July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The Super Bowl is the most watched event in the nation. And thanks to the almighty power of the blessed Internet, this year’s gameday is easier to follow and participate in than ever before.

We’ve devised a comprehensive gameday strategy for football fans and all their friends and family members.

1) Watching the big game online

Desktop: If you can’t get to a television screen, CBS Sports is doing you a solid by streaming the entire broadcast on its website for free. Pregame programming begins at 8 a.m. PT (11 a.m. ET), with the game itself kicking off at 3:30 p.m. PT (6:30 p.m. ET). The CBS Sports website may actually provide a better experience than the traditional TV screen, as you can view the game from many different angles, check out a livestream of social activity, and play with several interactive features. But if, for whatever reason, you’re not a fan of CBS, then head over to the official NFL Network website to catch a free livestream of the game. If you live outside the country, though, you’ll be forced to purchase an NFL Game Pass to watch the Super Bowl.

Mobile: Can’t get to a television or desktop computer? If you’re Verizon customer, don’t worry. The wireless carrier/FiOS broadband Internet company is providing a Super Bowl livestream via its free NFL apps for iOS and Android to anyone with an NFL Mobile subscription ($5/mo.).

2) Watching the commercials online

You have a few options for keeping track of all the seemingly memorable Super Bowl commercials online, with many shortened or rejected versions of them already available for viewing online. I prefer to use the Hulu AdZone to watch the commercials, but YouTube’s AdBlitz is also a good option. Either way, watching the commercials online means you can skip the annual offering from GoDaddy, which is usually tasteless and degrading to women.

3) Second screen apps & services

Team Apps: Because most of you will be constantly glancing at your smartphone or tablet throughout the game anyway, this year’s Super Bowl comes with a handful of official mobile apps intended to enhance the viewing experience. Both the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers have applications available on iOS, Android, and BlackBerry that will give you game news, short replay videos, photo galleries, player interviews, statistics, and other goodies.

Super Bowl event app: This year the NFL is providing those attending the game with a mobile app to make the most of their undoubtedly expensive experience. It has a map feature showing nearby restaurants, music, ticketing information, etc. And if it’s anything like the 2012 version, it will include some useful features for people who aren’t at the game too.

4) What to watch at halftime: Beyoncé or puppies?

Musical Performance: This year, CBS Sports will be providing a livestream of the Super Bowl’s halftime show, something that wasn’t available to online viewers in the past. That means you now have the option of watching Beyoncé try to entertain rambunctious football fans. If that doesn’t appeal to you, here’s another option:

Puppy Bowl: I’m not sure who at cable network Animal Planet was responsible for making an entire halftime show devoted to puppies playing with balls in an adorable dog-sized football field. But it’s back again this year, and with a new partnership that will vastly improve your viewing experience. Animal Planet has teamed up with Yahoo’s IntoNow application to give you an easy way to share and caption a large volume of adorable puppy screenshots via its CapIt feature (a meme generator). You may remember that I thoroughly praised IntoNow for its ability to make the 2012 presidential debates far more enjoyable. This will be more of the same, except this time you’ll actually stand a chance of getting everyone in the room to agree that your tweets are indeed awesome. For now, check out some game predictions using puppies, courtesy of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon:

5) Gameday Grub ideas

Foodily: Sure, you can definitely get away with ordering a few extra-large pizzas and opening a bag of chips, but why not go all out? I did a quick scan of some of the food startup blogs and was shocked to find that many of them had a pretty meager selection of Super Bowl food posts. Foodily, however, comes through, offering up not one, but three different posts that cover snacks, cocktails, and overall food. If you don’t like any of those selections, you can always search the site for more.

Yummly and Allrecipe: If you want a good recipe for regular game snack food, Allrecipe has collected a handy list of the most searched-for Super Bowl food. And if you have no idea what constitutes Super Bowl food or what the average football fan wants to eat, check out Yummly’s very extensive post on the subject using data from its own site.

