It looks like a belated April Fools’ Day prank, but this video showing a golf cart hovercraft from reigning Masters champion Bubba Watson and Oakley appears to be the real deal.

Watson and Oakley have worked together on the BW1, a prototype hovercraft that solves some of the issues with traditional golf carts. With it, you can drive on the putting green without damaging it, and you can move across sand and water without any issues. Plus, it just looks cool.

“Let’s go through the water hazard, come off the other side right back by the green, putt your ball in the hole, and drive back across the water hazard,” Watson says in the video. “And who doesn’t want to do that?”

Check out the video above for more.

Active Mind Technology is seeking to remake the game of golf with Game Golf, which measures a golfer’s stats and makes them available for you to analyze and share with your friends. It is one more example of how technology can provide us with way too much information about ourselves as well as how far golf has to go arrive in the 21st century.

The wearable product tracks the location of your shots, the distance the ball traveled, and which club you used. Then it syncs that data to the cloud, and you can look at the results on your smartphone and then share them with your friends. The device is another example of the craze for the “quantified self,” a movement that advocates self-knowledge through numbers.

“Golf is a category that needs to be shaken up,” said John McGuire, the chief executive of Active Mind Technology, in an interview with VentureBeat. “It needs something new.”

There is plenty of sensor technology being applied to analyzing golf swings and helping golfers — that’s nothing new. But this device has a lot going for it. The product was designed by Yves Béhar, the creator of cool tech gear like the Jambox wireless speaker and the upcoming Ouya game console. It’s also being promoted and backed by pro golfers Graeme McDowell and Lee Westwood.

Tapping crowdfunding, Game Golf is raising up to $125,000 for the project over the next 30 days on Indiegogo. Game Golf uses accelerometers, gyroscopes, global navigation system (GPS), and near-field communications to track everything in a seamless fashion. It does not, however, measure the velocity of your swing and how good it is.

Perhaps the most important thing it tells you is the distance that you hit the ball with each club — a piece of data that most golfers never know with any precision, said John McGuire, chief executive and founder of Active Mind Technology, the company that makes the Game Golf device, in an interview with VentureBeat.

“We are doing what Nike FuelBand does for running,” McGuire said. “We want to change the sporting experience for amateur players.”

The company plans to launch the product in this summer. You can preorder it now.

“Game Golf not only gives everyone access to crucial data to dramatically improve your golf game and handicap, but it also makes playing more motivating, rewarding, social, and fun,” said McDowell, an investor and winner of the 2010 U.S. Open. “The product is extremely intuitive, doesn’t disrupt your game and is essential for any golfer looking to understand their game better, knock down their handicap, give themselves a competitive edge and compete with their friends and family across the globe.”

McDowell and Westwood have worn the devices in tournaments and are offering feedback to Active Mind Technology.

Béhar’s company, Fuseproject, designed the device and its different parts to be wearable. You can attach the main device to your belt, and then you screw the small red plugs into the top of your club grips. Those red plugs are NFC-enabled, so when you put them near the main device, it records which club you are using. Then it figures out how far you hit the ball as you pull out the next club to line up your next shot.

The device can upload the data via a universal serial bus (USB) to your computer. Or it can load the data via a wireless Bluetooth connection. It syncs the data to the cloud. On the iPhone, the app tracks, analyzes, and shares the data. Beyond shot distance, the app tells you your percentage of balls hit in the fairway, the greens you hit in regulation, and your putting performance.

The social part of the app is interesting. McDowell said that he can use the technology to share his best strokes with followers on Twitter and Facebook. A player can also participate in contests such as the “longest drive” on a hole. If you follow a friend, you’ll find out as soon as the player finished a round and what they scored. Friends can compete against each other long distance.

“The design of the Game Golf app and product has been closely integrated: a beautiful and dynamic presentation of play data, easy and fun ways to share, nondisruptive hardware and experience,” said Béhar, who is an investor in Active Mind Technology and is CEO of Fuseproject. “The design and user interface is crafted to deliver a 21st century experience of the game.”

The device can track two full rounds of tracking on one battery charge. Over time, Active Mind Technology plans to use the technology to measure and “gamify” other sports, McGuire said. Other sports that could benefit from the technology include soccer, cycling, swimming, and biking.

McGuire founded the company in 2010 when he moved from Ireland to San Francisco. The company has 20 employees, including some at a development center in Galway, Ireland. In addition to Behar and McDowell, investors include Chamath Paliphaitya, Jerry Yang, Ed Colligan, Hosain Rahman, Seagate Technology, ACT Ventures, Enterprise Equity, Cross-link Partners, Moroda Ventures, and 11-time world surf champion Kelly Slater.

McGuire has a background in software and behavioral technology as it applies to professional athletes. His aim is to help everyone improve their results by changing behavior. McGuire said his company has raised a seed round already and is in the midst of raising more money.

That segment of the populace will doubtless be delighted to know that starting this weekend, PGA tour events will be streamed live online, courtesy CBSSports.com and the network’s iPhone, Android and iPad apps. And for those on less-privileged platforms like Windows Phone and BlackBerry who are really hard up for golf, a mobile-adapted web player will also be available at m.dbssports.com.

