The phrase “I have seen the future, and it works” is attributed to Lincoln Steffens, a proto-socialist who thought the USSR would be humanity’s haven for order and beauty. What he saw in the soon-to-be failed state, however, was merely a glimmer of the true light. Here is the true light:

It is a homemade arcade system equipped with every worthy game of our generation; it is the shimmering jewel of the ages, three decades-worth of pixels and magic. According to its assembler, Brian Collette, brother of baseball writer Jason Collette, the device has all you require:

Some of the sports games I do have working are arcade games like NBA Jam, Tecmo Bowl, ‘80s WWF games, Punch Out, Super Dodge Ball, Arch Rivals, Blades of Steel, etc., and some home console games like RBI Baseball 1-3, Baseball Stars, NHLPA ’93, among others.

A hearty giggity goo! A giggity goo to echo across the ages!

The principle of the machine is very simple — it’s basically just an old computer with a MAME emulator inside it. For more info on the parallel beauties and troubles of emulation, check out David Wiers’ excellent emulator article.

The hard part, really, is the hardware. But according to Brian, this is a device you, sir and/or madame, can build too:

• The “arcade cabinet shell” hails from Rec Room Masters
• Brian says the assembly is not taxing and that particular dealer has “lots of cool styles at all price ranges.”
• You will need a two-player joystick and trackball control panel.
• You will need a cheap PC and monitor. Says Brian: “I used a $200 Dell, any old one you’re no longer using would work; doesn’t need much modern power. Add some old computer speakers.”
• And for the cherry atop the castle of techno-awesome, Brian elected to add a coin-operated edifice so as to simulate spending extra money on playing these games. (And though he does not explicit suggest this, it may also work as an excellent power play in the family dynamics. He who controls the quarters controls the universe.) According Brian, this cleverness “only requires some simple wiring setup. They sell them here.”

(NOTE: We and I personally do not get any kickbacks from any of these above-linked business. Of course, if you work for one of those businesses, feel free to send me free stuff.)

And before you assault your loved one with tales of digital valor and majesty — and therefore signify the pressing need for a device such as this in your own home — girdle yourself with this knowledge: Apparently Brian is not the only enthusiast in the house. According to him, it’s a family affair:

My wife and son love it too, there’s nothing like playing a game on a real arcade machine whether it’s Galaga or Street Fighter II. Even Nintendo games like RBI Baseball translate well.

So really, not building one of these babies is like voting no on family values.

Bri-man estimates the total cost in the $500 to $1000 range, depending on what you’ll need to buy fresh. I, for instance, have lobbied to save at minimum two old towers (both of which have smaller processors than my Nexus 5 at this point), so I’d be gravy on that end, but the monitor would need to be acquired — perhaps via prudent garage saling. But can we put a price on awesome? Or, more importantly, can we put a price on the validation we will douse ourselves in when we suddenly have a (moderately) legitimate reason for storing those old computer parts in the baby’s closet?

Some things, I argue, are worth more than money.

It is not totally uncommon for one brand to be designated as the signifier of an entire product group. All tissues are known as Kleenex, all large trash containers as Dumpsters, all photocopies are Xeroxs. There is a whole Wikipedia article devoted to this, in fact. And while other lip balm makers probably aren’t thrilled that their product is usually called ChapStick, the effect is lessened by the fact that their product is on the same shelf as ChapStick. Consumers get to see the products side by side and compare packing and promises and pricing. Their sales aren’t ruined simply because Pfizer has a trademark on a catchier name.

This isn’t necessarily the case in the consumer electronics field. In this cutthroat world where competition is fierce, prices are high, and margins are low, brand recognition can be everything. We don’t ask friends and family what brand of cotton swab they use, but we’ll surely probe for opinions on tablets or laptops, making mental notes of the brands mentioned. When walking into a Best Buy or Fry’s, people are overwhelmed with choices. Having a trusted, recommended brand can be the difference between winning and losing a sale.

