ESPN has reengineered its streaming radio app to offer improved sound quality, push alerts for when a favorite program is going live and content-caching for listening to podcasts without an Internet connection.

It’s also launching the app for the first time on iPad. The app is already available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry; the updated version will hit Android in June, and a Windows phone app will be available this summer.

If you vaguely recall ESPN having just updated its radio app, you would be correct: The company retooled it less than 18 months ago to include new search and personalization features, as AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka reported here.

Marc Horine, ESPN’s vice president of digital and print media, says that with the newest version, the network is trying to refocus on what’s most important with a radio app — the listening experience. Files have been compressed for faster streaming and downloading, and the sound quality has been enhanced, Horine says. And the app includes DVR — which allows users to skip ads, by the way, though I doubt ESPN would encourage that — and the ability to download full podcasts for listening offline.

Most of the content on the app is commentary, though there are some live play-by-play game options, and there’s a SportsCenter update available every 20 minutes (for the really, really rabid sports fans). To lure listeners to the app, ESPN has mixed up its app offerings to include original, app-only programming with stuff that’s already broadcast on terrestrial radio, like “BS Report with Bill Simmons,” “Pardon the Interruption” and “Fantasy Focus.”

At $4.99, the new ESPN Radio costs two dollars more to download than the old version, and runs in-app ads as well as commercials throughout the podcasts.

Horine says the mobile radio app has been downloaded more than 740,000 times since it first launched two-and-a-half years ago. That’s actually a pretty small percentage of the 24 million weekly radio listeners ESPN claims across all platforms.

And the majority of listeners — 90 percent, Horine says — listen to radio while at work Monday through Friday. But now, with the ability to stop and start radio podcasts on your desktop and pick up right where you left off on the mobile app, ESPN envisions mobile will become a growing fraction of those listeners.

(Full disclosure: I worked as a non-Disney employee for ESPN from 2003 to 2006. I was not involved with network’s radio programming.)

Yahoo’s embattled CEO Scott Thompson (pictured here) is set to step down from his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in what will be dramatic end to a controversy over a fake computer science degree that he had on his bio, according to multiple sources close to the situation.

The pair will apparently say he is departing for “personal reasons.” Sources said that Thompson will be claiming to be leaving due to a serious illness that he recently discovered he had.

But the evolving crisis — which is just over a week old — centered on his botched resume and how he handled the thorny issue is the key reason for the abrupt end to his tenure as a CEO.

Thompson’s likely replacement on an interim basis will be Yahoo’s global media head Ross Levinsohn, who most recently also ran its Americas unit, including its advertising sales.

In addition to the management upheaval, Yahoo’s board is closing in on a settlement with the man who discovered Thompson’s misstep, activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point, said sources.

The situation could change, since Yahoo’s full board still has to meet this morning to officially approve the sweeping changes at the long-troubled company.

But, if it is, this development goes a long way toward fixing some of what has been ailing Yahoo recently.

And it’ll also be a stunning victory for Loeb (pictured here), since the pugnacious hedge fund investor is set to get three board seats from a slate proposed by him as part of a proxy fight aimed at Yahoo. The new Yahoo directors will be media exec Michael Wolf and turnaround specialist Harry Wilson. Loeb’s fourth selection — former NBC head Jeff Zucker — will withdraw.

The five current Yahoo directors — who were to step down at the company’s annual meeting this summer — will leave the board effective immediately, sources said, to make way for the Third Point selections.

Finally, Yahoo’s recently added director Fred Amoroso will be named chairman of the board.

Amoroso is the director who has been conducting the investigation into the issues raised by Loeb about how the fake academic credentials got in Thompson’s public bios, as well as in Yahoo’s regulatory filings, and also the hurried circumstances around his hiring in January.

Those mysteries — read, screw-ups — might never be solved now, although Thompson made a convoluted attempt to explain it all in two awkward employee meetings at the end of last week. In those gatherings, according to numerous sources, he blamed a headhunting firm for introducing the mistake when he was being hired for a job at eBay in the mid-2000 timeframe.

That company, Heidrick and Struggles, slapped back last week with an internal memo, noting that Thompson’s claim was “verifiably not true.” Sources said that Heidrick told Yahoo’s board that it was in possession of a resume that Thompson had apparently submitted showing the inaccurate CS degree on it.

That memo, impugning Thompson’s credibility, was one of many that piled on to create an impossible situation for the Yahoo board, related to his leadership ability going forward.

Thompson had also previously issued a Yahoo statement, in which he apologized for the “distraction” caused by the problematic resume, but not for the mistake itself.

And, initially, Yahoo — under his direction — had called the borked resume an “inadvertent error.”

Such fumbling to fix the situation was among the many other issues that the board has been considering relating the ability of Thompson to remain in his job. Also of importance was the sinking morale of Yahoo employees, who had largely rejected Thompson’s excuses in the ResuMess scandal.

Internal message boards at Yahoo lit up all last week, with staffers largely rejecting his explanations. In addition, a number of top execs and engineers approached the board calling for Thompson’s firing.

While that’s not precisely what happened here, it’s close enough to describe Thompson’s departure as inevitable.