Foodie iPad app: If you’re looking for a more directed crop of recipes, Glam Media’s cooking/food site Foodie has released a Foodie Recipes iPad app that highlights 40 game-day suggestions.

Seamless & GrubHub: If you hate cooking, or even leaving the confines of your house to pick up food for your guests, you can always use delivery services like Seamless or GrubHub to order from a ton of local restaurants.

6) Other miscellaneous Super Bowl-related apps, services, and content

Madden NFL 13: The EA Football game franchise is featuring a Ray Lewis pre-Super Bowl speech video on YouTube that’s available to watch now.

Xbox Live’s Sports Hub: A collection of Super Bowl-related content from a variety of Xbox media partners, including Hulu, Maxim, iHeartRadio, CrunchyRoll, and DailyMotion.

StatMilk: StatMilk has put together an interactive web infographic that compares statistical data of the Ravens and the 49ers. It’s actually pretty cool if you’re super into sports stats.

Swipper Bowl: Social startup Swipp has created a Swipper Bowl app that helps frame the discussion sports fans will likely be having via social media during the big game. To use it, you’ll need to connect with Facebook.

Football Party Game App: This is an iPad app/web app that lets you and a group of friends (wherever you are) to play a game of trivia during the Super Bowl. I’m not a fan of “pub quizzes” or trivia nights, but I have an exhausting list of friends who love it. It will, however, set you back $5.

TOK.tv iOS app: This app lets you chat with four other friends not in your general vicinity during the big game. It’s basically a Google Hangout that’s devoted to live sporting events. The TOK.tv iPad  app is free and available in the iTunes store.

7) Avoiding the heck out of the actual Super Bowl

Hey sports haters and hermits, did you think we’d forget about you? Nope. Here are a few cool things you may want to know going into Super Bowl Sunday weekend (the thing that will render your Twitter feeds useless for much of Sunday evening).

Netflix Free weekend: Did you know that Netflix is letting anyone with an Xbox 360 + Xbox Live membership access its vast library of streaming videos for the whole weekend? If you didn’t, and you don’t already subscribe to Netflix, you now can catch up on old episodes of Star Trek, classic Disney cartoons, and marathon through the first few seasons of Vampire Diaries. Hulu Plus is also enabling free access to its Xbox Live app for the weekend.

House of Cards: In addition to the Xbox Live weekend promo, Netflix is also debuting its first super huge original TV show, House of Cards, which is said to be on par with the quality of HBO’s original programming. The good thing about Netflix, as opposed to the cable networks, is that you won’t have to wait 13 weeks to finish the first season. Netflix is releasing the whole thing today.

HBO Go: Again, the Super Bowl is so powerful that HBO made the decision to release the latest episode of its hit series Girls one day early (Saturday, Feb. 2). I can’t imagine that anyone who’s a die-hard Lena Dunham fan would be upset about missing the Super Bowl, but regardless, we all benefit.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comment section, and we’ll be sure to add it.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Unlike the last election cycle, the 2012 presidential debates will largely be available online. It’s also perhaps the first set of debates where you should turn off your television and move over to your computer to get the full experience.

All the major broadcast stations have teamed up with reputable tech companies/services to offer a more interactive experience than the traditional boring TV channel coverage. A few websites are hosting a live stream of the debates while doing things like fact checking statements made by both Republican nominee Mitt Romney and incumbent Barack Obama. There’s even a slew of services that let U.S. viewers see the collective reactions from everyone else watching, create debate memes, and earn Halo 4 gear.

Below is a list of sites and services that either provide a live stream of the debates or enhance the experience with a second screen (or both).

YouTube Elections Hub

YouTube is teaming up with ABC News to offer a live stream of the debate via its Elections Hub, which offers users access to tons of election coverage from several different sources, including  ABC News, Al Jazeera English, BuzzFeed, Larry King, New York Times, and others. As the largest and most trafficked video site, it’s unlikely that YouTube will suffer from technical glitches during the live event either via the Web or through mobile devices.