Getting their hooks into customers is everything for electronics makers. If someone is buying their first tablet, Google or Apple or Microsoft doesn’t just want the revenue from the device. They want to get consumers to be reliant on a specific ecosystem. Apps purchased in their app stores ensure revenue for these companies. This is basically Amazon’s entire model when it comes to their Fire tablets. Even free apps that consumers decide they can’t live without become sticking points when it’s time to upgrade devices. It’s not a hardware-based arms race. It’s a fight for brand loyalty.

And, at least right now, it’s a fight that Microsoft is losing badly. Apple and Google have their tentacles wrapped around the mobile market and up until now, Microsoft has had a hard time breaking in. This is part of the reason Microsoft entered an agreement with the NFL worth a reported $400 million to allow their Surface line of tablets on the sidelines of football games. These kinds of product placements aren’t all that new. Samsung has been doing it everywhere from the Oscars to the White House. Microsoft wants more people to know about their Surface. A lot of people watch NFL games. It all seems pretty straight forward. Except for one problem — TV announcers keep calling them iPads.

NFL announcers aren’t paid to be tech know-it-alls. They are hired for their expertise in announcing or their knowledge of the game (some jokes could be made here, but I’m leaving it alone for the time being). It’s a pretty safe bet to say that they are making these mistakes due to a lack of education, rather than malicious intent toward Microsoft. But that is part of the problem. If Microsoft is willing to drop that much cash on implementing Surfaces on the sidelines, wouldn’t they want to make sure the announcers know that? Yes, the announcers are technically employed by the TV network, but those are networks that have a tight and lucrative affiliation with the league. Certainly someone could have passed a few memos around. Forgetting the name is one thing, using the name of a direct competitor — a competitor that is kicking the butt of the product in question — is another.

There’s a bigger problem here, as well. The Surface is more than a tablet. Save for the ill-thought RT version from a few years ago, the Surface strives to out-feature the iPad. The Surface 3 is the most laptop-like tablet Microsoft has released. It even markets itself as a laptop replacement. However, the integration with the NFL doesn’t highlight those features — the features that set it apart from others in the space. The implementation simply calls for the Surfaces to show photos of previous plays (replacing those binders of black and white snapshots) with the ability to draw on said photos. That’s it. Microsoft is trying to raise eyebrows by showing off features a $200 Android tablet could do.

This is not entirely Microsoft’s fault. Security and fair-play considerations had to go into the integration. Therefore, no Internet connections are allowed (they are connected to a locked-down wireless network). The Surface allows (and promotes) pen input, but I have yet to see a player or coach using one. The case that adorns every Surface on the sideline covers up the kickstand — another selling point of the device. Nothing the NFL does with a Surface sets it apart from the crowd, especially from the iPads that NFL teams are already using.

In fairness, a lot of this couldn’t be helped. There isn’t a whole lot of use for tablets on the sideline to begin with. As far as application goes, Microsoft and the NFL have pretty much exhausted their options. Which makes the $400 million so curious in the first place. Could that money be better spent on more advertising? Perhaps product placement in movies or TV that can show off more of its features? This space is a tough one to break into, I get it. But as it stands, Microsoft’s partnership with the NFL isn’t enough to get the Surface recognized. Especially if announcers can’t even get the name right.

(Header photo via Kārlis Dambrāns)

The advent of NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV must have felt like a godsend for re-located football fans across the country. Never again would they have to comb through the TV schedule to see if their favorite team played in the local market, or perhaps got a Sunday night or Monday night game. All they had to do was pay a lot of money and plop down in front of the TV. But as our culture turns ever more mobile, we have different needs. It’s no longer good enough to have all the games on our TV. We want them with us wherever we go. Enter the NFL Sunday Ticket mobile app.

We’re officially through our first NFL Sunday of the 2014/15 season. My favorite team got drubbed on Thursday, so this left me some time to test out the NFL Sunday Ticket app for iOS. It’s hard to talk about the app without first discussing the price. It’s technically free in the app store, but you won’t be able to get past the login screen unless you are a subscriber of Sunday Ticket. And even then, you need to have the right version of Sunday Ticket. Spoiler: you need to more expensive one.