All this change comes in the wake of a massive restructuring he was in the midst of at Yahoo, after 2,000 employee layoffs.

Thompson was pushing forward a vision of adding a much more significant data and commerce element to Yahoo’s largely ad-based business.

That is likely to be less stressed under media-focused Levinsohn, who will be essentially trying out to be the permanent CEO.

Well known in the media and advertising communities, he has worked at a number of big online efforts over many years.

According to his bio at Yahoo, where he arrived in 2010:

He previously served as the President of News Corporation’s Fox Interactive Media, where he was responsible for the day-to-day operations, strategy and acquisitions that helped transformed the company into a leader in digital media. He also held senior management positions with AltaVista, an early pioneer and leader in search, CBS Sportsline where he oversaw all content and development for the top rated sports site, and HBO where he launched and oversaw a unit developing new programming and revenue streams. Levinsohn also was the co-founder and managing director of Fuse Capital, an investment and strategic equity management firm focused on investing in and building digital media and communications companies.

Levinsohn sits on the board of Freedom Communications and the Bogart Pediatric Cancer Research Program. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from The American University.

So far in my checking, Levinsohn’s resume is accurate.

More to come, obviously.

I have emails and texts and calls into everyone for comment, but apparently they are all out at a Mother’s Day brunch (except me).

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

Zander Lurie — CBS’s SVP of strategic development, who worked on a number of its key digital initiatives — is leaving the media giant.

Lurie has been involved in everything from the company’s acquisition of Clicker to its recent spate of licensing deals for digital distribution of its premium content to the integration of its CNET tech news unit.

He does not have another job lined up, but is looking for an operational role, he said in an interview.

Lurie was CFO of CBS Interactive, before moving to his corporate role. Previously, he worked on M&A at CNET.

“CBS is now at a place where everything is really integrated and working between all the digital platforms and our sports, news and entertainment products,” said Lurie. “So, I want to get out and build something new and from the ground up.”

A new Pew survey of more than 2,200 U.S. adults shows that 70 percent of all cellphone owners and 86 percent of smartphone owners say they’ve used their phones in the past 30 days to access immediate information, solve a problem or get help in an emergency.

The fact that cellphones and smartphones are being used as need-it-now devices really isn’t that surprising, since they put the world’s trove of information in our pockets. What’s more interesting is how those situations are categorized — something the mobile ad industry might want to pay heed to.

The majority of those surveyed — 41 percent — say they’ve used their phones for the basic task of coordinating meetings or get-togethers.

That outweighs the number of people who say they’ve used their phones to look up a restaurant (30 percent), check sports scores (23 percent) and get transit information (20 percent).

Less than one-fifth of those surveyed said they’ve used their phone in an emergency situation in the past 30 days, which is probably a good thing.

Another interesting tidbit: Despite the fact that slightly more women than men now own smartphones, as my AllThingsD colleague Ina Fried reports, men who own mobile phones are more likely than women to look up information during an argument. Some 31 percent of men admit to doing this, compared with 22 percent of women.

Could this be because women are less likely to experience memory loss? Just saying …

(Image courtesy of Flickr/Brenderous)

But there’s a third option emerging, where the actual teams and venues are offloading excess inventory, and instead of paying face value, customers can name their price — sort of like hotel rooms on Priceline.com.

ScoreBig.com, which launched in October 2010, is promising that winning bidders will end up getting tickets up to 60 percent off, and a minimum of 10 percent off.

“Forty percent of live event tickets go unsold nationwide,” said Peter Sinclair, the company’s VP of Marketing. “Even when they fill up the building, they are giving a lot of tickets away.”

Sinclair said this is a way for those venues or teams to move that inventory without degrading the brand. He declined to say who they work with in particular, but that the Los Angeles-based company works directly with teams in every league and ticket vendors, like TicketMob.

Today, the company is opening its site to anyone after having a long wait list. Additionally, it is launching an iPhone app called ScoreBig Daily, which offers deals on three to six of the best performances that are available that evening in your city. The free app is only availalbe for iPhone, and is only currently available in San Francisco and Los Angeles. New York will be added this summer with a national roll-out following.

Both the iPhone app and the site allow customers to name their price and choose where in the auditorium they want to sit. Plus, there are no convenience fees because all of the costs are passed on to the venue or sports team.

So far, the company has been able to maintain an inventory of roughly one million tickets at any given time on the site, and Sinclair says revenues have been growing since they started marketing. As a rough indication, Sinclair said in March they doubled the number of transactions compared to January and that April is already ahead of March.

The company has raised $20 million in two rounds from Bain Capital, U.S. Venture Partners and other individuals.

Photo Credit: Lewis Howes. 

In another high-profile parry in its increasingly aggressive proxy fight against Yahoo, activist shareholder Third Point has launched an extensive Web blog to support its case with investors called “Value Yahoo.”

Along with a long statement — a blogifesto of sorts — about what it will take to fix the Silicon Valley Internet giant, Value Yahoo also tries to keep up the pressure on Yahoo’s board and management.

