A new Nike+ “pressure sensor” is coming to Nike basketball and training shoes. The sensors will track data about wearers’ movements and transmit it wirelessly to their iPhones. The enhanced basketball shoes are meant to track the movements of players during practice sessions and games, including (but not limited to) how high the wearers jump. The training shoes are meant for casual and competitive athletes involved in any intense fitness activity.

Nike has been adding sensors to its athletic gear since 2006, though some of the products send data to an iPod or accompanying fitness watch rather than to a smartphone. The company says the Nike+ community has grown to more than six million “digitally connected” athletes.

Last month, Nike introduced the Nike+ FuelBand, a lightweight rubber wristband meant to be worn all the time to track fitness levels, which are measured in a Nike-branded activity currency called NikeFuel.

With these new basketball and training shoes, Nike says, workout statistics can be shared with friends on social networks. They also offer a “showcase” mode, which allows wearers to superimpose their live data onto a video that can then be shared with friends. So now, when a heated debate arises about who jumped higher on the court, you can take it inside, to Facebook.

A couple of unanswered questions — which I’ll ask Nike in a short while, and update as needed — is whether the sensor uses Bluetooth or another kind of wireless technology to transmit the data, as well as how far the reach of the sensor is. Most casual basketball players I know wouldn’t want to carry their smartphones in their pockets while playing (and I’m imagining it’s the same case with pro players). So would the user have to head to the sidelines or locker room and be within a certain proximity of his or her phone to transmit the data? Or does the data sync automatically?

And I’m curious to hear more about how verticals are actually measured. For example, if one foot edges higher than another, is the ultimate measurement an average of the two verticals? Or is it from the foot that got higher?

The company’s first sensor-enabled basketball shoe will be the Nike Hyperdunk+, which will cost $250 and hit stores this June. The first training shoes that work on the Nike+ system will be the Lunar Hyper Workout+ for women and the Lunar TR 1+ for men.

Nike has said LeBron James will wear the Nike Hyperdunk+ shoes this summer at the London Olympics.

Update: Nike’s vice president of digital sport, Stefan Olander, offered some more details on how the new pressure sensor works.

It reads four key pressure points in the foot to track when the feet leave the ground, Olander said. That data is combined with accelerometer technology to measure gravity and overall movement.

While data transmission in the “old” Nike+ sensors and running sneakers is enabled through Nike’s proprietary radio protocol, the latest Nike+ sensors use a new kind of Bluetooth technology that is said to be faster — and saps less power from connected devices. The data is stored locally on the sensor, and users can (wirelessly) upload the data to their iPhones when they’re done with their basketball or training session.

Also, the new pressure sensors are put into both left and right sneakers — unlike earlier versions of Nike+ sensors, which slipped into just one shoe — to more accurately measure the wearer’s movements. Whether the user takes off from the left foot or right foot — for example, when shooting a layup or attempting to dunk — Nike knows the timing of the foot pressure; the company claims it has created an algorithm that is more than 96 percent accurate in measuring jumps.

I wasn’t at today’s press event, but here are some tweets from those who were, including, naturally, Nike:

Improve every time you step on the court or in the gym. Introducing Nike+ Basketball & Nike+ Training #innovate http://t.co/7dsnBBwq

February 22, 2012 8:23 am via Nike PublisherReplyRetweetFavorite

@Nike

Nike

Nike has just unveiled a Hyperdunk shoe with a pressure sensor that tracks every move & allows you to upload it.

February 22, 2012 8:21 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@darrenrovell

darren rovell

#Nike is arguing that it will bring the power of its own lab to any athlete through technology. I like the idea of the connected athlete.

February 22, 2012 8:18 am via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@jeffjarvis

Jeff Jarvis

Nike+ will tell you how high you jumped when you okay bball!!! That’s unreal!!

February 22, 2012 8:23 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@omid

Omid Ashtari

Here’s a promotional YouTube video featuring Mr. James himself, showing off the sneakers and how another player’s vertical data is transmitted to the iPhone:

Some of the college basketball tourney’s games will only be available to Web users whose cable providers have deals with Turner Sports, or those who pay a $3.99 one-time fee to access the games on PCs, Google/Android and Apple/iOS devices.

Games that CBS broadcasts, though, will still be available to anyone with a Web browser, through the network’s own site.