DirecTV offers two different packages in which to get games: Sunday Ticket and Sunday Ticket Max. The former will get you the bare-bones setup for $39.99 a month: all the games, the Mix Channel that allows you to watch eight (tiny) games at once, and various on-demand features. Sunday Ticket Max comes in at a whopping $54.99 a month, and adds the Red Zone channel (which is actually pretty cool) and the ability to watch games on a computer, phone, tablet, or gaming console (XBOX One, PS3, or PS4). So basically, it’s an extra $15/month to stream games on the go. Sunday Ticket bills for six months, so it’s an extra $90 on top of regular Sunday Ticket which is already on top of your DirecTV package. (It is possible to get Sunday Ticket without a DirecTV subscription, but there are a good deal of requirements that must be met.)

When you first open the app, you are greeted with an advertisement. Though it only lasts for a few seconds, it seems like an incredible kick in the pants to have to see an ad in a service you paid a great deal of money for. You are then greeted with the opening screen which has a video player on the right, and the list of current games  and scores on the left. Just tap a game to watch. It’s that easy.

Switching between games is very fast, a nice feature that other apps like MLB.tv lack. After tapping a game, the video was up in less than a second. This was true on WiFi or 4G, though the WiFi offered a higher-quality video at first. The 4G connection needed some time before the picture was HD-quality. There is a tradeoff, however, as there seems to be a significant delay in the streamed games and actual games. Using the Bills/Bears game as a test, the app stream clocked in at around 43 seconds behind the game on TV. The amount that this is a big deal depends on the watcher. If you’re just clicking around during commercials, it really doesn’t matter all that much. If you are following along on Twitter (on another device, presumably) it might.

The app offers a few other nice features, like on-demand highlights from the game you are watching listed below the video. If you turn to a game and want to see how the score ended up the way it is, the video evidence is right there. The app also pushes highlights from other games that appear as little widgets on the video screen. If you click one, you are sent to the highlight, then, when it’s over, immediately back to the game you were watching. The widgets only show for a few seconds, so they are not too intrusive, and the ability to see an insane down-the-field-catch on the fly is a nice thing.

Overall, the app performed well. I only had one instance of it misbehaving over the course of a couple hours of heavy game switching. The glitch was fixed on a close and relaunch of the program. It was annoying, but the app cooperated much more than some from other leagues (cough, cough, MLB). There was also a slight issue with audio where after switching to a different game, the audio would be loud for about three seconds, then drop in volume quite a bit. This seemed to happen on all games. The first three seconds weren’t painful, but the dropoff was so drastic that I often found myself adjusting the volume.

The Sunday Ticket app would work well for football junkies, fantasy junkies, gamblers, or people who can’t be homebound on a Sunday. The app works very well, and does exactly what you want it to do — stream all out-of-market games — with solid performance. For the fan who just wants to watch their team on their couch every Sunday, it might not be worth the price of Sunday Ticket Max. The addition of the Red Zone Channel is a bonus, but if the main goal is just to watch your team, you might be better off with the standard package. Going on just the features and reliability of the app alone, DirecTV has put out a fairly solid product.

Grade: A-

Each Friday, we here at TechGraphs like to point out some of the sports-tech stories that may have slipped through the cracks. It’s the Friday News Roundup. I have a busy schedule of getting my butt kicked in Madden, so let’s get right to it.

• It’s football season! To celebrate, the temperature in the American Middle West dropped twenty degrees within 24 hours. As of this writing, we are one game into the NFL season. Hopefully you didn’t blow your entire nest egg on Seahawks/Packers, because betting on games just got easier. Thanks to the Windows Phone feature Cortana, all you have to do is ask who is going to win. Cortana will use a “combination of stats, previous match-ups, and subtler criteria like stadium conditions” to pick a winner for you. If you program your bookie in your phone, your gambling problem can be 100% voice-activated.

• Speaking of the NFL, Fox announced that you should be able to use its Fox Sports To Go app to stream 101 games to which they have the rights for the 2014 season. One will need a cable or satellite subscription to access the feature on their computers, phones, and laptops, and the game will have to be available in their local area. This means that fans of out-of-town teams are still stuck with needing Sunday Ticket or sketchy streaming web sites.