The purple-themed site — this is Yahoo’s well-known color — features a humorous take on Yahoo’s now dearly departed neon sign in San Francisco, with the banner: “Yahoo Shareholders Deserve Overdue Representation!”

It includes a section on “Failed Leadership,” info on its “Road to Recovery” slate of alternate directors and even an FAQ and mission statement.

“We believe in Yahoo!, its loyal users, committed employees, dedicated partners, and the potential of the brand,” it reads, in part. “Yahoo! shareholders, employees, and partners have suffered for too long with a revolving door of management teams and Directors who have been unable to seize opportunities despite the Company’s enduring role as the premier online source for news, sports, business, entertainment and email.”

By the way, in a clever dig, there is also a Facebook site for Value Yahoo — patent lawsuit or no, you can “like” Third Point’s effort.

Here, for example, is one of Value Yahoo’s charticles:

The goal of all this, presumably, is to get Yahoo to give in to demands for several board seats using its directors, including Third Point’s Dan Loeb. So far, ongoing discussions between Loeb and Yahoo have failed to stop the shareholder battle, which comes in the midst of the company’s wrenching restructuring.

Last week, Yahoo said it had appointed three new directors to its board. In a pointed slap at Loeb, the company said it had rejected him specifically, although Yahoo added that it was willing to accept one of his current choices and another that was mutually agreed to.

Loeb reacted to that, um, badly, with another letter last week that said Yahoo leadership was living in an “illogical Alice-in-Wonderland world.”

The war of words continues with the new site, which Third Point said it will maintain actively like a blog, with updates, charts, filings, outside news stories and more.

(Since Yahoo has apparently banned me from its internal news offering to employees, according to more sources than you can shake a stick at, I hope they can see my work here!)

In its newest post — titled “Why Are We Running for Election to the Yahoo! Board?” — Third Point presents an argument for other shareholders to act, even though Yahoo has actually made a lot of the changes that Loeb has been pushing for already.

(In fact, that’s an FAQ question on Value Yahoo, natch: “Yahoo! has made changes to its Board. Hasn’t Third Point already gotten what it wanted?” Short answer: Vigilance, since they are well-known backsliders over there!)

As the firm notes in its reasons-why essay, with the original bolding on the Value Yahoo blog:

“After years of failed leadership and poor governance, Yahoo! shareholders have a chance to inject experienced, independent voices aligned with their interests. The “Shareholder Slate” — Daniel Loeb, Harry Wilson, Michael Wolf, and Jeff Zucker — seeks a voice and a choice for Yahoo! owners hurt by the current “Legacy Board’s” track record of value disintegration, and wants to prevent the Board from simply nominating their handpicked replacements — the “Insider Slate” — for Yahoo!’s board.”

The New York-based media company has been discussing the idea on and off for several months, though it hasn’t made a decision. If it does go ahead, such a venture would not launch any time this year, the person said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The activity of skiing goes back a long way in human history. Wikipedia tells me that there are cave drawings dating back to about 5,000 B.C., depicting people on skis. And pieces of wood, thought to have been primitive skis used for transportation and to help hunt wild game, have been found in Greenland dating as far back as the 10th or 11th century.

I didn’t know any of that before I took my first skiing lesson a few days ago. To make a long story short, I fell three times, didn’t break any bones, and had a fantastic time on the slopes in Beaver Creek, Colo.

I also know that I skied a total of 2,830 vertical feet.

What tells me so precise a number is a Web service called EpicMix created by Vail Resorts, of which Beaver Creek is a part. The service tracked my skiing activity and awarded me a set of different badges, in a manner reminiscent of Foursquare. Since it was my first time, I earned a “First Run” and a “Toe Dipper” badge, both for first timers, plus one for having visited Beaver Creek itself. It also tracked how many times I rode up the various lifts.

Central to it are ski pass cards that are enabled with RFID tags. When you get on a lift, your tag gets scanned, making your movements trackable. That might strike some as creepy, but it also makes it easy to track your stats throughout the season and over time.

So, if you want to brag about having skied some advanced black diamond-level run, there’s no disputing it. You can just point your doubters to EpicMix. It’s also really social: You can share your stats on Facebook and Twitter, and friends from both networks can easily be added to your list of friends on EpicMix.

There are also pictures. Professional photographers are stationed around the resort snapping photos of skiers in action or between runs. As long as the photographers get a scan of your pass, your photos show up in your EpicMix account, and you can buy a high-quality download for $20. They only caught me once after my lesson was over for a group shot with my patient and mellow instructor Tom Newman and fellow first-time skier, Claire from London, who took the class with me. As you can see from our faces, it’s probably not the last time we’ll be seen with long, flat things attached to our feet.

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:

But! If you’re going to see Linsanity up close and personal, may as well get as close as possible. Zuckerberg’s seat normally goes for $1,200, according to CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell.

Mark Zuckerberg, who is at the Knicks game, is sitting in $1,200 seats. He can spend that every min for 10K days & still have $

— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) February 19, 2012

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.

And for those who are into both football and geekery, tomorrow is kind of like the Super Bowl. Well, technically speaking, I guess tomorrow is like the Super Bowl for everyone.

