Apps: Sports

Shakespeare wrote "The play's the thing", in Hamlet, but with CrowdZone (FREE, http://www.crowdzone.com), that could easily become "The CROWD's the thing".  CrowdZone is a social networking tool focused on sporting events.  In fact, CrowdZone is probably the ultimate tailgating app!  You create a profile and see what events are happening today.  You join an event, whether you are at the game or watching at home or at a sports bar.  You can leverage the location-aware capabilities of the iPhone and find like-minded users nearby!  Root for your team, chat with others, and earn "trophies" for your own comments.  You can even earn real world rewards, like tickets!

If you're a fan of the NCAA basketball tournament, you'll want to take a look at this app. PocketBracket ($1.99) lets youcreate brackets, organize pools, and follow the NCAA men's basketball tournament with game and score updates. In addition, you can compete among thousands of users on the PocketBracket Network as well as your friends and coworkers. PocketBracket comes preloaded with 2009 tournament data so you can test-drive the application before the 2010 tournament. You can create sample brackets and begin organizing your pools.

A few days ago I posted about the free Winter 2010 app for following the Olympics. Another option available is Games 2010, a $0.99 app that gives you up-to-the-minute news from over 30 news sources, ranging from the New York Times and ESPN to the BBC and the Associated Press. In addition, the app includes a range of other content, including pictures, videos, medal standings, latest results, TV schedules, event schedules, and interviews.

Winter 2010 is a free app with a number of great features that give you about everything you need to follow the Winter Olympics. It gives you access to all the news and information, event schedule, and a medal tracker, which lists the countries with the most medals. A neat feature is push notifications, so you can get instant notice for winners by nation or by sport. The news feeds offer general news as well as news by sport. 

 If you've been paying close attention, as most developers do, to the App Store, you may have noticed some changes.

1. New Releases only show BRAND NEW apps, i.e. version 1.0
2. Updates are not included in the New Releases

This is potentially a good thing for users but there are some downsides.

The good news is, you won't have to search through old apps to find new gems.  It might also discourage developers from submitting minor updates just to be featured on the New Releases page.  That will also cut down on approval time as fewer apps need to be reviewed.

 Apple recently announced a major shift in how they treat free apps and I have been mulling over what it means to developers, in addition to end users.

In the past, "In-App Purchases", or the ability to add features to an app, were only available for paid apps.  Free apps could not be upgraded, short of purchasing the paid version separately.  Now, users of these free apps can purchase upgrades.

On one hand, more choices are a good thing.  But I have some concerns.