Ustream Channels

Live video staple Ustream is hosting a stream of the presidential debate (as well as subsequent debates) through its channel partner, CBS News. The channel pages will sport their own debate-branded skin and provide access to Ustream’s social tools. And while Ustream isn’t erecting its own “hub” of election coverage, the startup is debuting a new front page site design, complete with a team of people curating the hottest videos of the moment. And for anyone who wants more than just the debate live stream, there will be plenty of commentary from other Ustream channel partners via debate watch parties. Also, no ads.

CNN

The 24-hour news cable network is once again providing viewers with a live stream of the debates via its website. In the 2008 debates, we were “treated” to a mood meter showing how the audience was reacting throughout the night. This time, CNN has some new tricks up its sleeve thanks to its partnership with Snappy.tv, such as allowing viewers to easily grab and share video clips from the debate on Facebook and Twitter. And while it wasn’t much of an issue in 2008, this year you’ll be able to watch the live stream on most web-connected mobile devices.

Sunlight Foundation

Want to watch the live stream, but don’t have the attention span to furiously Google search every time a candidate makes a bold statement? Well, you can either take notes for fact-checking purposes after the debate ends, or you can visit the Sunlight Foundation’s live stream. The nonprofit organization — which is dedicated to government openness and transparency through online tools and resources — is providing fact checking alongside the video stream.

Other news organizations

Plenty of other cable networks and news publications are offering a live stream of the debates on their websites, such as Fox News, PBS, the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post (via HuffPost Live), Univision (translated into Spanish), and probably a few more I’m leaving out. You can bet that each of the aforementioned options will also provide additional analysis and coverage leading up to, and after, the debate. The most basic option for watching the debate, however, is through the C-SPAN 2 website.

Xbox Live Election Hub

Microsoft is providing debate coverage through its Xbox Live Election Hub channel, which launched back in August. You need an Xbox Live Gold account to access the Election Hub channel, which (in addition to a live stream of Romney v. Obama) gives you access to daily YouGov polls, election coverage from NBC News, and factoids about each candidate via Face the Facts USA. Probably the most interesting thing Microsoft is doing is offering a Halo 4 Warrior Armor avatar award to anyone who watches at least three out of the four scheduled debates. (I can’t decide if adding gamification elements to get U.S. citizens to pay attention to the election is a stroke of genius or just very sad. Still, it’s something new.)

Second screen apps & services

Regardless of how you’re watching the debate, you can enhance the viewing experience by grabbing your smartphone or tablet.

Twitter Political Index. If you plan on tweeting during the debate, know that Twitter has created its own Political Index, which translates all those politically charged tweets into raw data showing how users feel about the candidates.

Social check-in services. I fully expect sites like Foursquare, Miso, and (of course) GetGlue to offer their users a badge when checking in during the debate. GetGlue in particular could be a good place to get a quick scan of any friends also watching the debate as well as some of their comments or impressions.

IntoNow (Yahoo). One check-in service that is stepping up during the presidential debate is Yahoo’s IntoNow app. The company just released a new version of IntoNow for the iPad. The app lets you predict who will “win” the election, provides an electoral map, up-to-date political news from Yahoo, and a freaking presidential Meme generator. And while most of the features sadly paint the debates like semi-finals of American Idol, the overall app looks like it’ll improve your viewing experience. (Seriously, a meme generator. Awesome.)

Ponderoo. A few news organizations are attempting to track the audience’s “pulse” during the debate — showing how people feel about each candidate in real-time. Ponderoo, an iOS app released Monday, focuses entirely on this feature. The app lets you touch portions of the screen to indicate your positive and negative feelings during the debate, tracking your activity along the way. You can even see a line for how others across the country are reacting. The app is free and available via Apple’s App Store.

[If we missed a service you plan to use during the debates, please let us know in the comment section below.]

Photo via @gov/Twitter

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Yahoo has just launched the newest version of IntoNow, its TV companion app, and it’s bringing a boatload of new features to tablet and smartphone devices.