Anyhoo. For everyone looking for some tech to go with their gridiron, there are lots of options.

First of all, NBC is streaming the Super Bowl live over the Internet, for those who can’t make it to a television or want a second screen to enjoy even more of the action.

ESPN president John Skipper said at D: Dive Into Media that he thinks giving away the game for free is a bad idea, but NBC paid for the rights, so they get to do what ever they want.

Verizon is also broadcasting the game live to the smallest of screens via its NFL Mobile service. (However, Peter Kafka notes their marketing of said service could use some work.)

Second, there are a ton of Super Bowl apps, including the official ones for both iPhone and Android, as well as a game program. Peanuts are still not downloadable, but content-tagging app Shazam is offering a variety of commercial tie-ins. Check here for even more game-day apps.

And of course, the big game will be the talk of Twitter, to be sure.

Lastly, as a special treat, AllThingsD will be offering live coverage of the game, the commercials and the social-media hoopla. We had so much fun in January with Footballmer, our liveblog mash-up of Steve Ballmer’s final CES keynote and the BCS championship, that we decided to do it again.

This time, though, I’ll actually get to watch the game, rather than having Ballmer duty. I’ll be commenting on the game, the commercials, the tech and the Twitter commentary. Check back tomorrow before kickoff for that.

A stickler for detail, Dauman noted that while the House of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act was a focal point of online protests, it was the Protect IP Act, the Senate version of the bill, which would have set the legislative precedent.

“I think the bill that would have emerged would have been very reasonable,” Dauman said.

“It became almost religious dogma that any legislation built around the process would have broken the Internet and created censorship around the world,” Dauman said.

Meanwhile, he argued, many technology companies supported a patent bill last year. “There should be a system where patent and copyright are both protected to make these two industries grow,” Dauman said.

Dauman — or “Philly D,” as Snooki apparently calls him — addressed a number of other topics in an onstage conversation with AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka.

Regarding the hefty payments sports networks get from cable and satellite companies, Dauman said he felt they were due for a reduction.

He said Viacom channels account for 20 percent of all viewing on subscription television, and a greater portion for young viewers. Dauman attested that, according to an unnamed distributor’s set-top box data, half of its audience never turns on sports-only channels, while half of its content costs come from sports.

“I do believe that premium content should command premium value, but there’s a fine line,” Dauman said.

We’ll hear more on that topic from ESPN’s John Skipper at the conference later today.

As for developing internal technology and acquiring tech companies, Dauman said, “We prefer to work with partners.”

“Everyone who’s developing a new form of distribution or technology stops by our office,” he said.

The Nike+ FuelBand measures time, calories, steps and “NikeFuel.” It uses an accelerometer to measure movement, has built-in USB and 20 LED flights that flash red or green to show your progress, and can connect wirelessly to the iPhone via Bluetooth.

The FuelBand comes with a free iPhone app, and is social network friendly, for those users who want to share their activity updates with Facebook, Foursquare and even Path. For now, the FuelBand app is iOS-only. Stefan Olander, Nike’s vice president of digital sport, says that the company will eventually explore other mobile operating systems for the app.

Nike, for competitive reasons, currently isn’t sharing details on how the band calculates users’ NikeFuel levels, whether they’re running, skateboarding, or doing any other kind of physical activity. The idea of NikeFuel — a measurement or score of a user’s activity — sounds a little bit like the Fitbit’s “flower power” currency. It’s a way for users to compare workouts without necessarily referring to data like calories burned, which may differ from user to user.

With FuelBand, Nike seems to be taking a slightly different measurement approach from those of other makers of health-and-fitness bands. The company says it maps oxygen uptake against a three-axis accelerometer during both activity and downtime to measure the metabolic equivalent of a task (a.k.a. M.E.T).

The Jawbone UP, for example, measures steps, heart rate, calories burned and sleep patterns. Basis is also focused on measuring heart rate and other metrics with its Basis B1 Band (no chest strap needed). And BodyMedia’s Fit armband uses galvanic skin response (GSR) sensors to measure body temperature and how much heat has dissipated from the body to determine the amount of energy that’s being used.

The Nike+ FuelBand will be available for preorder in the U.S. on Jan. 19, and will cost $149 — more than the UP, less than the B1 Band, and in the same range as BodyMedia’s bands.

Nike has a few other wearable workout tools already on the market, but its FuelBand is really meant to be worn all day, so Nike device users don’t have to switch from day wear to workout wear. With the FuelBand, Olander says, Nike is aiming to hit all areas and levels of the fitness market, not just serious athletes and runners.

Here’s a quick rundown of how the FuelBand compares to Nike’s other fitness-monitoring devices:

There’s the Nike+ SportBand, which currently retails for $59, has a slightly bulkier form factor, and works in conjunction with a sensor that goes under the sock liner of your left-foot Nike+ compatible shoe. This one is water-resistant, tracks distance, pace, time elapsed and calories burned, and stores 30 hours of running data. (It’s also available as a “Livestrong” SportBand.)

