There’s a scene in Iron Man 2 where Tony Stark is struggling to create a new element for his chest piece. He ends up watching an old promotional film his father created, which includes an Easter egg at the end specifically for Tony. In that speech, he uses the phrase “I’m limited by the technology of my time.” It’s a plot point, but it’s also a phrase I think of often. So much of what we see in the tech world, and what we cover at TechGraphs, is straddling the bleeding edge — using everything currently available to us to create the best and most innovative products. But there’s a limit. Moore’s law aside, there are only so many advancements that can happen given the current hardware availability. Every so often, there needs to be a jump. And if what the Bluetooth Special Interest Group says holds true, we may be on the brink of one of those jumps.

The Bluetooth SIG recently announced the coming of Bluetooth 4.2. You can read about all the upcoming changes for yourself, but the big enhancement centers around something called low-power IP connectivity. This essentially gives new Bluetooth devices the ability to connect directly to the Internet — no intermediary required. The ramifications of this has underpinnings in everything from automobiles to lightbulbs, but one of the biggest benefactors could be the wearable tech industry.

With direct Internet connectivity, Bluetooth devices will no longer need to paired to some intermediary device (e.g. a smartphone, tablet, or laptop) to upload and download what it needs to function. It will still need a connection to the Internet via some sort of gateway device, so it’s not as if our future smart watches will be totally free, but it still loosens the restrictions on what a device needs to operate.

Many current offerings of helmet sensors, for instance, use Bluetooth connectivity to relay data back to some central hub. Again, this would be a smartphone or laptop. That laptop then takes that data and uploads it to some server somewhere. This all works fine. Unless the laptop crashes. Or there is interference with the Bluetooth signal. Or the devices roam out of the field of connectivity. Most devices plan for this, certainly, by including some sort of on-board storage that would hold the data until the connection is restored. But if the helmets were able (through an in-stadium device) to upload the data right away, without the need for an extra connection, data could end up being more reliable and devices — not needing the extra storage — could get even smaller. There’s also an increased ability for these devices to talk to each other, be they in-equipment sensors on a hockey team or multiple sensors on one athlete.

This is a little bit of speculation, of course. We will have to wait until the protocol is widely adopted before knowing what kind of advancements can be made. And I’m sure there are things that you or I haven’t even thought about that will make their way to market or to the research sector. And that’s kind of the fun part. While it won’t bring about the Stark vision of a clean, endless source of energy, some pretty interesting things can come about when we are no longer limited by the technology of our times.

(Image via Manuel Iglesias)

The numbers are in for the League of Legends Worlds and they are staggering, and not just the $1 million prize pool. Riot Games, developers of LoL, posted the viewership numbers for their world finals. The event itself was spread out over 15 days of competition and totaled 100 hours of gameplay to decide the champion.

According to Riot, the finals were broadcasted in 19 different languages utilizing 40 different casters and play-by-play partners. The grand finals between Samsung White and  Star Horn Royal Club was watched by a peak of 11.2 million viewers, the equivalent of almost all of the censured population of Ohio. Put a different way, it was as if Oregon, Oklahoma and Connecticut combined to tune in simultaneously.

Throughout the road to the grand finals, LoL Worlds caught 27 million unique viewers and 288 million impressions to see Samsung White win it all. The 179 million hour total of esports watching outpaces the 151ish million hours of the video Gangnam Style by Psy which recently broke YouTube. This year’s fall classic went a full seven games and average 13.9 million viewers, though the final out of game seven was viewed by 27.8 million people. The numbers between esports and baseball are suddenly comparable, not to mention the sold-out 45,000 seat Sangam Stadium venue.

On Riot’s website, dating back to January of this year, they claimed over 67 million users played LoL every month. Of them, 27 million play daily and Riot’s servers carry the load for 7.5 million people at peak hours. The world’s most popular video game is showing no signs of slowing down. Who else ready to tailgate for an esports match? If it’s too cold outside, how about a BarCraft instead?

(Header photo via Riotgames.com)

Powdered supplements and meal replacements have existed for years, but over the recent months, they have taken merged and unified to answer the question: “Can we survive on artificial substance alone?”

Rob Rhinehart, the creator of Soylent, appeared on the Colbert Report to discuss his open source product. That’s when I first heard about it. In the course of the interview, Stephen Colbert tastes Soylent, adds chocolate sauce, and receives commendation from Rinehart:

This intrigued me. I figured Rinehart would have grimaced or demured when Colbert augmented his carefully crafted food replacement. But he didn’t. Something about this made me jump to the thought: This could work for athletes.

