used to provide. Depending on one’s level of fandom, Game Pass could be a good deal. But for those wanting just the audio streams are left with a pretty serious price hike. There is no “official NFL” option to just stream radio feeds. Tweets and emails to NFL media customer support regarding what other options fans might have all went unanswered.

Enter TuneIn, the Internet radio service. TuneIn allows users to stream real radio stations from all over, including local stations. A premium subscription brings other features, including access to 600+ commercial-free music stations, MLB baseball and Premier League soccer, and even audiobooks. And now, TuneIn has brought the NFL into the fold. For $7.99 a month, users get (along with previously-mentioned features) access to both home and away radio broadcasts of all the NFL teams, Spanish language broadcasts, and a dedicated NFL channel devoted to news and talk shows. A look-in show, a la Red Zone, is also coming. Per the press release:

Starting in November, TuneIn Premium subscribers will have access to a seven-hour-long Sunday broadcast that will feature live analysis, stats, and drop-ins of local radio coverage for all Sunday games airing in-progress. The live look-in show will be live Sundays from 1pm ET – 8pm ET.

With the death of Audio Pass, TuneIn provides the best option for those who only require the audio feed. SiriusXM has long provided NFL game streaming via car radios, online, and apps, but the cheapest package that includes such options is the All Access package, which runs $20 a month.

In the NFL, like with pretty much every sport, video is key. It’s the TV networks that are inking the big deals with teams. MLB.tv basically created MLB Advanced Media, or at least made it what it is today. People like watching sports. So maybe an audio-only option for the NFL isn’t the biggest of deals. But those that subscribed to Audio Pass probably did for a good reason. Either they were stuck in a car or office on Sundays, or the very high cost of NFL Sunday Ticket was too much to follow their favorite out-of-market teams. Blackout rules and streaming availability/costs have long been a point of contention for pretty much every major sport. While NFL Audio Pass wasn’t a perfect solution, it was at least some kind of solution.

Good on TuneIn for stepping in and adding NFL game audio to their repertoire. It’s a nice feature addition to current subscribers, and should bring in former Audio Pass subscribers as well.  And perhaps most importantly, it provides a not-expensive and not-illegal method for fans to stay up-to-date on the goings on in TV markets other than their own. It’s a bit of a shame that a third party had to step in to provide this access to the nation’s most popular sport, but TuneIn’s something is certainly better than nothing.

(Image via Keith Allison)

The MLB postseason is upon us (yes, I understand that the play-in games were technically part of the postseason), so many eyes will be turning to baseball for these next few weeks. As it happens, given the age in which we live, a good amount of those eyes will also be glancing down at phones and tablets while the game action plays out on our TVs. The two-screen experience is nothing new — heck, I look at Twitter during games myself — and MLB is looking to capitalize on this by debuting a new, socially-minded, app for fans to use during playoff time.

The app is called MLB.com Clubhouse, and is now out (for free) on the iOS App Store (sorry, Android users. No word yet on availability in the Play Store). It’s a fairly straight-forward app, allowing users to share custom MLB emoji and GIFs revolving around their favorite team, or MLB baseball in general.

When you open the app for the first time, you will be asked to pick your favorite team. Don’t worry, you can always switch to a different club or MLB in general by using the Teams button on the upper left. Once that is done, you will be shown two categories of shareable material; GIFs and Stickers.

The stickers are merely emoji-looking illustrations of team-specific players and designs. My Houston Astros gave me the option of using Colby Rasmus, a bearded guy (Lance McCullers?), a bulldog with a beard meant to represent Evan Gattis, and a train carrying a car full of cheese balls, among others.

The GIFs option consists of exactly that. When you change the team to MLB, you get lots of options to share, including memorable moments from baseball’s past. The team page gives a plethora of clips from the current team’s season. The Astros GIFs included Evan Gattis falling down, lots of team celebrations, George Springer dancing, and Evan Gattis falling down again.

Sharing these gems can present a bit of a problem. The first launch of the app will give you instructions on how to install the third-part keyboard for your phone. After you do this, you can use said keyboard to copy/paste your favorite sticker or GIF into an app. You can even pin your favorite images to save on scrolling. Unfortunately, this only works in the Messages app of the iPhone. I could not get the images to paste in the various other programs I tried, including Google Hangouts, Twitter, Instagram, and TweetBot. The special keyboard only seems to work in the Messages app, at least in terms of the many apps I tested.