IntoNow is the media-centric company’s television sidekick “experience.” It brings avid TV fans a comprehensive offering of news headlines, statistics, and even social media updates from popular actors. IntoNow 3.0 is specifically tailored for iOS devices (the old IntoNow is also available in the Google Play store; we anticipate an Android-friendly version of IntoNow 3.0 will be available shortly).

The app update aims to give fans more and better ways to engage with and around television shows. The TV portion of the app will continue to deliver relevant stats, tweets, and trivia in real time. Music Sync is an IntoNow feature that can automatically identify a song playing in a show and take you to iTunes for instant gratification, should you choose to own said tune.

One hilarious new feature is mashing up TV moments with meme-making. Called CapIt, it allows viewers to screen-capture and caption anything they see on their TV. Angelina Jolie’s gonna love that.

Another new feature is group chat, which is what it sounds like. You can instantly set up private conversations with friends, start a chat around a specific show, or set up a recurring chat event to coincide with a show’s air time. It’s like a book club, but without all that annoying reading.

“iOS devices are pervasive in our living rooms, and second screen behavior is now commonplace. IntoNow wanted to up the ante and give people a whole new experience,” said Yahoo product VP Adam Cahan in a release on the update.

“We’re the first to offer some major technological innovations – like the ability to capture and share moments that happened seconds ago on TV or automatically identify songs playing in the background – all of which gives people watching TV with IntoNow 3.0 a unique, interactive experience.”

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the new features:

As a footnote, do let’s refrain from placing any praise or blame for this product on Marissa Mayer, the company’s new CEO. Girl’s only been there two weeks.

Top image courtesy of Goodluz, Shutterstock

Yahoo has been scrambling in recent years to stay relevant and competitive while Google grows into a dominating search and social company. With the company’s paltry first quarter earnings increase, the once-powerful search engine plans to shut down or combine more than 50 Yahoo properties.

Since Yahoo has yet to release a full list of services that are headed to the graveyard, we took it upon ourselves to play grim reaper. Join us on a journey through the obscure, useless, and all-around awful Yahoo products that should get the axe.

Messenger / Chat

Yahoo Messenger is the company’s instant messaging client that was used slightly more than Windows Live Messenger, and slightly less than AOL’s AIM. With the rise of Google Chat and Skype, Yahoo Messenger became even less popular. Like the old-school AOL software, Yahoo offers its users access to hundreds of chat rooms where they can strike up conversations with strangers. Those chat rooms are still extremely active. Unfortunately, most of the activity comes from automated user accounts that ask legitimate users, like myself, questions about if I like having a good time. Of course I do.

The point being? Yahoo needs to kill off its Messenger product. Yahoo’s IM capability should be limited to Yahoo Mail.

Connected TV

Hey cord cutters, did you know Yahoo has its own streaming media platform to bring web content to television sets? Well, it does. It’s actually been around longer than Google TV or Apple’s ambitions to enter into the smart TV market. That might be why the platform has such a generic sounding name –  Yahoo Connected TV. The company initially teamed up with Intel to provide live “widgets” on your TV in 2008, and slowly evolved it into something that resembles smart TV software. Unfortunately, Intel decided to get out of the television chip business in 2011, which has caused Connected TV to get even less attention.

Yahoo needs to take this product off life support so it can die with dignity. I can’t imagine it’s bringing in a significant amount of revenue. Also, people won’t miss it.

Maps

With all the innovative and graphical improvements Google has made to its Maps product, I fully admit to forgetting that Yahoo even had its own mapping service. I don’t really have anything negative to say about Yahoo Maps, except that it’s pretty generic and far less popular that most of the other options out there. Yahoo has already cannibalized its search engine business to Microsoft, so cross integration between search and Yahoo Maps can’t  be very important anymore. And since the company doesn’t really have much of a mobile strategy, the logical course of action would be to shut down Yahoo Maps.