Here’s the practical breakdown, nicely summarized by BTIG’s Rich Greenfield (registration required):

• CBS will stream the games airing on the CBS Network throughout the country live on CBSSports.com for free. Consumers will only be able to watch on PCs/Macs, with no tablet/smartphone access.
• TBS, TNT and TruTV will stream the games airing on each network live at TBS.com, TNT.tv and truTV.com for consumers who authenticate their respective MVPD service provider (currently all major MVPDs authenticate these network Web sites, except Time Warner Cable). As with CBS, the games will only be available via PC/Mac (no portability).
• Complete access to March Madness on Demand via PC/Mac, smartphone and tablets with interactive features, regardless of whether you have subscribed to MVPD service, will cost a consumer $3.99 (one-time fee for the whole tournament). Streaming online and across portable devices will be available from the selection show through the championship game.

A few more notes: CBS and Turner split the games, so you won’t run into the paywall every time you want to watch — Turner will have 41 of the games. And as Greenfield notes, most pay-TV operators have deals with Turner, which says that means about 75 million homes will have Web access via “authentication.” That said, if you’re planning on watching the games that way, better prepare now, by hunting down your subscriber info, etc. — the process isn’t nearly as easy as it ought to be.

Big picture: This is a switch from the precedent CBS established in 2006, when it started streaming all of the tournament’s games on the Web for free (for three years before that, it had charged around $15 to watch online).

Each year, the network loudly trumpeted the number of eyeballs and ad dollars that Web streams attracted, while arguing that it didn’t hurt traditional TV ratings at all. Last year, you could even watch the tournament on an iPad for free.

But it’s in keeping with the broader move we’ve seen from big media companies, who are pulling back on free Web video. Back when Hulu launched in 2008, it seemed that most big TV networks were going to put all their shows online, but in the last couple of years, we’ve seen the pendulum swing the other way, as networks tie “free” Web TV to pay-TV subscriptions.

I realize that this will be a bummer for some of you who thought you could enter an athletics-free zone, now that the Super Bowl is over.

But in the last week, Jeremy Lin has become a national sensation, and one who resonates with a certain slice of tech-savvy Twitter and Facebook users. Which means you’re going to see a lot of him, at least in the very near future.

Who is Jeremy Lin? Easy enough to Google him, or to read any number of profiles, like this nice piece from the New York Times. But if you’re in a real hurry, and/or lazy –

Guys, I’m tired. Can someone Cliffs Note this “Jeremy Lin” thing for me?

— ericspiegelman (@ericspiegelman) February 11, 2012

We can help you out here:

• Jeremy Lin’s parents emigrated from Taiwan to the Bay Area in the 1970s.
• Jeremy Lin played basketball at Palo Alto High School.
• Jeremy Lin played basketball at Harvard, where he earned an economics degree.
• After Harvard, Jeremy Lin played briefly for the Golden State Warriors, who let him go, and the Houston Rockets, who let him go.
• Last December, the New York Knicks hired him as a backup player, and he only played briefly for the team until last week.
• Last week, Jeremy Lin started playing a lot for the Knicks, because they had run out of bodies in his position. Since then, he’s played at a very high level. And the Knicks, who have been very bad for a long time, have won all of their games.
• The Knicks’ last game was last night, where they beat the Los Angeles Lakers and Kobe Bryant in a game that lots of people watched.
• Jeremy Lin’s instant celebrity comes from the conflation of several currents: He is a very rare Ivy League graduate playing and succeeding in the NBA. And he is an even rarer Asian-American playing in the NBA — just the fourth in the league’s history. And he plays in New York, a city that loves basketball and winners, and which still has an outsized influence on media. It’s an underdog story that is almost literally unbelievable. And one that touches on race and culture in a way that’s exciting without making (most) people uncomfortable.*
• If none of this appeals to you, you must really, really hate sports. Weird. But simple probability is in your favor, since Lin can’t keep this streak going indefinitely. And at some point, the hysteria will dissipate, and you won’t have to feign interest in three-point shots when you talk to prominent angel investors, entrepreneurs, etc.
• Then again, we would have said that six days ago, too.

Too many words? Okay. Some moving pictures:

*Now that Jeremy Lin is a meme, some of the race/class stuff will unfortunately become much less pleasant.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse

Sprint and the league didn’t disclose the size of the deal, though I am told it is fair to say that it is “in the millions” of dollars. Sprint replaces T-Mobile USA, which had been the league’s partner from 2005 until the end of last season.

As part of the pact, Sprint will offer its subscribers a new Sprint NBA Mobile app that will offer in-game and post-game video highlights, radio broadcasts of every game (including home and away radio broadcasts) as well as the usual assortment of news, scores and stats. Sprint says the app should be ready for Android by the time the delayed season tips off later this month. An iPhone version should be available at some point, though it may not have the exact same features.