There’s also the $199 Nike+ GPS Sportwatch powered by TomTom, which works with or without a Nike+ sensor as well as a Polar WearLink Transmitter for measuring heart rate. Compared to a single rubbery wristband, that’s a lot of stuff to carry around; without those devices, the watch alone shows a mapped route and tracks time, distance, pace, heart rate and calories burned. It plugs directly into a USB port on your computer to upload run data and recharge the battery.

And the Nike Amp+ iPod Remote is no longer available through Nike’s store, but way back in the day — four years ago — it was a nifty device that synced the Nike watch to users’ iPods and provided voice updates on time, distance, calories and pace during workouts.

But here’s a picture of the Union Square Ventures partner watching the New York-Toronto game on his big screen, after all. He was able to get a feed of the game from a pirate aggregator called atdhe, he explained on Twitter. “Worked great for me. #screwcable”

The fact that it’s easy to get pirated TV, delivered over the Internet, isn’t new. It’s certainly not a revelation for Wilson, one of tech’s most prominent and successful venture capitalists, or his 199,000 Twitter followers.

Still, it’s always worth pointing out just how easy it has become. It’s particularly important when it comes to live sports, because that’s supposed to be the one thing that keeps everyone — or many people, at least — paying (a lot) for cable.

I’d be surprised if the Knicks game looked very good on Wilson’s Panasonic — when I tried it on my MacBook, it was pretty blurry.

But it’s better than nothing, which is your only alternative if you’re a Time Warner Cable subscriber in New York City right now (the NBA’s League Pass subscription service, which is supposed to give you access to every game in the league, has a regional blackout).

It’s also worth noting that while Wilson is directing his anger at the cable guys, who are easy and deserving targets, the NBA itself is a supporter of ProtectIP and SOPA, which are designed to make sites like atdhe harder to search for on Google, Twitter, etc.

I’m quite sure that Wilson would say he’s not advocating piracy, but simply trying to access something he’s already paying for (or in other cases, grabbing something he isn’t allowed to buy for unfathomable reasons).

Still, I can imagine a Big Media lobbyist using Wilson’s tweets (or, I suppose, this post) to help explain why the legislation should pass. And I’m certain that’s not what Wilson was aiming for.

Entrepreneurs need to be reminded that it’s not the job of their customers to know what they don’t. In other words, your customers have a tough enough time doing their jobs.

– From Mark Cuban‘s 2011 book “How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It”

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.

One sure path to making money on the Internet is to find a business that people can get emotional about — that is, enough to type in their credit card number.

CaptainU, a start-up that serves the families of young athletes, may have found the most emotional business of all.

The San Francisco-based company has positioned itself between student athletes and the college teams that might recruit them, in much the same way that financial Web app Mint.com placed itself in between people building their financial goals and the banks and credit card companies seeking new clients.

But don’t call CaptainU a recruiting service — that might run it afoul of the NCAA.

CaptainU users sign up and then build a profile that includes the student athlete’s statistics, team affiliations, training camp attendances and GPA.

The site also provides templates for tracking statistics, displaying highlight videos and all the other ephemera college coaches might look for when recruiting.

But, according to co-founder Mike Farb, CaptainU’s real service — like Mint’s — is about helping users make decisions with more information.

Once they decide they want to play at the college level, “students really need a road map for what they should to do, to develop athletically and academically,” Farb said. “Today, most families just rely on high school coaches and other parents.”

What CaptainU provides, after analyzing all the data added to a profile, is a realistic set of goals and prescriptions for achievement.

Want to play lacrosse at Duke? CaptainU can tell you what GPA you should shoot for, whether or not you are on the right traveling lacrosse team, and which coach you should get in touch with.

Farb, like other founders wary of nailing down claims of early traction, wouldn’t share user numbers in detail. But he acknowledged that CaptainU currently had “hundreds of thousands of users.”

Users can sign up for a free “rookie” profile, or trade up for an expanded services profile, which runs between $20 and $40 per mont — pricey, but not when compared to something like a bag full of top-tier hockey equipment.

Farb said that he didn’t think the financial future for his bootstrapped company, which is looking to raise an A round of funding, was in paid user accounts.

“We can now connect families with videographers in every state, so that they can get highlight footage taken,” he said. “We want to provide the same connections for private coaches, camps, and anyone else who provides services for athletes families.”

The plan for CaptainU is to become a platform for all of these partners to connect and transact business with the start-up’s growing user base. CaptainU takes a small cut of each deal, and charges admission for trainers, camps and other service providers to be listed on the site.

This “platform play” isn’t new, but Farb said that growing the sales and marketing staff, which CaptainU organizes by sport, is the next step.

“After all, how many former college athletes do you know that end up in sales?,” he asked and then answered. “All of them.”

Here is the video of an interview I did with Farb:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111120/captainu-builds-the-mint-com-for-student-athletes/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20111102/liveblogging-yahoos-product-runway-are-you-in-or-out/ http://allthingsd.com/20111102/liveblogging-yahoos-product-runway-are-you-in-or-out/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:41:24 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=139502

I am here at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale, Calif., to check out “Product Runway,” which is the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s attempt to show that it can still innovate.

First and foremost is the launch of Livestand, a personalized news reader that is similar to Flipboard and a variety of other rivals, including — soon — Google.