First in high school and then in college, I had weight problems. I was too light in high school (a 185 lbs. offensive lineman) and too heavy in college (a 210 lbs. five-seat rower). One of the greatest difficulties I faced was in the cafeteria. In high school, there was insufficient good food, so I couldn’t bulk up healthily. In college — with a Sodexho buffet — I had unlimited access to decent food and even more non-decent food. Part of the college problem was self control, but just as much of it was, let’s say, digestibility. The healthy options — the salads and vegetarian quiches — were often unpleasant or cold, but the pizza and the cheesy pastas and the cookies tasted warm and vaguely reminiscent of delicious (and more importantly, the pizza and pasta went well with the salad dressings and hot sauces that provided a much-needed variety).

In other words: Eating right was hard. Eating like an athlete — when I was burning 1000+ calories every day, and thus was 1000+ calories more hungry every day — was even harder (this, of course, is to say nothing of when your coaches actually want you to be obese).

Perhaps something like Soylent could be a solution? Not only does it meet the hard-to-hit nutritional standards, but it can provide 2000 calories and do so for around $10 a day — or $3.33 per meal.

One of the best resources I have found for learning about Soylent and Soylent-like products is the Soylent Subreddit on Reddit.com. In a recent conversation about the efficacy of the diet entirely on Soylent, user eviljolly pointed out one of the key advantages of a liquid diet — not that it trumps a standard balanced diet, but that it can bring a balanced diet to more people:

Soylent has come along and made nutrition easy for people, and people (like me) that would probably never devote themselves to eating perfectly healthy, can now do so without little to no effort involved.

The current problem for many athletes is a combination of incorrect calorie amount and poor calorie types.

“Americans are not lacking in calories,” Rob Rhinehart said to Stephen Colbert. “They’re lacking in balance.”

Athletes can be disciplined sorts. It’s not unthinkable a diet composed 2/3rds or 100% of liquified nutrition could be viable — especially if it comes cheap. I think Soylent and its sisters might be able to offer that balance.

God Save The Queen! Esports is coming to London in the form of a specific arena designed for tournaments, league play and ladder competitions. Gfinity, a company whose mission statement is “to help push esports within the UK to a professional level, to raise awareness and to provide an arena for gamers to showcase their talent” is working on the first building of its type in the country.

No stranger to the realm of esports — Gfinity hosted G3 and its $145,000 prize pool spread across four different games — the arena is already slated to hold an astonishing 30 live events next year. With seating for up to 500 spectators to view the competitions unfold, the building may not be as large as Major League Gaming’s (MLG) new Ohio event building, it is nonetheless a great first step. The confirmed events include games such as StarCraft II, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Halo, FIFA 15, League of Legends and Hearthstone. Gfinity has set aside $500,000 for these tournaments in addition to their weekly cups (weekly tournaments) plus six “open” events where anyone can come to the arena to chase their professional gaming aspirations.

Though this is new to the United Kingdom, mainland Europe is no stranger to hosting massive local area network (LANs) games and live tournaments. From DreamHack to Electronic Sports World Cups (ESWC), esports have spread across Europe as quickly as their internet connections will take it. The UK has hosted previous annual large-scale LANs before, notably the yearly Insomnia events, however nothing in the same scale as what Gfinity has planned for 2015 and beyond.

With new venues, tournaments and competitions, esports — despite recent controversies — continues to grow around the world. With a multitude of streaming platforms ranging from Twitch.TV to YouTube to MLG.TV, the way to watch and esports at home is wide open. The live-and-in-person options are finally catching up.

(Header image via Gfinity)

“We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man…We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster.”

Classic science fiction aside, there has been a recent announcement by Tufts University regarding the world’s first wireless electronic implant to fight staph infections then automatically dissolve into the body when the job is finished. Working with a collection of talent from Tufts as well as the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, the research group has successfully shown an absorbable chip that eliminated a bacterial infection in mice by applying heat to infected areas after receiving a wireless signal via remote. The devices themselves are made from silk — where the antibiotics are loaded for dispersal — and magnesium, allowing them to be safely absorbed in testing animals after 15 days.

The large scale implications of such a chip in humans is grand, as professor of biomedical engineering at Tufts Fiorenzo Omenetto believes

“This is an important demonstration step forward for the development of  on-demand medical devices that can be turned on remotely to perform a therapeutic function in a patient and then safely disappear after their use, requiring no retrieval.”

Frank C. Doble, a professor at Tufts School of Engineering, believes this could drastically change the aftermath of surgical procedures in hospitals.

“These wireless strategies could help manage post-surgical infection, for example, or pave the way for eventual ‘wi-fi’ drug delivery.”

As per a study conducted by the Center for Disease Control in 2011, as many as 1 in 25 hospital patients were hit with a healthcare-associated infection, or HAI. The same study showed approximately 721,800 and HAIs were responsible for an estimated 75,000 deaths.