Sprint subscribers who want even more basketball can get a 20 percent discount on the NBA’s mobile “League Pass,” which offers up to 40 out-of-market games per week.

Here’s a delicious juxtaposition you don’t get often: Various reports indicate that reality show empress Kim Kardashian’s upcoming wedding to New Jersey Nets basketball player Kris Humphries will be held at the Montecito estate of Google’s Executive Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt.

And, according to another report, if not there, then at a house owned by one of Silicon Valley’s most famous VC legends.

Schmidt won’t be a guest at what is sure to be a heavily chronicled event — which the New York Post said will have a $20,000 cake, three dresses and 500 guests.

You know, simple nuptials.

Instead, it appears Schmidt rents out the lush house, which he bought from talk show host Ellen DeGeneres in 2007 for $20 million.

Fun fact: It is the same spot where Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck — or Bennifer, as I like to call them — were set to be hitched in 2003, before they called off their engagement.

According to blog site The Real Estalker, who also wrote about the possible rental:

The privately situated and heavily secured luxury compound’s architectural heart and soul is a 5,000-plus square foot main house with 4 bedrooms and 4 full and 2 half bathrooms designed by beloved Santa Barbara architect George Washington Smith. Staff and/or guests can be comfortably accommodated in a detached 1-bedroom guest house with kitchen and an additional studio space tucked into a quiet corner provides private respite from family members and all the full-time staff people required to maintain an estate of this magnitude.

At the time Mister Schmidt snatched up the property, the extensively and meticulously landscaped grounds included a long winding drive, massive motor court, championship grade tennis court, extra-long swimming pool with raised spa area, wide terraces, broad lawns, and a stunning allée with colorful tiled fountain that screams out for a highly stylized celebrity wedding designed — we presume — by an efficient, innovative and extremely well-paid event planner.

[UPDATE:] Later, The Real Estalker changed its report and said the wedding might not be held at Schmidt’s place, but at another over-the-top estate owned by Silicon Valley venture legend Frank Caufield, one of the founders of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

I have a call in to the Kardashians, who are usually so shy with the press, so I will update as soon as I hear or a camera crew arrives at my house.

Until the I-dos are done, below are some pretty pix of Schmidt’s fancy spread from back in 2006:

A Google spokesman had no comment, obviously.

It will also launch what it calls the NBA FanCam–an app where fans can take a photo and then add various basketball-themed images and share the composite via social media.

“We are thrilled to deliver ‘fan-fueled’ NBA-themed mobile content, reflecting our strategy of putting the fans in the driver’s seat and creating content for celebrating on mobile and sharing via social media,” Cellfish CEO Fabrice Sergent said in a statement. “Given the worldwide enthusiasm for the NBA and its 30 teams, we know that fans will find this content exciting to further celebrate their favorite teams.”

The start-up touts itself as having more than $100 million in revenue and has 320 employees in the U.S., France, Germany and Canada.

One exception to the rule has been the annual March Madness NCAA college basketball tournament, which CBS has been broadcasting for free on the Web for several years.

Which is smart: A big chunk of the tournament occurs during weekday work hours, so giving people the opportunity to stream games to their PCs isn’t a channel conflict, it’s just a chance to collect more eyeballs.

This year is the first year that CBS and Time Warner’s Turner are splitting up broadcast and digital rights, and the two networks have added a new twist: Free streaming of all the games to Apple’s iPhone and iPad. (No luck this year for Google Android fans).

[UPDATE: Several of you have asked when the app will show up at iTunes. March 10, Turner says.]

In the past CBS has offered iPhone streaming, but only via a paid app; this will be the first year the tournament is available on the iPad.

The tournament, which now features an extra four teams and an extra two days of games, kicks off March 15; we’ll see then how Verizon Wireless and AT&T, which is one of the tournament’s digital sponsors, hold up to demand.

Andreessen Horowitz has invested more than $80 million in Twitter via purchasing stock in private secondary markets.

When called about it by BoomTown, a spokeswoman at the high-profile Silicon Valley venture firm confirmed the purchase.

To be clear, Twitter does not get this money–early investors and employees able to sell their privately held Twitter shares do.

Buying into the secondary markets–which have recently attracted some controversy and regulatory scruntiny–has become a common way for VCs to invest in a hot start-up without a complex and competitive funding bake-off.

The move is an interesting one, since Andreessen Horowitz was not part of the recent $200 million round of venture funding at the San Francisco microblogging company, led by Kleiner Perkins at a $3.75 billion valuation.