There is another way to share, however, which is baked in to the Clubhouse app itself. You simply select the image, and choose Share. This brings up the iPhone’s sharing screen, which will allow you to send the image to Twitter, Facebook, and the like. The only problem here is that you are relegated to only using the apps that utilize iOS’s built-in sharing. My go-to Twitter app, Tweetbot, does not have this function so there’s really no way to use that app to share MLB Clubhouse content. That might be more of a limitation of Tweetbot, but it’s annoying nonetheless.

All in all, it’s a fine little app. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s not trying to be. It’s just a fun little thing you can use to post silly pictures on the Internet, and, let’s be honest, like 90% of the Internet is just silly pictures. Also, with MLB’s recent crackdown on sharing GIFs over social media, this might be our best option that doesn’t involve the Twitter Police knocking at your virtual door. It’s free and it’s fun, so give it a shot. Just don’t be surprised if you start losing followers from posting a GIF every 20 seconds.

We are about to enter one of those wonderful convergences in sports next week. The baseball season is ending, and the playoffs begin on Tuesday. The NHL season begins on Wednesday. Add in the regular mix of NFL games, and we have a pretty busy week on our hands. Conversely, the sports tech world has been fairly quiet this week, but nevertheless, here are the stories we found interesting.

Non Sports PSA: Just in cases you hadn’t heard, there have been a couple of big data breaches this week. Some 15 million T-Mobile customer records were stolen thanks to a hack on the credit firm Experian. T-Mobile is offering free fraud protection for their users, so if you are one, make sure to sign up for that. Conversely, Patreon also got hacked, so if you use the crowd-funding site, make sure to update your passwords. This isn’t sports, but it’s pretty important so we wanted to pass it along.

A federal ruling involving the NCAA could perhaps open the doors for college sports video games to come back. There has been a two-year gap in releases of NCAA-branded video games, thanks in large part to these pending lawsuits. The reintroduction of the popular football and basketball games could still leave room for future lawsuits (hey, what can’t?), but the possibility is still there.

Do like to watch dudes punch other dudes in the head, but always wished you knew exactly how hard they were getting punched in the head? Well then, HBO might be barking up your tree. They just patented a technology that would place sensors in boxing equipment so that precise measurements of hits could take place. The plan would be to include hit metrics during broadcasts much like baseball or football broadcasts produce real-time stats during games. Quantifiable barbarism — it’s not just for the NFL any more!

Microsoft is using traditional prediction models along with your web searches and behaviors to help predict the outcomes of NFL games. Creepy? You bet. Accurate? Well … yeah. Check out TechInsider’s article for the full details. It’s actually fairly interesting in a Big Brother sort of way.

Sports-data aggregation company SportsRadar has reached a new agreement with the NHL to provide their statistics to third-party and media outlets. SportsRadar, based in my home town of Minneapolis, provides data for all kinds of sports to media, fantasy sites, and anyone else who needs real-time, play-by-play data. The NHL expects big things from this partnership, including new interactive and visual web elements. The NHL is already outsourcing their video to MLB Advanced Media, so it kind of makes sense that their real-time stats would be handled by a third party as well.

Finally, Kotaku has a very interesting video about how the American team took home this big esports prize at the latest Dota 2 tournament. I don’t know much about esports (that’s why we keep David Wiers around), but I found the video informative nonetheless.

That’s it for this week. Have a good weekend. Be excellent to each other.

Apple’s release of iOS 9 and its ability to allow content blocking on Safari has once again sparked conversation about blocking online advertising. Every now and again, the topic of ad blocker use crops up in the tech news circles. There are arguments made, grandiose solutions proposed, and villains identified. It’s the sites’ fault for allowing such terrible ads. It’s the ad networks’ fault for presenting such hideous and annoying material. It’s Google’s fault, it’s Apple’s fault, it’s Facebook’s fault. There are a lot of reasonable solutions out there — a switch back to native advertising, a rise in reader contributions, more reliance on direct partnerships — and what eventually shakes out will be some combination of those and some other things and it will only work for a little while. It’s a war of attrition between ad networks, content producers, and readers. But while we all contemplate the Future Of Online Publishing, let us not forget the actions we take today and how they affect the sites we use on a regular basis.

In fairness to the reader, it should be noted that these words will be a little biased. It’s always sticky for writers to opine on the mechanisms that directly affect their pocketbooks. Also, many of the sites I mention are staffed by acquaintances of mine, have paid me money to do things for them, or are just places I respect. Considering the audience, most of this is probably understood, but it should be mentioned.