• Verizon is also offering up a similar service, but with the added bonus of RedZone.

• Also on the streaming front, ESPN announced that customers of MediaCom, Suddenlink, NCTC and NTTC should now have access to the WatchESPN service on computers and mobile devices. There’s a joke here about watching First Take while sitting on the toilet, but I can’t nail it down yet. I’ll get back to you.

• ESPN also updated their SportsCenter app for the iPhone, allowing quicker access to favorite teams and shows. It seems as if my request to add curling to the scores section went unnoticed yet again.

• GOLF! The Ryder Cup said it would ban social media posting by fans on the grounds, but then they changed their minds. Or succumbed to scrutiny. Either way. Limiting ways fans can interact with a game everyone says is dying was probably a dumb move, so it’s nice to see the Ryder Cup rectify it.

• Not a Madden person? Don’t have $60 to spend on something that pretty much only makes you angry? You’re in luck! Tecmo Super Bowl 2015 has been released! With just a little emulator magic, you can get that virtual football experience without all those buttons and joysticks to get in your way. Now you can get angry for free, though that was already pretty easy.

• In baseball, MLB said that they have crossed the point of no return — more people are watching MLB.tv on devices than on computers. I’m guessing this guy had a lot to do with it.

• We may be closer to removing the first down markers and chains from football, thanks to some research being done with magnetic fields. While I’m all for getting the calls right, I will miss that part when the ball is short by a good foot and a half, but the quarterback runs to the coach signaling that they ONLY NEED TWO MORE INCHES. I grew up watching Brett Favre, so I remember this happening a lot.

• And finally, EA Sports launched their Madden GIFERATOR this week. This tool is supposedly for taunting your Madden opponents on Twitter or something. I’m not really sure what the practical use is. Anyway, the Internet did what the Internet always does, and ruined it. Actually, they took a dumb, gimmicky thing and made it pretty funny. I even tried my hand at it today:

That’s all for this week. Remember to ice those thumbs periodically, and try not to curse too much at pre-teens.

(Header photo via John S)

The way things change and progress these days, seven years can seem like a lifetime. When viewed through certain filters, 2007 looks like ancient history. Our laptops were huge, our smartphones were pretty dumb, the Bears were good at football. A lot has changed. Our interaction with sports — the ways we observed and learned about our games — have also taken enormous leaps. The level of analysis available to us is at an all-time high. And as recent news suggests, it’s only going to get better. What we take for granted now may have seemed like a pipe dream seven years ago, but it was a technology that came about in 2007 that let us peek into the future.

Read the rest of this entry »

I had big hopes for my Pebble smartwatch. I envisioned a time when I could just leave my phone in my pocket or bag, and go hours and hours without having to dig it out. I could be such an engaging tablemate at restaurants. I could ride public transit and smirk at all the suckers who are glued to their devices. I would be free. Free from distraction, free from the rectangular device that has taken over my life.

Don’t get me wrong, my Pebble works just fine. It does exactly what I wanted and even more. But I am still a servant. I’m still always glancing, always clicking. Only it’s at my wrist instead of my phone. While this is an upgrade of sorts, I have learned to accept and embrace my technology overlords. Everything is still coming to me — every email from my fantasy league, every Google chat from my friends, every text from my wife — it’s just coming in a slightly more convenient way. That is, if you assume glancing at your wrist is more convenient than glancing at your phone

The Pebble has a few useful apps, but its main selling point is notifications. It relies on whatever notifications my iPhone sends me. If the phone gets it, the watch gets it. The usual fare is offered — email, text messages, etc. — but it also works with notifications from nearly any other app. When I go to a ballgame, my watch (via my MLB At the Ballpark app) welcomes me to the field. When a player on my fantasy roster has been put on the DL, my watch (via my fantasy apps) alerts me. When my beloved Astros are about to take the field, my wrist vibrates. The same goes for when they take or give up the lead. It goes on and on. This may sound annoying, but I wouldn’t be honest if I said I didn’t love it. The sports fan in me loves the updates, and the tech geek in me loves that it’s happening on my watch.