Sources said that the firm made the move because it is already deeply invested in other key companies in the social space, including gaming giant Zynga, location-focused Foursquare, local discounting phenom Groupon and general social networking behemoth Facebook.

Apparently, Twitter makes it a full basketball team.

The investment by the firm gives more perceptual boost to Twitter, which is still trying to create a lucrative business model for itself, focused on advertising.

It needs to, if it want to stay independent for the long haul.

While an IPO is a possibility, so is an acquisition. Several months ago, while it was doing its funding round, Twitter had incoming interest from Facebook, which lobbed in a $5 billion soft offer, as well from Google.

Apologies for this, but it is indeed a slam dunk: James and his shoe company have a new ad to show off, and the Internet wants to see it, then talk about it. Google tallies 58 stories so far about the new ad. Make that 59….

Oh, that scamp John Mayer is such a jokester.

Here’s a spoof video the singer did in the wake of all the controversy around the basketball star choosing Miami to play for and leaving behind a dejected and angry Cleveland.

Big surprise, given his promiscuous reputation: Mayer will play his music for everyone.

Enjoy:

On this large canvas, people work differently and apps can behave differently depending on which way the device is turned. Apps can (and must) incorporate creative ways of navigating—in addition to the usual multi-touch gestures like flicking, two-finger swiping and pinching. Thus, although it runs most of the 150,000 apps already available for the much smaller iPhone and iPod touch, the iPad is spawning a new type of tablet-specific app.

This week, I’ve been testing some of these iPad apps that give users novel ways to interact with the device. These are designed to take advantage of a larger touch screen by using things like fly-out menus, multi-panel layouts, 3-D images intermixed with text and newspapers that can be read almost as easily as their paper counterparts.

Since most of us haven’t used apps like these or a device like this before, many apps install with brief tutorials on how to navigate them. It’s obvious that the makers of these iPad apps are still tinkering with what works best for a large touch surface. And ads appear in several digital newspaper and magazine apps. Unless otherwise noted, the apps listed below are free.

News

Multi-tasking isn’t yet possible on the iPad, but the NPR app allows people to do certain things simultaneously. While browsing news stories, a player in the bottom portion of the screen lets you listen to programs, interviews or songs. I played Jakob Dylan’s “Women and Country” song while reading an article about NCAA basketball. Content can be saved to a playlist for future listening.

The Marvel Comics app

The Wall Street Journal app’s home page displays a horizontal row of newspapers representing the past seven days’ editions and a “Now” edition, with late-breaking news, all of which can be read when the iPad isn’t online. These editions are designed to use the full screen to display easy-to-read newspaper layouts and videos that play right within the articles. A finger swiped from the top down skips to a different section of the paper, while pinching any screen with two fingers returns to the home page. And you can save articles and sections. The WSJ iPad app also can access saved data from a WSJ.com account.

The app is free to download but requires a subscription for full access, which costs $4 a week or is free for a limited time to existing online or print subscribers.

The New York Times (NYT) app is called Editors’ Choice and looks like a roomier version of the newspaper’s iPhone app. Five icons at the bottom of the screen instantly jump to different sections of the paper, or you can flick a finger across these screens to page to more articles. It doesn’t require a subscription.

The USA Today app brings the Gannett Co. (GCI) paper’s color-coded blue, green, red and purple sections to the iPad. Its popular charts of information (called “Snapshots”) pop out from the bottom left of the screen and include polls that can be voted on using the device. The USA Today app looks less like the print edition of the paper and more like a list of news points with color photos beside each. This list can be scrolled with a simple finger flick up or down.

Magazines

Digital magazines on the iPad seem to be experimenting with different payment methods. Rodale Inc.’s Men’s Health, for example, is a free app and includes previews of magazine issues, but then it charges $5 to download the actual issue. Bonnier Corp.’s Popular Science app costs $5 up-front and includes an issue that must be downloaded within the app.

Popular Science really uses the iPad’s larger surface in creative ways. Instead of just letting you page ahead with each finger flick as if reading a regular magazine, you can read articles by flicking a finger down or across a screen. In some articles I read, images appeared to be floating in the background behind text. Two fingers flicking up from the bottom of the screen show shortcuts for a table of contents and previous magazine issues.

Music

Pandora’s iPad app makes good use of the device’s screen real estate by showing artist information, now-playing details, album art and a list of personalized radio stations all on the same screen. I found myself more likely to read about artists on the iPad than on my smaller iPod touch. But like many Pandora users, I like playing music in the background as I work on other tasks, and this isn’t possible on the iPad because it doesn’t allow third-party apps like Pandora to multi-task.