With something as simple as a patch the doctor places and remotely monitors, some of the guesswork in post-surgery complications can be removed. While there is no timetable for the implant to begin human trials, the hope would be to cut down on not only HAIs but also infections of any other type. The implant managed to handle staph infections as well as E. coli and S. aureus bacteria. There may come a day where rather than seeing the doctor about a prescription and then driving to the pharmacy, the doctor or nurse could apply something as simple as a patch and then send you on your way.

(Header image via NIAID)

If you prefer casually drinking coffee and wearing pajamas while you shop, look no further than Cyber Monday. The new Black Friday, Cyber Monday also offers a wide array of gifts and options for shoppers. I suppose nothing is stopping you from going shopping today in your PJs, but that is really up to you and your local clothing statutes. We here at TechGraphs love our sports, but we’re all nerds at heart. And there are no shortage of deals for our brethren this holiday shopping season.

Just like how Black Friday deals creeping into Thanksgiving Day, some retailers are kicking off Cyber Monday as soon as today. The prices over at Amazon are lower than usual — though if you wait until Monday you may get an even better rate — if you’re in the market for anything ranging from MLB team zip-up hoodies, portable chargers for your phone or tablet, or even a 3D printer.

For the video documentary enthusiasts, make sure to check out HTC’s RE camera. You can hold it in your hand or with a simple mounting bracket the RE can go on your bicycle to record everything from beautiful scenery to bad driers. Regularly priced at $200, they will be on sale all weekend (while supplies last) for half off. The waterproof RE snaps pictures with its 16 mega-pixel camera and records video in 1080p.

On the other hand, if you’re more the style to watch movies than to film them, the Google Play Store is offering some great deals. With almost 90 movies available for less than 10 bucks, Google has you covered if you want to catch up on films. On top of the entertainment available, items such as Chromebooks, Chromecast and smart watches are all being offered at discounted prices. The LG G Watch is $130 dollars off its regular price of $229 and is compatible with any Android device — not LG specific — running 4.3 or higher. Other incentives such as up to $50 toward the Play Store are running on the Samsung Gear Live, ASUS ZenWatch and Sony SmartWatch 3.

If you’re an Apple enthusiast, fear not, as the Apple Store is running up to $100 dollars in iTunes gift card with a Mac purchase or $50 for an iPhone or iPad. AppleTV, compatible with MLB.TV, HBO GO, ABC, Watch ESPN, NFL Now and more, is also offering a $25 gift card. Though it is still being sold at the $99 regular price, with the gift card AppleTV basically 25% and makes for a great gift. Special thanks to AppShopper for already posting marked down apps, including some free apps.

Factor in other sites such as NewEgg, Tiger Direct and of course PC Part Picker (all are among my favorite sites to shop), there is no shortage of incredible deals to take advantage of. Rather than fighting for parking or bruising my elbows over in-store deals, I think I’ll enjoy this coffee and only worry about whether or not I want to eat left-over turkey for lunch or dinner. Maybe both.

(Image credit via IMDB)

The social media app Vine is sort of hard to nail down. Yes, it’s a tool that lets users share short videos with their friends and the world, but it doesn’t have one particular purpose. People use it to make comedy clips, post super short music videos, commit acts of journalism, and any other kind of thing that can fit in a six-second short. Vine is a great tool to blast out a video to all your Facebook and Twitter cohorts. But with our list of friends and followed accounts growing all the time, it becomes easier and easier to miss great content. Vine is hoping to counteract that by offering users the ability to receive mobile notifications from their favorite Viners. With a single touch, people can now get notified whenever an account posts a new video.

This could be seen as useful for lots of people, but I think sports fans could really benefit if leagues and teams do it right on their end. Almost every major league sports franchise has a Vine account. How much they use it varies quite a bit. But Vine could be used by these teams (and their respective leagues) to push out a good deal of highlights to fans. Certain league-specific apps can do this already, but Vine could be used as a one-stop highlight spot spanning across multiple leagues and teams.

It’s true that some teams use Vine to do this already. But the addition of push notifications taps into the immediacy of sports. Of course people can gather around a computer at the office on Monday and re-watch (and re-watch and re-watch) Odell Beckham Jr.’s one-handed snag, but a big football fan would want the ability to see it on their phone while they’re at the airport, on the bus, or even hanging at home without the game on TV.

Vine’s new push abilities compliment sports highlights as a whole. There could certainly be some TV licensing rules to deal with, but teams and leagues should see this new feature as a great potential to reach fans. We want our highlights and we want them now. Vine is making it easier for that to happen. Now it’s on the content creators.

(Image via Jason Howie)

Impressive sales numbers aside — Electronic Arts’ (EA) FIFA games have sold over 100 million copies throughout the franchise’s life — the game has been sowing the seeds of genuine soccer interest in the United States. While the latest version of the game, FIFA 2015, has been out for more than two months now, one of the best signs of increased home interest in the beautiful game is the record of online play for FIFA 14.