Events / Upcoming

When I’m looking for something to do, Yahoo isn’t the first, second or third place I think of. This is even more true of Yahoo Upcoming, which is the company’s database of live events. The site itself doesn’t even get routine maintenance — a conclusion I reached after discovering a message in the left sidebar that states “Upcoming gets a new look! December 15, 2010″ (screenshot). Spoiler Alert: Yahoo lied.

Upcoming is one of the many products that still exists in Yahoo limbo without a real purpose other than to clutter up the brand and waste resources. And although I don’t need further justification for the strong accusation, I should also point out that Yahoo’s next attempt at an events service site, Yahoo Events, is permanently stranded on Fathers day 2011. At least Upcoming’s event listings were current.

Needless to say, Yahoo doesn’t do event services very well. It’s time to kill them both.

IntoNow

IntoNow is a mobile social service that allows people to check-in based on whatever TV show they’re watching. IntoNow’s iOS apps can actually identify a TV show down to the exact episode just by listening to the audio for a few seconds. Once checked in, users have access to additional information about the show, as well as other fans and who else recently watched it. If you think this sounds like a cool service, you won’t get any arguments from me. The only problem with IntoNow, is that its way beyond Yahoo’s new scope for consolidating products that actually bring in revenue. IntoNow is a relatively new service that faces competition from a handful of well-established companies, like GetGlue and Miso.

If Yahoo is serious about getting back on track, it’ll fold the product. If it wants to continue dumping money into products with lots of potential (as its done for years now), then it’ll keep IntoNow active.

Livestand

This tablet app grabs content from online publishers and displays it in a bland, unoriginal way. The app focuses on Yahoo branded content and even lets you connect Google Reader. But if you are already using Google Reader to manage RSS feeds, you likely don’t use Yahoo for anything and wouldn’t choose Livestand over other popular apps. In a world where Zite and Flipboard seem to dominate the tablet content-reading experience, Yahoo should back away from Livestand and spend its money else where.

Avatars

Avatars is one of Yahoo’s most random services. Instead of posting a real picture of yourself in your Yahoo profile, you can create a cartoon avatar, complete with stylish clothes, fancy backgrounds, and seasonal accessories. The service is somewhat relevant now because you can export your avatar to Facebook, where it can be your profile picture. However, Avatars is so out of place for Yahoo, and it doesn’t seem to always work as promised, it’s probably not worth the dollars and time to keep it alive.

Answers

Yahoo Answers is apparently where the Internet goes to die. The service started out innocently enough as a place where people could ask questions and get answers from other Yahoo users. It’s become so pervasive that anytime you Google search a question, a Yahoo Answers hit comes up. It be a great little service if it wasn’t fill with so much spam, trolls, and people like this. Seriously Yahoo, shut down the madness.

Message Boards

Like Yahoo Answers, Message Boards is full of spam and trolls. It’s also ugly, messy, and tries to cover too many topics to be a valuable resource of information. There appears to be no moderation, which has caused each message board to get out of control. Yahoo either needs to take control of the boards or shut it down altogether.

4Cast

4Cast is question and answer service that looks like a grown-up Yahoo Answers. Instead of open-ended questions, you ask multiple choice queries. People then “forecast” the outcome by choosing their answer. As people answer, you get a cute little pie graph. At the very least, the multiple choice responses cut down on trolls and spammy comments, but the service is just as useless as Yahoo Answers.

Could you live without these Yahoo services? Have you heard of all them? Let us know which services Yahoo should take the axe to, or which should be spared, in the comments.

Image by Tom Cheredar

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

New research from analytics firm Nielsen confirms what most have suspected about the symbiotic relationship between tablets and television, and offers some hope for a growing crop of startups looking to capitalize on the second screen experience.

In a 2011 fourth quarter survey of connected device owners, Nielsen found that 88 percent of tablet owners in the U.S. use their device while watching TV at least once a month, 45 percent do so on a daily basis, and more than a quarter (26 percent) go into multitask boob-tube mode several times a day.

click to enlarge

The trend of tablets taking over the living room crosses borders too. Eighty percent of U.K. device owners indicated that they touched their way to entertainment heaven while watching TV at least once in a month.