Entertainment

Scrabble app

The Marvel Comics app displays stunning, large illustrations and moves you across the screen to see them as if the comic is one continuous strip and there’s no division between one screen and the next. A finger swipe moves you ahead in a guided view that jumps you from one character’s dialog cloud to the next in the correct order. This app is a free download and a handful of free comic books come with it, but each additional book costs around $2.

Scrabble for iPad costs $10 and includes options for playing with friends by passing the iPad back and forth, and an additional free app enables connecting an iPhone or iPod touch to the iPad to use these smaller screens as tile racks. You can play against your Facebook friends or the computer, and things like “Best Word” and an option to shuffle tiles make the game a little easier to play for some. Scrabble will even play your iTunes music in the background while you’re dragging tiles onto the board using your finger.

With Real Racing HD, you see a 3-D view of racetracks and steer a car by leaning the iPad in the direction you need to turn (a built-in accelerometer senses where you’re moving the iPad). I played this $10 game while sitting in the back seat of a moving car and got a bit dizzy since the race is so realistic.

Education

A great example of how the iPad can be used for education can be seen in an app titled “The Elements: A Visual Exploration,” developed by Touch Press. This costs $14 and displays the periodic table of elements stretched across the screen. Selecting one element brings it forward and spins a dazzling image of it so you can see all sides of it. A link to the Web pulls in real-time information about that element.

iPad apps like The Elements: A Visual Exploration, above, make good use of the larger touch screen.

Others

Apple’s (AAPL) iBooks and Amazon.com’s (AMZN) Kindle are two terrific e-reader apps that bring digital books to the iPad. There’s a strong argument for using the Kindle app, since books bought through it can be accessed on a variety of platforms in addition to the iPad, all in sync right where you left off reading, while iBooks are currently limited to the iPad. But the books in iBooks are displayed in an arresting way, with animation that resembles real pages turning.

Pages, Keynote and Numbers are Apple’s versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel and they cost $10 each. When installed, these programs can convert documents from Microsoft’s (MSFT) formats and let you work on them. They present rich, PC-like features controlled by touch. Pages, also lets you convert the documents back to the original Microsoft format.

TruPhone and Skype will make calls over the Internet using the iPad when you’re online, and in one test, this worked relatively well.

The Houzz Inc. app is a digital look book for interior-decorating ideas that’s updated with current images of decorated houses. It displays large images of decorated rooms across the iPad’s screen, allowing you to search and save certain looks for offline access or sharing with others.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

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More iPad Coverage »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100406/for-the-ipad-apps-with-their-own-wow-factor/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090804/playing-with-a-more-sensitive-wii/ http://allthingsd.com/20090804/playing-with-a-more-sensitive-wii/#comments Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:18:02 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20090804/playing-with-a-more-sensitive-wii/ Nintendo’s Wii gaming system motivates first-graders, senior citizens and everyone in between to get off their couches and play video games by swinging a motion-sensing remote control. These motions are similar enough to those used in real-life games that people find the Wii less intimidating than other video games with confusing controls.

After almost three years of Wii success, Nintendo recently reported it sold in its first quarter less than half the Wii consoles it sold a year earlier. The Wii needs a shot in the arm, and Nintendo thinks it has just the solution: the Wii MotionPlus remote accessory.

This small piece plugs into the bottom of Wii remotes and costs $20 by itself or $50 when bundled with the Wii Sports Resort game, which includes 12 sports that take advantage of Wii MotionPlus. The Wii console costs $250 and comes with a remote and a Nunchuk. The Wii MotionPlus has a gyroscope that helps the remote detect slight twists or rotations made by one’s wrist and/or arm and reflects these movements on the screen. It adds more precision to games like bowling and golf, so you don’t feel like you accidentally made a good—or bad—shot. And it lets you add spin to a ball while swinging a golf club or ping-pong racket or while bowling.

I’ve been playing games with the Wii MotionPlus, and this small accessory adds a much more satisfying, realistic element to Wii games. In some cases, this meant that I played a game with less success than with the original Wii remote because the MotionPlus add-on is more responsive and sensitive. But I eventually got used to it and liked it more than the plain remote.

However enjoyable, the Wii MotionPlus is more of an evolutionary change than a revolutionary change. If you’ve never played video games on a Wii before, you wouldn’t know what you were missing if you used the remote without MotionPlus.