It’s Yahoo’s attempt to present a business-as-usual feel — amidst a long and agonizing and very public strategic overview that might also include the sale of the company (or not!), in the wake of the recent firing of its last CEO, Carol Bartz.

It has caused a lot of trauma inside Yahoo, which can’t help with innovation.

But we press on!

In other words, despite the three-ring circus going on outside, Yahoo wants you to know it is still hard at work.

We begin:

10:35 am: As the strains of U2 die out, Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving takes the stage, which is actually set up in the company’s cafeteria. I can smell lunch being made nearby and I am hungry.

Apt — Yahoo certainly needs to show off a lot of cool stuff or its fate will be cooked.

No pressure, Blake!

“Personally, I am more bullish on Yahoo today,” he said. “What is Yahoo? Simple. It’s the premier digital media company. Period. Stop.”

Oh, if it were only that easy.

10:46 am: Irving pulls out his favorite slide, which looks like a chemistry test. It lists the various elements of the product strategy, with things like personalization, mobile, premium.

Now to Livestand, which is available on the Apple iTunes app store right now.

Don’t all rush at once!

Irving notes that Livestand is more than just an app — it is a platform.

In other words, Yahoo wants to help publishers publish online. Kind of a Facebook of content.

If Yahoo can pull it off, that is. (And, of course, unless Facebook decides to do the same.)

10:50 am: Livestand is an HTML5 “personalized living magazine.”

“This is the way Web pages are going to look,” declares Irving. Which is to say, heavy on photos, swoopy navigation, a television screen-like interface.

Irving uses the example of Surfer magazine, which is a good idea since waves always look pretty. Especially in a video-in-frame with Kelly Slater in Hawaii.

But, in essence, for anyone who has used Flipboard for years now, none of this is entirely different.

10:54 am: The look of what would be the Yahoo News page is actually much more interesting, since it is clearly a whole lot better than the Web page.

Irving also shows off a “living ad” — in this case, an unusually snuggly couple on a couch. It is cool, but creepy.

When launched, the ad has tap points. Irving — naughtily declaring about what is an ad, “I’ll tap that” — taps the lady’s butt, which would also have been my move. We learn about the jeans, of course.

10:58 am: Irving then shows off the ability to add feeds.

Next, something called “Cocktails.” First up, a developer tool called Yahoo Mojito and Yahoo Manhattan, which is a hosting service. The company will open-source both the technologies in 2012.

Irving brings up Mike Kerns, VP of Personalization & Social, who came to Yahoo when it bought the innovative sports fan site called Citizen Sports.

“We like to ship sh#t,” he notes. I like Mike Kerns immediately.

Kerns intros C.O.R.E. No, it is not a secret government organization that takes out fussy bloggers, who might be more critical than Yahoo execs would like.

In fact, it stands for “content optimization relevance engine.” Of course it does.

Simply put, C.O.R.E. is trying to link the right content or whatever to the right consumers and who likes what. Ladies like this, dudes like this. Apparently, “men of multiple ages” enjoy stories about golden chicken.

11:11 am: Kerns is moving on to social, especially its integration with Facebook. While much touted, sources tell me it has gone slower than expected in terms of use, but that it is improving.

Kerns talks about the idea of matching content to conversations to interests and, well, you know — the now exhausting world of modern media consumption.

The world in which you can no longer simply read an article and enjoy it — you must comment, share, discuss, parse, tweet.

Does anyone remember when you read something cool and just kept it to yourself?

Forget it, pal! It is a full-information society now and you better get on board and start poking your friends about every little thing.

(Personally, I plan on becoming a hermit in 3 … 2 … 1.)

11:18 am: Now Tim Parsey, who is Yahoo’s design head. He is hands down the most delightful exec the company has had in a while, mostly because he loves to smirk adorkably.

He shows off Yahoo’s first original design, which was a dull list. And then another really bad logo. But Parsey loves it! It’s kitschy!

Smirk attack!

Parsey moves into what has to happen now, which is to deliver a much more emotional experience and a much better designed one. He uses words like “humanism.”

Say what? He is right — Yahoo has for too long completely ignored design as an important part of the experience.

That’s why Flipboard was so quickly touted — it was pretty and fun. And it is why everyone is simply forced to love Apple products.

11:22 am: Parsey even has a code for it, called REM — for rational, emotional and meaningful.

He shows off a weather app. People take photos and they can be used in the app. Then Yahoo Mail for the iPad, whic is also handsome with photos and video. Livestand, also pretty.

“Great way to differentiate,” says Parsey. He calls it “one Yahoo!” Indeed.

11:35 am: I’ll admit it. After Parsey-fest, I zoned out for a sec when IntoNow dude, Adam Cahan, comes up.

Donut emergency!

Back to IntoNow, it’s the television indexing service that Yahoo bought in April.

Essentially, more ways to watch the media — in this case, video — and do 53 other things at the very same time. Memo to humanity: We will all be paying continuous partial attention for the rest of eternity.

Like I said: Hermitage!

11:41 am: Product dude Irving is back, making a point that, despite all the public mishegas, Yahoo has been busy at innovating.

