TAYLOR’S TAKE ON THE WEEK IN SPORTS TECH: Yo, Yinzers. I’m still having fun in Pittsburgh, and learning that this could be a hub for sports tech innovation. This week I met with Diamond Kinetics, a hot startup here that helps baseball players better understand their swing. That’s Buddy Clark and C.J. Handron, co-founders of Diamond Kinetics, in the photo above at their office. They work just a few blocks away from PNC Park and Heinz Field. “I want to see this as one of those sports tech epicenters, because there isn’t really one,” Handron said. Pittsburgh has the pieces.… Read More
Volt Athletics is teaming up with one of the biggest names in sports business. The Seattle startup today announced a new partnership with Gatorade and will rename its strength and conditioning consumer app to “Volt Fueled by Gatorade.” The revamped app combines Volt’s “intelligent” workout technology with Gatorade’s sports nutrition expertise, offering a more complete digital fitness guide for athletes. It’s a milestone deal for Volt, which has more than 100,000 users across 120 countries on its platform that launched in 2013. Volt CEO and co-founder Dan Giuliani called it “a truly unique offering in the fitness app space” and said… Read More
The Winter Olympics’ first-ever drone light show has earned Intel the title from Guinness World Records for the “most unmanned aerial vehicles airborne simultaneously.” There might be an asterisk in the record book, however: The show didn’t actually take place at today’s opening ceremony for the PyeongChang Olympics in South Korea. Instead, it was pre-recorded last December for broadcast during the event, just to make sure that bad weather or a technical glitch didn’t spoil the view. The synchronized flight of 1,218 Intel Shooting Star drones broke Intel’s previous record of 500 drones, flown simultaneously in Germany in 2016. The… Read More
Despite the fact that the actual football game was the more entertaining part of the evening for once, some Super Bowl LII advertisers still managed to create the necessary buzz to justify spending $5 million for 30 seconds of air time. According to USA Today and its annual Ad Meter platform, Amazon bested all the competition with its “Alexa Loses Her voice” commercial. CEO Jeff Bezos makes an appearance in the ad, as do celebs Cardi B, Gordon Ramsey, Rebel Wilson, and Sir Anthony Hopkins. The competition, in its 30th year, required panelists to rate ads on a 1-10 scale. Every… Read More
TAYLOR’S TAKE ON THE WEEK IN SPORTS TECH: Hey, Yinzers! I’ve been having fun living and working in Pittsburgh for the past week as part of our GeekWire HQ2 initiative. On Friday I experienced my first NHL game in person as Sidney Crosby’s Penguins hosted Alexander Ovechkin’s Capitals at PPG Paints Arena. Loved the fast-paced action of live hockey with few in-game interruptions. I can see why it appeals to a younger crowd, as Vegas Golden Knights GM George McPhee told me last month. Sports tech note: Pretty cool watching coaches use iPads to review video of past plays during the game.… Read More