The real excitement in video gaming and general broadcast TV controlling will come when we don’t need any remote controls at all and cameras will sense our movements, reflecting them on-screen. In June, Microsoft (MSFT) announced its Project Natal, which would potentially work with all Xbox 360 consoles to directly sense movements and sounds, and to recognize faces. This would encourage users to swing, throw, run and jump in a completely natural way without the need to learn anything about how to hold a remote control or operate its buttons.

On a similar note, Sunnyvale-Calif.-based Canesta Inc. wants you to use your hands as remote controls for your TV. The idea with Canesta is that users could, for example, walk into a family room and wave at the TV to turn it on, move a hand in a rightward circle to turn up the volume and flip through channels using motions like those used to page through a large book. I tried Canesta in a demonstration and can testify that doing things like turning the channel with your hands is a powerful and somewhat magical experience. But of these, Nintendo currently has the only product on the market to use technology that echoes natural movements, albeit with a remote control. Project Natal is still just a research project that isn’t used in any products, and it won’t be coming out any time this year.

Canesta has a partnership with Hitachi (HIT) so that it will be used in the company’s TV sets, though Hitachi says these TVs won’t be available until 2010 at the earliest and would likely show up in Japan first. Canesta is also building other partnerships, or it could work as a standalone product for TVs, computers, set-top boxes or other devices.

Wii MotionPlus makes the remote smart enough not to require as much button pressing. For example, shooting basketballs in a three-point shootout only required holding the remote in my right hand so it followed my shooting motion. Bowling no longer requires letting go of a button just in time to release the ball, a former menace to Wii’s beginner bowlers. And I threw a Frisbee by moving the remote with the same motion as if I were tossing one in real life. At first, my friend and I found ourselves trying to make stiff motions that seemed more video-game-like, but when the on-screen instructions encouraged us to move naturally, we did so and had much more success.

Wii Sports Resort includes 12 different sports but omits some of the old favorites from the original Wii Sports. Tennis has been replaced with table tennis, boxing has been replaced by sword fighting, and though bowling and golf remain, baseball is gone. New sports include wakeboarding, Frisbee, archery, basketball, power cruising (jet skis), canoeing, cycling and air sports like parachuting.

I bowled and put a little extra spin on the ball by twisting my wrist just before letting go. The ball was surprisingly reactive, so much so that I had to tone down my spin before I got the hang of it. Wakeboarding works by holding the remote horizontally like it’s the cross bar you hold onto and use for steering in the water. The Wii MotionPlus works with the Nunchuk attachment, and my friend and I attached this piece to the remote to compete against one another in several rounds of archery (he won by seven points). With the Nunchuk attached to the remote, we held the remote like it was the bow and slowly pulled the Nunchuk attachment back as if it were the arrow—stretching sound-effects and all.

The MotionPlus can stay attached to the remote while playing games that aren’t made specifically for its use; those games won’t be affected. However, a regular remote can’t be used with games made for the MotionPlus. Along with Wii Sports Resort, three other games are made to use the Wii MotionPlus: Sega’s Virtua Tennis 2009, EA Sports’ (ERTS) Grand Slam Tennis and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10.

If you’re hoping to give your tired Wii a boost, you’ll like what the relatively inexpensive Wii MotionPlus accessory brings to your game—though you’ll also need to buy new games that work with it. Generally speaking, it’s exciting to know that technology is almost advanced enough that we could very soon stop letting our remotes have all the control and take some of it back with just the wave of a hand.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090804/playing-with-a-more-sensitive-wii/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090410/cbs-releases-online-march-madness-stats/ http://allthingsd.com/20090410/cbs-releases-online-march-madness-stats/#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:44:59 +0000 Marisa Taylor http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=10616 The NCAA basketball tournament is over, but CBS (CBS) Sports is basking in the glow of its March Madness-related traffic surge.

CBSSports.com reports that its March Madness on Demand video player had about 7.5 million unique visitors by the end of the tournament, a 58 percent increase from 4.8 million users over the same period last year. The first four days of the tournament saw more unique visits–5.6 million–than last year’s total traffic.

Read the rest of this post

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090410/cbs-releases-online-march-madness-stats/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090402/the-ncaa-blows-the-whistle-on-twitters-march-tweetness/ http://allthingsd.com/20090402/the-ncaa-blows-the-whistle-on-twitters-march-tweetness/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:59:49 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=5927 Last week, AT&T and Federated Media debuted “March Tweetness,” a Twitter-endorsed page geared around the March Madness college basketball tournament. It was Twitter’s second attempt at what amounted to an advertising play, and I thought it looked modestly promising.

