sports

When News Groper, an entire site full of "fake celebrity" blogs in the vein of Fake Steve Jobs, launched earlier this summer, some people (myself included) thought it would have a rough time making a name for itself on the Web. There's so much online comedy already out there, and after the rise and fall of Fake Steve, I thought the blog community would've had enough of celebrity satire (celebritire?)

Now, however, it looks like News Groper may have had its big break--MSNBC reporter Alex Johnson mistook one of its blogs for real, and quoted it … Read more

It's almost September, and that can mean but one thing: Football. And here at Crave, we do our level best to help you keep apprised of all your scores, fantasy or otherwise, as we did by alerting you to the "Game Time" sports watch in time for Father's Day.

But if your heartless and inconsiderate family missed that opportunity, there's still hope. Enter the "SportsCase Wireless Football Scoreboard," a $75 (on sale) gadget that provides scores received via satellite with no subscription needed, as well as standings, schedules and statistics.

Sure, it's … Read more

Cadillac's efforts to reposition its brand extend to the cabin electronics in the update to the Cadillac CTS, with a new infotainment system that outstrips the competition. We've seen live traffic integration and a music server on the Lexus LS 460, but Cadillac introduces both features on its lowest-end model, the 2008 Cadillac CTS. This second burst from Cadillac's next-generation salvo takes the bold "Art and Science" design and makes it fit better with the sport-luxury segment on which the company has set its sights.

The bold edges of the original CTS remain, making the … Read more

Here's one that's good for back-to-school season. The Web has made it possible for media niches that normally would get squeezed out of newspaper margins or TV time slots to find a way to be heard, and high school sports are no exception. We've already seen Takkle (earlier coverage here) fall into this sector, and now media giant Hearst-Argyle Television has launched a competitor--High School Playbook, which aims to go for a cross-platform strategy of TV, Internet, and mobile content. Sponsored by Canon, the site has launched in beta for a select number of sports-obsessed metro … Read more

During football season, there are really only two times of day: game time, and the lame 164 or so hours a week when your team isn't playing.

Finally, there's a watch that realizes this. The Pro Sports Schedule Watch comes preloaded with your favorite NFL or MLB team's season schedule.

These $130 watches aren't one-year wonders, either. The USB-compatible watch can download future schedules from the Web, so you'll always have the current schedule on your wrist.

When it's game time, the watch plays "The Star Spangled Banner" for football games or &… Read more

By now, the news has hit the wires (and the blogs) that Peter Moore, corporate vice president of interactive entertainment at Microsoft, is leaving Redmond to be president of the sports division at game publisher Electronic Arts (EA). An EA representative confirmed to CNET News.com that there is no press conference planned, but a release (now posted on Kotaku, which first reported the news) has been sent out.

It's by no means the only recent major executive shuffle in the game console world, as PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi famously stepped down in April. But Moore's timing is … Read more

Back in what we like to call "the day," football fans had two main choices for NFL-branded video games. There was the Madden juggernaut and 2K Sports' NFL2K series. Thanks to EA's exclusive contract with the NFL, the last 2K football game to see the light of day was NFL2K5, which became something of a cult classic.

2K Sports is still going strong, with its NBA and MLB franchises, so the company decided to blow the dust off its football game and create a new version, minus the official NFL license. Instead, All-Pro Football is played with … Read more

SportSnipe is a new single-page aggregator the likes of Original Signal, PopUrls, and others, although it's focused specifically on sports feeds from all over the world. Users can browse through headlines and video thumbnails for various leagues, genres, and teams. Like Original Signal, SportSnipe has the option to hover over any headline to read the first few lines of the story, along with a comment button that lets registered users add their own commentary to the story--separate of the parent site.

The service claims to pull its headlines from over 1,300 different sports feeds. It also doubles as a regular old build-it-yourself feed aggregator similar to Netvibes and PageFlakes, albeit a little less flashy. Users can add RSS feeds as either text or video feeds. The video feed catcher is especially cool and gives you a little thumbnail for each clip. If you do this with a text feed, you won't get anything but a black box.

SportSnipe has a few ways to sort and share content. You can bookmark pages you'd like to share with others through a variety of social bookmarking sites. You can also turn off comments and hover over previews. With a quick toggle you can rearrange the feed boxes and extend the feeds to see more than just a few headlines. There are also embed codes for putting your feeds on a blog, Web site, or social networking profile (which I've done to the right.)

In many ways, SportSnipe isn't very original as a single-page aggregator. Pageflakes and Netvibes do a much better job with their presentation, and the resemblance to Popurls and Original Signal is unquestionable. However, SportSnipe has a really great directory of sports feeds that aggregate quickly and are far more comprehensive than what Original Signal offers. The video feed implementation is a nice touch as well.

More screens after the jump. … Read more

Expensive sports rights are a major cost for the United States television industry. Sports also brings huge ad revenue and a male audience that is much prized by advertisers because it's so elusive.

Now the NBA has signed new TV deals that run nearly a decade. This time the buyers get significant rights to Internet distribution of games, highlights and related content. Clearly, this is just another step toward the Internet becoming a full-fledged alternative to typical TV distribution. An ESPN executive said its Web site had a million unique visitors daily during the NBA playoffs earlier this year.… Read more