Even since March of this year — prior to the United States men’s national team improbably making it out of group play in the World Cup — soccer in general and Major League Soccer in particular was growing. As a joint effort between ESPN Sports Poll and Luker on Trends shows, for the first time ever MLS has reached the same level of fandom (measured by 12-17 year-olds who claimed avid interest) as Major League Baseball.

Luker on Trends partnered with EA again to release their latest data, showing distinct growth in online play as an MLS club from 2014 to 2015. The most popular clubs, Seattle Sounders, New York Red Bulls and L.A. Galaxy, come as no surprise given the super stars such as Clint Dempsey, Thierry Henry and Landon Donovan respectively, are all available to start slotting goals home.

It would be difficult to understate the importance of the US youth showing such an interest in the world sport for the future of the USMNT and USWNT teams. With more violent sports such as football being ruled out by certain professional athletes, specifically citing soccer, it is possible that some of our nation’s best young athletes will be turning to soccer for their competitive outlet.

(Header and graphic via EA.com)

We’ve all heard rumblings of ESPN launching services that allow viewers to watch MLS or NBA games without a cable or satellite subscription. As of today, they’ve only existed in rumor. According to a report by Re/code, however, ESPN may finally be entering the cord-cutter-friendly domain as early as February — though not with the sport you might assume.

Though plans don’t seem to be quite finalized as of yet, ESPN is looking to broadcast the Cricket World Cup via online streaming service come February. To U.S. viewers, this may not hold as much clout as a deal with the NBA, but it would be the first step in the eventual move away from TV-bundled streaming. As of now, services like WatchESPN and Fox Sports Go require a current cable or satellite subscription for full functionality. This makes it a convenience service for current subscribers, not a solution for those who don’t have the need/disposable income for a TV package. What ESPN is supposedly offering with cricket would pave the way to a much wider a-la-carte option — only pay for the sports you want to see.

This isn’t a shot across the bow of the streaming services already offered by the four major American sports. Were this type of streaming service to expand to leagues like the NBA or MLS, it would most likely come as an addendum to a cord-cutters current arsenal to go along with their current MLS Live or NBA League Pass subscription.

In a perfect world, we’d be able to pay one lump some to stream all the [insert sport here] games that are played during a season. But with team revenues tied so strongly to TV contracts, that doesn’t seem very likely. Certain leagues have deals with certain TV networks, and that’s just a fact of life. But if we were allowed to pay that network a little extra to access those usually-blacked-out games, that may be beneficial to both sides. Though it’s getting its start in a fairly obscure market (at least as far as U.S. watchers go), ESPN’s plans with cricket might be that pivotal first building block.

(Image via Pulkit Sinha)

As popularity in a sport grows, so too can the inherent trappings that go along with being in the mainstream. Fame and money come into it, which can sometimes lead to foul play. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a game by Valve Corporation that will be shown on the X Games in January, was hit with a massive cheating scandal over the past few days. Already three individual professional  players and two teams have been banned by Valve’s anti-cheat program, VAC.

The actual cheats themselves was detected not by Valve, but rather a competitive gaming league, ESEA. Once confirmed as a cheat, the league contacted Valve directly regarding the cheating and thus the bans were handed down via Valve Anti-Cheat or VAC. The programs used to improve the player’s aim is allegedly contained within a mouse software or on Valve’s own Steam Cloud, thus both went previously undetected by VAC as well as being usable while playing in a live-in person tournament. A game hack to improve aim such as an aimbot or aim lock, when the player has no vision or knowledge of the opposing player, is a blatant cheat.

The three players banned by VAC — dubbed as a VACation by reddit’s r/globaloffensive — are Simon “smn” Beck, Gordon “SF” Giry and Hovik “KQLY” Tovmassian. The significance of such an advantage cannot be understated, as killing the opposing team is often required to win rounds. In a competitive format, the first teams usually play a best of 3 across three different maps. First team to 16 round wins will take the map win.

These bans, as well as other players coming under suspicion, most notably Robin “Flusha” Rönnquist, come just before a major tournament at DreamHack Winter. According the DH website, the CS:GO alone portion of the tournament offers a prize pool of $250,000. Of the original eight invited teams to DH, two teams with the now banned cheaters have been disqualified.

With esports gaining more momentum and access to casual fans as well as the inquiring non-gamer, to see a cheating scandal of this magnitude hurts the CS:GO community, though not all is lost. While cheating is nothing new, other esports have had such events unfold and bounced back. In June of 2010, the StarCraft community was rocked when a match fixing scandal was confirmed in the most prestigious SC league, ProLeague. Then a total of 11 players were confirmed for throwing games in exchange for money from various gambling websites. While it is an entirely different game, it does give hope to CS:GO enthusiasts about bouncing back.

(Image via Valve’s Steam Store)