Tablet usage in conjunction with television-watching trumps that of smartphone usage, according to Nielsen’s data, though not by much. In the U.S., 86 percent of smartphone owners said they used their device while watching TV at least once during a 30-day period. In the U.K, 78 percent of the smartphone-owning population said they were simultaneous consumers.

Multitaskers are, by and large, checking email (how boring), but Nielsen found one other popular activity that has important implications for apps such as GetGlue, Miso, and IntoNow focused on enhancing this extended, second screen experience.

“Device owners also seem to engage with content related to the TV as well, either by looking up information related to the show or looking for deals and general information on products advertised on TV,” Nielsen said in its report.

That last nugget could point to a movement in the making where mobile users embrace social television applications, a class heretofore relegated to the edges of social media land, for extra content. The findings also suggest that when consumers have a smartphone or tablet handy, they’re interested in learning more from advertisers, a clear opportunity for marketers and Shazam as it pushes ahead with its ad-tagging initiatives.

Photo credit: Mr.Thomas/Flickr

“It’s an exciting opportunity to bring the ability to engage a widespread audience leading up to the presidential [elections],” IntoNow co-founder and Yahoo product manager Adam Cahan told VentureBeat. “This is the first multi-screen debate experience spanning TV, web and mobile devices with the ability to inform, interact and engage audiences.”

IntoNow, a social TV application for iPhone, Android and now iPad, was acquired by Yahoo in April 2011. The application uses patented technology to listen to and “tag” — a.k.a. identity — millions of television and movie titles.

Debate viewers who use the app to tag the ABC News broadcast will be presented with poll questions, related news content, candidate profiles and discussion streams all tailored around the event. ABC News will use the application’s poll feature to query live audiences and gauge reactions to candidates’ debate responses, and then use the collected data to pose follow-up questions.

So you may hear an ABC News moderator say something like, “Candidate X, our live data suggests only 33 percent of Americans agree with your stance on X…,” we’re told.

The news network has been aggressively promoting IntoNow on the air (Yahoo is a sponsor of the event), includeding a prominent mention on flagship show Good Morning America. It will continue to promote the app and its poll questions during the live broadcast.

The Republican debate airs Saturday at 9 p.m. ET on ABC and will be streamed online.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Television-tagging application IntoNow has launched for the iPad, and it now matches tagged content to real-time news and updates, parent company Yahoo announced today at a press event in Sunnyvale.

IntoNow is the iPhone and Android application that uses patented technology to listen to and identify millions of television and movie titles, in a similar fashion to how Shazam identifies music. The technology originated at Auditude, but the app was spun out as its own entity. Yahoo acquired IntoNow in April 2011, just 12 weeks after the then nascent startup launched its iPhone app in the App Store.

Available for free on the App Store, IntoNow for iPad is designed to engage the multitasking television viewer. It tags live and time-shifted broadcast television content, highlights related content, and recommends television shows and movies based on your tagging behaviors and preferences.

The app’s most compelling feature, however, is its ability to discover and feature real-time content — in the form of tweets, news headlines or play-by-play sports updates — related to what the user is watching.

IntoNow for iPad, explained product manager Adam Cahan in a demonstration of the application, is taking closed captioning data and analyzing it using Yahoo Core technology, the company’s personalization and optimization engine. It then works to understand show content and context, matches that information against current news items, and surfaces results in the right-hand sidebar of the application.

Cahan referred to the process as ambient-style computing, and said that IntoNow will focus on this technology to better answer the question of “what’s next?” in the second-screen entertainment environment.

IntoNow had close to 600,000 users and was averaging 25,000 to 35,000 tags per day prior to being acquired by Yahoo. Cahan disclosed that, to date, IntoNow has been downloaded more than 1.6 million times on Android phones and iOS devices.