This weekend’s Farmers Insurance Open is the first-ever PGA tour event for which the full network broadcast will be live-streamed online, but it won’t be the last. In fact, 18 more tour events, all part of the FedExCup series, will be streamed by CBS, and all Golf Channel and NBC telecasts will also be be streamed. NBC’s streaming start begins with the wonderfully named Waste Management Phoenix Open.

I really, really hope the PGA got extra cash for that one.

A thought occurs. On the rare occasions when I actually have watched more than 20 seconds of golf while on my way to the nearest ice hockey game, I find it almost impossible to see the ball in flight on my 42-inch high-def TV screen.

Good luck seeing that ball on your 3.5-inch iPhone or 7-inch Nexus screens.

photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc

Teespy is unveiling a Facebook and mobile app today dedicated to letting golfers brag about their accomplishments.

Started by golfing buddies who felt like golf was the original social network, Teespy also lets golfers sign up for tee times at discounted rates at a number of golf courses.

The San Francisco-based startup, debuting at this week’s DEMO Fall 2011 conference, lets golfers brag far and wide. You can earn badges for getting a “birdie” or an “eagle” on a hole. Teespy also uses the scores to generate individual statistics to track personal progress. It’s the “gamification of golf scoring,” said Patrick Mark, co-founder of Teespy, in an interview.

“Golfers always try to be the top dog in their group of friends,” Mark said.

Users can go to Teespy.com, use an HTML5 mobile app, or log in on Facebook to record their scores and share them with friends. Courses can also make more money by pushing available tee times to Teespy members, sometimes at good discounts. Teespy gets a share of the revenue whenever someone books a reservation through its service.

The mobile app and web site take advantage of Facebook Connect for quick logins. You can use the app to compare stats with friends and find information on favorite courses. It’s a lot like how a gamer can check his or her stats in a Tiger Woods PGA golf game on a game console. The badges have a fair amount of variety, giving even duffers a chance to win something like getting under 100 for the first time.

“It sees like golf is made for an iPhone app,” said Scott Weiss of Andreesson Horowitz during the Demo Sage review of Teespy following the presentation. He adds that it might take a long time for the app to penetrate the market.

“They might be shooting a little early for the window,” said Weiss. ” There’s no question, the pencils are going to be around for a while.”

But, he said, “There’s a pony in there somewhere.”

The company was started last year by University of Colorado classmates Mark, Andrew Armenante, and Ken Amarit. Mark had recognized that golf courses were lacking in technology when it comes to marketing to the average golfer. Mark and Armenante brainstormed and came up with the idea of mixing golf and social gaming. Amarit supplied the programming expertise.

Teespy will start out with five participating courses in the Bay Area and plans to add more courses over time. The company has four employees and its rivals include EZ Links, Golf Now, Fore Reservations, Gamebook, and Oobgolf. Teespy hopes to set itself apart with a better user interface and a multi-platform approach. Teespy has raised $250,000 from friends and family and is seeking another round of funding.

Teespy is one of 80 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2011 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Sports app startup Zepp has a mobile app that can finally fix your golf swing golf swing.

The company showcased a motion-capture application that can be used with sports like golf and tennis. It ran through a demo of the app on stage at today’s Launch conference in San Francisco. Its first application, Golfsense, is in Apple’s App Store application approval process and will come out soon, the company announced today.

The company manufactures a motion-capture device that attaches to a glove or a user’s hand and tracks the person’s motion. Golfsense, for example, tracks a person’s golf swing and rates it. If it’s a terrible swing, the app makes some suggestions about how to fix it. The app displays a 3-dimensional map for each swing the user takes, and overlays it with what a good swing should look it.

Golfsense users can also sync up with other Zepp users and trade swing data. If there’s a professional playing golf nearby with a Zepp device, amateurs can download his or her swing data and compare it to theirs. There’s also a practice mode that lets users swing repeatedly as if they were at a driving range and gives a bulk rating — as well as specific suggestions on how to improve swings.

The company seems pretty bold in its pricing. It wants to charge between $200 and $300 for the application and the motion sensing device that attaches to a glove. But Zepp’s motion capture technology can be applied to other sports — like tennis or football — so the price point might be worth the trouble. Zepp also plans to release an Android and Windows Phone 7 application soon.

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Tesla expects Japan to eventually become its No. 2 market for sales after the U.S., Elon Musk told the WSJ.

EMeter has announced it will team up with relationship management company Convergys to create better billing and customer management for utility companies that are rolling out smart meters.

An LG Chem executive told Reuters he expects to nail down more battery orders from GM for the range-extending Chevy Volt thanks to better-than-expected demand for the car. The news comes the heels of GE’s recently-announced plans to buy 25,000 electric cars by 2015, nearly half of which will come from GM, starting with orders for the Volt.

Australian utility Energy Australia has inked a partnership with Cisco. Cisco will upgrade 200 of the utility’s substations so that it can better monitor faults and remotely restore power. The utility is currently rolling out a $100 million smart grid effort and previously announced a partnership with IBM, which will provide systems integration expertise.

The all-electric Nissan Leaf, the Volt’s competition, has suffered a delivery delay, according to Green Car Reports. Fewer cars than originally planned will hit dealerships this December. The company has seen 20,000 reservations for the Leaf.

Wind data provider Onsemble has completed a sensor network capable of tracking wind data for nearly 95 percent of the wind farms in Texas, according to CNET.

Volkswagen will launch an electrified version of its Golf hatchback (pictured) in the U.S. in 2013, CNET writes.