The ad blockers you install on your browser are both simple and complex. The idea is simple. The blocker scans the code being loaded into the browser, identifies code (usually JavaScript or Flash) that has previously been identified as advertising, and disallows it from loading. The back end — the expanding database of advertising code — can be more complex, but the mechanism is fairly straight forward. These tools stop advertising code from loading. Advertising code can greatly increase the amount of tiem it takes a page to load. It can royally screw up readability and navigation of web pages. It can even install malicious code on your machine. It’s nasty and silly and annoying and nobody likes it. But, to overuse a common trope, it’s the cost of doing business.

Any “free” web site — a web site that does not charge a subscription fee to view its content — needs to make money to run. Bandwidth and server fees need to be covered. Writers have to (hopefully) be paid. Administrative fees have to be taken care of. It’s a business. In lieu of charging you directly, they allow advertisers to display content on their sites. The advertisers pay the web site for the right to do so.

Way back when, advertisers would make direct deals with web sites. Company X would call up Site Y and strike up a deal to advertise their products on the site. This took time and energy, and as the web became exponentially bigger and creating content became easier, this model became quite inefficient. This is where ad networks stepped in. Instead of Site Y working with Company X, Site Y did deals with Network A. Network A did tons of deals with all kinds of companies, and gave Site Y some JavaScript to insert into their code so that Network A could take care of all the rest. Network A would charge the companies, take a little off the top, and pay out Site Y. That’s pretty much where we stand now.

And as the web grew and grew, content expanded rapidly. This created more platforms for ad networks, and drove down the prices that those networks paid to content creators. These days, most sites get about $0.002 per impression or thereabouts. There are certainly other ways for sites to create revenue, but ads don’t pay as much as they used to, and they never paid a whole lot to begin with.

The rise in online advertising also meant that sellers had to do more to get their ads noticed. Ads got goofier, videos began auto-playing, cookies started tracking visitors’ traffic to help in delivering content the robots thought the reader would be interested in. It all culminated in the hot mess we know online advertising to be now. It’s no good, and it bothers almost everyone. And, at the time of this writing, we all need it.

Somewhere down the line — maybe it was the Napster craze, maybe it was the price of so many things getting driven down that the line between paid and free began to disappear — we all decided that it was OK for us to take things from sites and give them nothing in return. The old adage was that if you weren’t paying for a product, you were the product. Your Gmail address isn’t free. Your Facebook account certainly isn’t free. By joining these services, you were entering into a complicit agreement that these services could poke and prod your behavior and use that behavior for their own personal gain. But it’s all in the background. Perhaps this is what conditioned us to think that everything should be free. Online advertising was supposed to follow this model, too. You read something free of charge, and in return you had to see some junky ads. That is, until some smart people created tools that allowed readers to take away those ads, and money started leaking out of creators’ pockets.

When an ad blocker is used, the necessary script isn’t loaded. On the ad networks side, they never see the transaction, so it never gets logged. The site never gets credit for your eyes seeing its content. Bigger companies are affected slightly less. Views of articles on CNN.com, in theory, create brand recognition and increase the likelihood of you watching CNN on TV, where TV ads can be presented to you. For smaller (read: most) sites, this isn’t applicable. They need your eyes, and they need the advertisers to know that your eyes saw the content. Ad blockers stop this from happening.

Your favorite writers (sports or otherwise) need the advertisers to know this. Your favorite spots for opinions, statistics, or humor need this, as well. As someone who expects to consume content for no monetary cost, you agree to allow this. Or, you should. Many don’t. And if you allow ad blockers to prevent these sites from making money, you are, in affect, taking money away from them.

The nice thing about ad-supported content is that it democratizes the Internet. Beyond the cost to acquire Internet access, these sites can be viewed by anyone for free. There is no barrier to entry. Subscription sites aren’t a bad idea at all, but as soon as you do implement that model, you remove the right for some (i.e. lower-income or financially-strapped) readers from seeing your stuff. It’s a choice every creator has to make. But for those that choose to stay free, a horde of challenges await them.

Some of our favorite sites, like Sports Reference, offer ad-free subscriptions that charge a small fee to allow you to browse ad-free. It’s a great solution to the problem, and if you use Sports Reference even more than a little bit, you should consider it. It’s a way to keep ads out of your browser while simultaneously supporting the sites you like.

This site does not offer such subscriptions, nor does its parent site. There are content agreements in place, but ad money still makes up a big chunk of the [x]Graphs family’s revenue. It is a terrible contract that both sides have to enter, but it is necessary.

All of this, and I realize it had been a lot so far, is to say that if you enjoy a site’s content, white-list it from your ad blocker. Are ads annoying? You bet. Do we all wish there was a better way? Certainly. Have we come up with a better idea? Nope. And, until you yourself do, disable that ad blocker. This isn’t a “save our site” plea. This is a call to action to put your money where your mouth is. If you want to read something, suck it up and allow those sites to make money. It’s not pretty, it’s not fun, but it’s only fair.