A redo of email, better search, social “Facebar” with Facebook, Flickr for Google Android.

Irving is correct — Yahoo’s engineers have been hard at work and deserve kudos for doing so, even with attrition issues, stock declines and questions about the company’s very future being debated daily.

The problem is that too many of these improvements are mostly incremental and essentially table stakes for tech companies, most of whom have introed many more significant innovations in the same time frame as Yahoo has.

Google did Android, Google+ (as well as some notable failures). Microsoft did Kinect, Windows Phone, Windows 8. Amazon did Kindle Fire. Facebook did a range of major updates, as it has grown like a weed.

And there’s Apple. You might have heard of the iPhone and the iPad.

You get my point. Yahoo’s Product Runway today is well done, but what it really needs to be is just the beginning of a take-off.

11:48 am: Now Q&A time.

The first question is what took so long to get Livestand out, the second is why should people use Livestand since Flipboard and others have already been around for a dog’s age.

I ask about design — mostly because I want Parsey to use the word “delicious” a lot — and also about all the turmoil around the company and its impact on product creation. (I decide not to mention that Yahoo blew its acquisition of the bookmarking site, Delicious, and then sold it.)

Parsey delivers on the delicious scale, noting that Yahoo must have one design experience and yet has a lot of different interfaces. In other words, it cannot be Apple, but it can feel a lot more cohesive.

Irving talks a little bit around the obvious elephant in the room — the future of Yahoo — noting that the product staff was trying to focus and forget the storm going on outside.

“We have dreams about what this company can be,” says Irving.

You and me both, brother.

12:04 pm: More questions that are too detailed for my tastes, since they have delivered lunch and I can see it and I am ravenous.

As Parsey might say: It looks deliiiiiccccious.

Now, let’s hope Yahoo can do even more tasty stuff.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111102/liveblogging-yahoos-product-runway-are-you-in-or-out/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111031/on-the-verge-of-a-new-tech-site-which-finally-debuts/ http://allthingsd.com/20111031/on-the-verge-of-a-new-tech-site-which-finally-debuts/#comments Tue, 01 Nov 2011 02:18:14 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=138536

Tonight at 1 am PT, techies who have nothing else to do — that would be me! — can click onto a brand new tech site called The Verge.

Well, kind of — it’s the result of many months of work by the gang that defected from AOL’s popular Engadget tech powerhouse, set up temporary shop under the Web site name This Is My Next and busied themselves with creating The Verge.

I have another screenshot below of the new site that will be focused on news, reviews and features about tech, and which has been getting a final tweaking all today.

From my quick perusal, it has a vibrant and slick design, with a lot of packed boxes, swooshy movement and plenty of content.

Along with the launch, The Verge’s parent company — formerly doing business as SB Nation, focused on sports — will also transform into Vox Media.

In a chit-chat with Vox’s CEO Jim Bankoff, top exec Marty Moe and Josh Topolsky, The Verge’s Editor-in-Chief, the trio of former AOLers all said they were going to for the big time.

“We want to build the platform for talented native Web voices, in sports and tech for now, and then we plan to grow more verticals,” said Bankoff.

“We want to create more than a news site or blog about tech — the frustration at AOL was that we did not get the resources or manpower to realize that bigger vision,” said Topolsky.

(You’re speaking to the choir, brother!)

Said Moe: “We think this category has not had a large enough vision…not enough has been innovated over the years and we think it is a big opportunity.”

Topolsky said the site, along with a mass of original content from 30 writers, will also be helped by a strong database of information about all its topics and gadgets and also focus a lot on community input.

“What we want to do was graduate beyond the blog,” he said.

(Hmm…and here I just got the hang of this blog thing.)

Bankoff, who would not say how much Vox spent on launching The Verge — my back-of-the-envelope guess, several million dollars — said that costs were spread out between the tech and sports sites with centralized sales and product teams.

Initial launch sponsors are BMW, Sony and Samsung, said Moe, who is aiming to sell “major brand advertisers on the idea that we will be the premiere destination of consumer tech coverage.”

It has to grow past big sites like Engadget to do so, but Topolsky said that This Is My Next had three million unique visitors in the last month and more than 10 million page views.

“We have done that with a lot of editorials and in-depth reviews,” he said. “I think people are really hungry for great content and stories.”

As to competitors, Topolsky said that “this not to necessarily I win if you lose,” although his clear aim is to unseat sites like CBS-owned CNET, Engadget and Gawker Media’s Gizmodo and perhaps even newsier sites such as TechCrunch and AllThingsD (as if!).

“We are going to do the nuts and bolts stuff,” he said. “Somewhere between Engadget and Wired.”

Topolsky compared The Verge to a “boutique hotel — we have the same stuff everyone else has, but it is a much more elegant experience.”

Later, that will change, he promised, noting that “this is only version 1.0.”

Of course — but what else would you expect from a gadget site?

(Good luck and congrats to the entire The Verge team from AllThingsD!)