And now it’s gone. At least temporarily.

Federated has taken down the site at the request of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and has put up a placeholder search page in its place. The problem? The college sports group, which keeps a tight grip on any and all trademarks related to its teams, games and tournaments, says the site infringed on its copyrights.

You’d think that might have crossed the minds of Twitter, Federated or at least the folks at AT&T (T), who already work with the NCAA. But no matter. Federated spokesguy Matthew DiPietro says the site will be back up with a new look, a lack of copyright violations and a different URL in time for the tournaments Final Four games this weekend.

Does this derail the great Twitter advertising strategy? Nope. But it does illustrate just how new and unformed this stuff is, both for Twitter and its ad partners. Which DiPietro is happy to admit. “These are first-of-their-kind executions,” he told me. “They’re very experimental… things will get worked out.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090402/the-ncaa-blows-the-whistle-on-twitters-march-tweetness/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090329/mark-cubans-twitter-bill-510-a-word/ http://allthingsd.com/20090329/mark-cubans-twitter-bill-510-a-word/#comments Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:46:16 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=5739 Mark Cuban has owned the Dallas Mavericks for more than nine years, and during that time he’s racked up more than $1.5 million in fines from the National Basketball Association for various transgressions. But he’s still finding ways to plow new ground.

The latest: A $25,000 bill from the league for two messages, totaling 49 words, that he posted via Twitter on Friday night. Both tweets complained about the officiating in that night’s Mavericks-Denver Nuggets game.

Cuban’s response? This tweet, posted Sunday afternoon: “just found out got fined25k by nba.) nice.” And then, upon further reflection, he penned this beauty:

Cuban is now wondering aloud, via Twitter (of course) and his blog whether his tweets ought to be considered copyrighted–that is, whether blogs and other publications need his permission to reproduce the stuff he posts. I don’t think so, obviously.

But for what it’s worth, I did check Twitter’s terms of service, and was a little surprised to see that the micro-blogging service doesn’t exert any claim on its users’ work. That’s a refreshing change of pace compared to Twitter’s Web 2.0 peers.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090329/mark-cubans-twitter-bill-510-a-word/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090321/weekend-update-32109-march-madness-edition/ http://allthingsd.com/20090321/weekend-update-32109-march-madness-edition/#comments Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:10:23 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=15156 Technically, the term refers to the frenzied flow of games and the intensity of the contenders for the NCAA Championship crown. But the NCAA doesn’t have a corner on “March Madness”–those descriptors work well in other instances, too. To wit:

BoomTown posted from various spots in Europe this week, yet managed to follow the geek-tastic goodness of Silicon Valley’s own contender, Apple (AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak, who competed while injured this week on “Dancing With the Stars”–and escaped elimination via the love of viewers in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Another founder made the headlines this week–BoomTown noted that Steve Case appeared at a huge pep rally at Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL. Case and former AOL exec Ted Leonsis gave their support (and a lucky green tie) to new CEO Tim Armstrong. Elsewhere, Pure Digital, the maker of BoomTown’s favorite gadget–the ever-present Flip digital video camera–sold itself to Cisco (CSCO) for $590 million in stock, and BoomTown urged Silicon Valley to remember it’s not immune to the recession, to put its nose to the grindstone and to avoid party-hearty inanity.

Guess no one’s taking heed of the warning, though: MediaMemo reports that no one’s getting anything done at work–CBS (CBS) says its March Madness Web traffic is up 57 percent compared to last year. On top of that, television viewership rose various percentages throughout the week. MM wasn’t watching much basketball this week, though–there was plenty to blog about: The New York Times (NYT) cracked down on unauthorized use of its photos; Discovery Communications (DISCA) announced a patent infringement suit against Amazon and its Kindle Reader; Palm (PALM) delivered dismal third quarter results, putting even greater pressure on the success of the Pre; and in a Q&A with BusinessWeek editor Stephen Adler, Steve Ballmer said he’s open to a phone call from Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz whenever she’s ready to talk. Oh, and in case you were wondering what happened at SXSW, MediaMemo got a Google (GOOG) guy to explain it.

Digital Daily’s March Madness started with a liveblog of Apple’s St. Patrick’s Day press event to unveil version 3.0 of its iPhone OS, a chronicle of the myriad features displayed onstage and a live photoblog to back it up. DD noted that sales of the iPod touch and iPhone have outstripped RIM’s (RIMM) combined BlackBerry sales by a factor of… well, by a LOT. Kind of supports the data that say mobile Web use doubled over the last year. Which is good, because Mac sales were no good in February.