Think about where we would be without Baseball Reference or Baseball Savant or VICE Sports or Deadspin or SB Nation. Your personal thoughts about these places aside, they helped and continue to help shape the landscape of the business. They aren’t needed on a purely utilitarian scale, but they help us research, enjoy, learn, and appreciate our favorite sports better than most sites can. A world without these sites is a world run solely by Disney, News Corp, and Viacom. Independent sites are good for everyone, regardless of subject matter.

Most independent and/or freelance sports writers on Twitter are pretty approachable. Ask them about the lavish lifestyle they lead as writers. It’s hard. Revenues are falling and therefor pay is falling. And never forget that the marketplace of writers is also growing. It sucks out there. Look at what happened to Sports on Earth. It was a pie in the sky idea that promoted quality writing over everything else and it failed. Money is hard to come by.

Will this ever be fixed? Who knows. Maybe the Golden Age of Internet Writing (if there ever was one) is dead. But until the bouncer kicks us out, let’s all work to make sure the people we like and and admire get as much as they can for all their work. If you use an ad blocker, white-list your go-to sites. If you don’t know how to, Google it. Google will gladly take your query and enter it into the ever-growing list of queries that you allowed it to capture by agreeing to use their service. The Internet is a grimy place full of trade offs. It’s not changing any time soon. Let’s at least support those crazy enough to try and make a living off of it.

Our days of posting our favorite baseball highlights on Twitter might be coming to an end, if they haven’t already. Recently, it appears as if MLB Advanced Media has been requesting that Twitter remove GIFs (technically, GIFs uploaded to Twitter are converted into video files, but the idea remains) that they believe violate copyright laws. It’s a move that’s both within the rights of MLBAM, yet still slightly confusing from a fan-engagement standpoint. If this is a harbinger of things to come, then our days sharing sports GIFs with our friends and followers might soon be over.

I first heard of the new policy via FanGraphs writer Jeff Sullivan. He had created a GIF of Felix Hernandez and tweeted it, but later got an email alerting him that it had been taken down.

As it happens, MLB had a video of the same highlight on their site. Now, Jeff’s GIF would be in violation of copyright whether MLB had their own highlight posted or not, it just seems like more than a coincidence. In the full email the above picture is referencing, there were other reported tweets from different Twitter users — notably @cjzero, who posts many videos of various sports through the social media platform. Sullivan believes this to be a mistake.

“Weirdly, in the same email, I saw notice of identical complaints filed about @cjzero and @megrowler. I probably wasn’t supposed to see those but multiple people responsible for this are stupid,” he said.

However, it shows that he is not the only one being targeted in this new development.

The idea is simple. MLB sees a GIF of a play or highlight and notices that they have the same video hosted on their web site. However, when the video is viewed on their web site, an ad is played beforehand. On Twitter, it’s not. MLB loses a (probably very tiny) source of revenue. MLB asks Twitter to take it down, Twitter complies.

(Note, I am not a lawyer. The following is simply my speculation based on the fact that I am a reasonable human adult)

Is it a violation of copyright laws? Yes. Well, probably. It all depends on your (or a judge’s) take on what’s fair use. There was actually a big decision in the courts recently about media takedowns and fair use. In what’s now known as the dancing baby case (no, not that dancing baby), a parent was instructed by YouTube to take down a video they had posted of their baby because the radio in the background was playing a song by Prince. The video taker, Stephanie Lenz, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued Universal Music Group (the copyright holder) claiming that Universal did not consider fair use before ordering the video’s removal. Eventually, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in Lenz’s favor. The gist is that Lenz didn’t just post a Prince music video, but a video in which the song happened to be playing. It falls under the umbrella of fair use.

There are four basic factors of fair use:

• the purpose and character of your use
• the nature of the copyrighted work
• the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
• the effect of the use upon the potential market.

Lenz’s claim most likely falls under the first. Lenz did not post the video with the intent of allowing people to listen to Prince for free. If Jeff Sullivan (or anyone else effected by MLBAM’s new attitude) wanted to contest their treatment, they might have some ground to stand on, but it would be shaky. Number three seems plausible if you take the length of a clip against the length of a whole game, but as I’m sure MLBAM considers a highlight to be just as much copyrighted as an entire game.