And here is another lovely screenshot, as promised:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111031/on-the-verge-of-a-new-tech-site-which-finally-debuts/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111020/playup-launches-group-messaging-app-for-live-sports/ http://allthingsd.com/20111020/playup-launches-group-messaging-app-for-live-sports/#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:00:56 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=134603 PlayUp today is announcing its iPhone and iPad social sports app for U.S. users. The app hosts live private and public fan hangouts during every NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS and college football game.

The app’s functionality is similar to group messaging apps like GroupMe, with group discussions centered on real-time score updates from a particular game.

Four-year-old PlayUp this year raised a seemingly insane $50 million from individual investors it declined to disclose. The company also offers text-based sports products in other countries; its most popular one is for cricket fans in India.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111020/playup-launches-group-messaging-app-for-live-sports/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110831/sportcaster-caters-to-sports-fans-on-the-go/ http://allthingsd.com/20110831/sportcaster-caters-to-sports-fans-on-the-go/#comments Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:00:14 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=115492 For those who want to do more than check sports scores on the go, mobile specialist Handmark is offering up SportCaster, an iPhone and Android app that combines sports-related Twitter feeds, schedules and scores into a single app. It’s the first app from Handmark’s social-oriented OneLouder subsidiary.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110831/sportcaster-caters-to-sports-fans-on-the-go/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110826/bill-simmons-knows-how-to-fix-twitter/ http://allthingsd.com/20110826/bill-simmons-knows-how-to-fix-twitter/#comments Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:10:25 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=114347 Dear Dick Costolo, Jack Dorsey, Adam Bain, et al.,

You probably know this, but ESPN star Bill Simmons — the guy they built an entire site for — is a big Twitter user. He has some free advice today about things he’d like changed/added. I concur! Let’s make it happen, ok? Thanks.

Via Grantland:

I can’t believe Twitter hasn’t added one of the following two wrinkles …

a. Adding a checklist to your follower list so you could follow however many people you want, but “check” the ones you want to actually show up in your feed. This would prevent wounded feelings (if you’re not following a friend who’s secretly bitter that you’re not following them, which means either they tweet too much or their tweets suck) and clogged Twitter feeds (if you have a couple of friends who post 40 to 50 times a day and clog your feed up, only you can’t unfollow them because they’re your friends).

b. Adding a button so you can make your follower list private. Do you realize how many more porn stars, strippers and hoochie mamas would be followed by athletes and rappers if nobody could see whom they were following? (Well, not you, Amar’e Stoudemire, you obviously don’t care. I’m talking about everyone else.) Do you realize how much more DM-inspired casual sex could be going down? You’re cheating the condom industry, child alimony lawyers and sports blogs, Twitter. Get your act together.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110826/bill-simmons-knows-how-to-fix-twitter/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110822/ticket-search-expert-seatgeek-gets-front-row-seats-on-yahoo/ http://allthingsd.com/20110822/ticket-search-expert-seatgeek-gets-front-row-seats-on-yahoo/#comments Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:30:02 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=112467 SeatGeek, a two-year-old start-up that aspires to be the Kayak of sports and concert tickets, has signed a multiyear partnership with Yahoo Sports to drive traffic to its site.

Visitors to Yahoo Sports and its Rivals.com fan properties will see links to SeatGeek embedded in a team’s schedule page; links will also appear within articles, blogs and on the 130 team-specific college sports pages at Rivals.com. Yahoo has more than 51 million unique visitors a month.

The links simply say “buy tickets”; clicking through brings up a stadium seating diagram, with a list of available seats and prices on the right side of the page.

SeatGeek says it is aggregating roughly 19 million tickets for upward of 60,000 sports events from more than 50 secondary markets, including StubHub, Ticketmaster’s TicketsNow, RazorGator and others.

Russell D’Souza, co-founder of SeatGeek, said the service is free to consumers, and that the company collects an affiliate fee from the seller, which will now be split partially with Yahoo in some cases. Since the average purchase ranges between $250 to $300, SeatGeek’s cut can be between $25 to $30 per transaction, D’Souza said. SeatGeek also has partnerships with The Wall Street Journal and the New York Daily News.

D’Souza said before he and Jack Groetzinger started the company, they used to open six windows in their browsers to compare ticket prices on dozens of sites where tickets were posted for sale by smaller brokers. He said there were often hidden fees, service fees and shipping fees, which made it even more complicated.

“It would be really hard to compare, so we wanted to create an interface for any event that would expose to users where the best seats were in the stadium and how much they’ll be paying,” D’Souza said.

Generally speaking, D’Souza said, the secondary ticket market is great for finding deals on tickets for events that are sold out, but a little-known fact is that it’s also good for events that still have tickets available.

“If an event is sold out, you have to go there — there’s only one option. But if it’s not sold out, you’ll end up finding tickets from season-ticket holders and brokers who will list it below face value,” he said.

By making it easier to sort through the various marketplaces, SeatGeek hopes to make consumers more aware of the alternatives. From its site, the company also offers venue maps and price forecasts to advise users when to buy tickets.

SeatGeek has raised about $2.5 million in venture capital from Founder Collective, NYC Seed and others. Founder Collective, an early-stage investor in New York, previously invested in Get Me In, a European secondary-market ticket vendor that was acquired by Ticketmaster in 2008.

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