In Personal Technology, Walt Mossberg reviewed the latest release of Microsoft IE8 (MSFT), its most comprehensive release in many years. His verdict? Mixed, of course. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt talked to readers about the many models of BlackBerry phones and how they differ from one another, the new iPod shuffle and its earphone compatibility and upgrading Vista to Windows 7. In the Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret reviewed the Ee Top, Asus’s first foray into the all-in-one PC market.

More next week. Go Woz!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090321/weekend-update-32109-march-madness-edition/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090320/hackers-target-basketball-fans-with-march-madness-malware/ http://allthingsd.com/20090320/hackers-target-basketball-fans-with-march-madness-malware/#comments Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:39:49 +0000 Marisa Taylor http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=9648 Basketball fans, beware.

Hackers are taking advantage of bracket-related Web surfing and initiating some madness of their own, with tactics as sneaky as spreading malicious software through March Madness blog posts.

Online security company Websense discovered two March Madness-related malware scams earlier this week, one in the form of URLs posted in blog comments that took users to a phony anti-virus scanning site, and another as a search engine optimization scam that infected basketball-related terms and pushed them to the top in Google (GOOG).

It’s a clever and common tactic, particularly for an event like the NCAA tournament, which has fans checking sports sites, blogs and mobile devices for updates on their favorite teams. Websense’s chief technology officer, Dan Hubbard, says that hackers try to capitalize on popular events or stories on the Internet, whether it’s a major athletic event such as the Olympics, the recent presidential election, or a celebrity breakup that drives Web traffic. Users need to be wary of links to fake anti-virus scanners that urge installation. “Just because something comes up on your screen and tells you to install it doesn’t mean you have to actually do it,” he says. “That’s a really hard message to get across to the consumers.”

Read the rest of this post

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090320/hackers-target-basketball-fans-with-march-madness-malware/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090305/cbs-no-web-ad-recession-for-march-madness/ http://allthingsd.com/20090305/cbs-no-web-ad-recession-for-march-madness/#comments Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:39:29 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=4916 Here’s a pleasant, rare bit of media news sunshine: CBS says advertisers are still lining up to get into its March Madness webcast. The company expects to generate $30 million in Web ads from the college tournament this year, up 30 percent from 2008.

CBS (CBS) says it has locked up AT&T (T) Coke (KO) and General Motors’ (GM) Pontiac as “presenting sponsors.” And Comcast (CMCSA) is paying to associate itself with the Webcast’s “boss button,” which you’re supposed to hit if one of your remaining superiors waddles by your cube while you’re watching the Duke game.

Chris Albrecht at NewTeeVee thinks CBS will need to take some of that extra dough and plow it right back into bandwidth bills, since the company is using a high-end player from Microsoft (MSFT) to stream the games this year. I’m not so sure about that–last I looked, Microsoft was still trying to persuade companies to use its player instead of Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, and I have to believe it’d be willing to make it worth CBS’s while to do so.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090305/cbs-no-web-ad-recession-for-march-madness/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090217/a-march-madness-win-for-microsoft-cbs-taps-silverlight/ http://allthingsd.com/20090217/a-march-madness-win-for-microsoft-cbs-taps-silverlight/#comments Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:04:48 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=4301 Do you love college basketball but hate Microsoft? Then CBS has a tough choice in store for you next month.

That’s because the network will be delivering its March Madness coverage using Redmond’s Silverlight streaming media technology, which for some reason stirs apoplectic emotions among a subset of tech zealots. Supposedly these folks would rather look at a blank screen than use dreaded Microsoft (MSFT) tech.

Why? Got me. I downloaded Silverlight onto my MacBook to watch NBC’s Olympics Webcasts last summer. And whenever I could find the events I wanted to watch (much harder than it should have been), I got a really great picture on my laptop.

So did some 40 million other people, which was why Microsoft wanted so desperately to get the rights to the event–it is trying very hard to gain some ground on rival Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash technology, the de facto standard for Web video. So it spends a lot of time focusing on big Web video events where it can introduce its tech to consumers.

[UPDATE: CBS wants you to know -- see comment below -- that you don't have to use Silverlight to watch the games online.]

March Madness isn’t nearly as big as the Olympics, of course: Last year, some 4.8 million people watched the tournament via CBS’s Webcast. But it’s a very big deal for CBS (CBS), which generated more than $20 million in extra advertising revenue out of the event. No word on what Microsoft had to pony up in order to get the rights this year, but Les Moonves and company certainly didn’t give them away.

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