But the Pebble is a one-way street for the most part. There’s no communicating back to it. If I miss the scoring alert of the Astros game, I need to pull out my phone. If I want to check my roster to make sure my matchups are correct, out comes the phone. It’s passive. It’s a message from a carrier pigeon. It’s a fortune cookie.

Which is why the news surrounding the new round of wearable devices is so encouraging as a sports fan. Earlier this year, Google announced Android Wear, a platform for running Android apps on third-party wearable hardware, which may be getting a significant update soon. Samsung just announced their line of Gear S watches, which offers both voice and teeny-tiny keyboard input. And, of course, Apple is expected to announce their own line of wearable tech next week. The details are still fuzzy on this device, but the ability to run current iOS apps (or at least modded versions of them) isn’t out of the question. All these devices offer a good deal more of interaction. Finally, there will be a tin can on the other end of the string.

Android Wear can already offer some help for sports fans. The integration with voice search allows the user to just simply ask their watch what the score of the Giants game is. If Apple integrates Siri with it’s watches, it should allow this functionality as well. Android Wear offers pushed notifications much like the Pebble, as well. As wearable technology becomes more common, it’s easy to see tighter integration with fantasy apps, news apps from ESPN or CBS Sports, even the ability to simply pull up scores from across the league without the need for pushed alerts. The ability to change a fantasy roster from your wrist, or send your friend a taunting text after seeing his favorite team’s latest score without the need for digging a phone out of a pocket or purse is on the horizon. Who wouldn’t want to see a towering Giancarlo Stanton home run pushed to their wrist? An injury report from their favorite team at the ready with their phone still tucked away? Is MLB.tv and Sunday Ticket streaming video on a watch that far down the road?

I may be getting carried away, or I could be just scratching the surface. Pebble’s Kickstarter ended in May of 2012. A little over two years later, we’re ready to accept the next great swarm of wearable tech into (and onto) our arms. If things play out more or less as expected, I’ll still have my phone in my bag. That familiar blue glow will be coming from from wrist instead.

(Header photo via Maurizio Pesce)

We’ve all been there. Our draft goes swimmingly. We get most of the players we were targeting, and feel like we improvised well when the need arose. Our roster looks great, and we’re daydreaming about fantasy dominance. Then, the hammer drops. Our RB1 is out for the year with a torn ACL. Our ace pitcher needs Tommy John. The dependable veterans we drafted become benchwarmers. We do our best to fix the situation, but it is basically untenable. Another fantasy season down the toilet.

That scenario, or rather the lack thereof, is one of the biggest appeals of so-called daily fantasy games. Rather than toiling away on a roster that can fall apart with one mistake or a little bad luck, daily fantasy sites offer the chance to start anew every day or week. Pick any players you want, stay under the salary cap, and have a chance at multiple payouts in a season. Players are not beholden to one team, either. Every team could have Tom Brady if they stay within the cap. It’s a great idea for those who want a change from the traditional system, or who want the opportunity to flex their fantasy smarts multiple times a year. And the money is showing that the idea is catching on.

Two of the biggest players in the game, DraftKings and FanDuel, recently went through successful funding rounds. DraftKings raised $41 million while FanDuel brought in $70 million. The new players in fantasy sports look promising, at least as far as investors see it.

FanDuel is looking to increase its visibility as well, announcing the World Fantasy Football Championships for 2014. They are set up as a set of weekly survivor pools, where the best performers will be flown to Las Vegas for the championship rounds. Pools are separated by entry fee, with $2 million of possible earnings for the biggest tournament.

Players can use either a web site or a mobile app to enter games from both companies, and a quick viewing of each shows hundreds of games available the first week of football season at many different price points. Baseball contests are also still available.

Fantasy players looking to try a little something different can invest very little (or even no) money to try their hand at these games. And if the funding results for places like FanDuel and DraftKings are any indication, every self-proclaimed fantasy guru will have a chance to prove their mettle for some time.

(Header photo via Tony Ibarra)