In the long run, fighting a copyright claim probably isn’t worth it. It is worth it, however, to question just who is being served here. Major League Baseball is worth over $30 billion. Are they really going to cry “poor” when some people don’t have to watch a T-Mobile ad before a highlight of a home run? And, to me, the chance to screw over MLB isn’t in most poster’s interests either. The point is simple — GIFs play right in the browser when scrolling through Twitter. Sure, people can link the MLB clip, but it would involve extra clicking. Is it a big deal? Not really. But the immediacy of it all is what makes Twitter Twitter.

Let us not forget that nearly every baseball GIF people post enhances MLB’s brand. The NBA figured this out early. They let anyone with iMovie and some time post highlights, mash-ups, parodies, etc. to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and the like. If you want to find a baseball clip on YouTube, you better hope that MLB has posted it themselves. Otherwise, there are no others to be found.

Because of my experience as a baseball writer, I immediately wondered about MLB’s new stance impacting baseball sites and blogs. A lot of writers use GIFs for analysis or to drive home a point. Are we to believe that this practice will be in jeopardy? Sullivan doesn’t think so, at least for right now.

“I’ve never heard of MLBAM complaining about gifs used at FanGraphs,” he said in an email correspondence. “Similarly, I don’t recall ever getting a complaint about gifs I used at SB Nation or Lookout Landing. Maybe something just slipped my mind, but there’s never been anything systematic. It seems they’re mostly okay with gifs used in the context of analysis, but viral stuff on Twitter — that gets their attention. Maybe because they’re trying to establish their own social presence and they want something approximating a monopoly of coverage. But this is speculation! I’m probably going to keep trying #pitchergifs because I’m a dangerous rebel who likes danger.”

I did reach out to MLBAM for comment, but have not heard back as of this writing. In the interest of full disclosure, my email provider did go down for about 20 minutes this morning. It’s unlikely that they tried to reach me then, but I mention it just in case. In truth Major League Baseball — a sports league that has a very large and powerful media empire named after it — has been fairly tone deaf when it comes to these types of things. Recently, they’ve made a big push with things like Cut4 and their Twitter account to promote their game. It’s a shame that they view other people, fans who want to help them out for free, simply as copyright violators. The fans are on MLB’s side on this one. At least for now. If this behavior continues, they might start losing some of their most connected and promotional fans. That would be a shame for both sides.

Happy Friday, dear readers. Between the baseball playoff push and the beginning of the pro and college football seasons, we are in for another wild sports weekend. Between your gulps of beer and piles of nachos, feel free to cleanse your palette with all the sports-tech stories we found interesting this week.

I’ve been using technology to improve my golf practice (look for that article soon), so when Wilson announced their new smart basketball that helps players get stats on their practice sessions, I was intrigued. The implementation seems fairly simple and straightforward. It seems most applicable to serious student and pro athletes, but I suppose anyone who wants to improve on their skills before their next pickup game could benefit.

For the first time ever, the FIFA video game franchise will feature women players this year. This is good! However, never content to let anything go unsullied, the NCAA is, once again, ruining things. Due to eligibility concerns, 16 women players have been pulled from the digital rosters of FIFA 16. Though the athletes and EA Games seemed to do everything by the book, the players didn’t want to risk their collegiate futures by disobeying the all-mighty NCAA. They weren’t getting paid to appear on the game, but the NCAA still found a reason to not let these talented women represent their countries. The NCAA has their stellar reputation to uphold, after all.

Golden Tee is making the jump from the pub floor to your phone. Now, enjoy all the fun of virtual golf without the ever-present smell of cigarettes and stale beer. Not having to put your hand on that cesspool of a rollerball is also a plus. Though, it’s not as if your smartphone isn’t without its own germ farms.

In case you weren’t annoyed enough with the respective brands by themselves, Snapchat has teamed up with the NFL. Simply subscribe to the NFL’s Live Story feed and get inundated with countless pictures and video every Sunday. Just don’t expect to see broadcast footage beamed over with cat faces on it — TV video won’t be sent via the service.

ESPN has a nice story about the Miami Dolphins and how they are using all kinds of technology to help keep their athletes healthy. There’s even mention of their work with Kitman Labs, which our own Dr. Bryan Cole profiled not too long ago.

Bad news, wannabe daily fantasy millionaires: The system is already rigged against you.

Last year, NBA 2K15’s facial scanning features lead to some terrifying results. This year, NBA Live 16 is taking a crack at it, and, according to Polygon, the results are much less nightmare-inducing.

You think getting a pre-draft spreadsheet together for your fantasy football league is hard? Try being the guy in charge of assigning skills to every player in Madden.

Finally, if your day has been wrecked by Google Now leaking sports scores when you were DVRing a game, Gizmodo has a nice write-up on how to save yourself from future frustration

That’s all for this week. Have a great weekend, and be excellent to each other.