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Planning a Super Bowl party? Check out these apps
With the countdown to the Super Bowl underway, TUAW is here to highlight some apps that will help smooth out your party planning. Apple helped as well, releasing its own list of Super Bowl party apps. We'll share some of those with you, as well as a few of our own favorites.
Motorola teases the real Xoom Super Bowl ad: George Orwell, flowers, iPhone-using automatons in white hoodies all involved
We already got teased on this, but it turns out that the first teaser -- which, let's be honest, didn't have the highest production value -- was strictly a teaser. Now, Motorola's sent us a fragment of the real commercial they'll be debuting during the Super Bowl this Sunday, and it's got pretty much everything you'd expect: a handsome gentleman with flowers reading 1984 on a Xoom, white headphones, and thousands of emotionless drones "enjoying" their Apple products. The whole thing is an obvious swipe at Apple for seemingly endorsing the very homogeny it waged war against in its Ridley Scott-directed Super Bowl commercial for the Macintosh back in 1984, and we suspect you good folks are going to have some very strong opinions about it. Follow the break for the first 15 seconds of the ad.
Best Buy's Buy Back Program to be made official during the Super Bowl... by Justin Bieber and Ozzy Osbourne
We heard about this during the news avalanche that was CES early last month, but today Best Buy has started making its new Buy Back Program official in emails sent out to valued Reward Zone customers. The gist of the scheme is that Best Buy will offer you set "Buy Back" prices for goods you purchase from its stores, advertising it as a reassurance that your electronics won't depreciate too much during your ownership. The leaked info we saw in January showed that you'll have to pay an extra fee at the point of purchase to enroll into the Program and Best Buy's highest re-purchase offers were capped at 50 percent of the initial price, so don't expect this to be any great favor to you, Mr. Consumer. For more info, keep your eyes locked on the Super Bowl this Sunday, when Justin Bieber and Ozzy Osbourne (no, seriously) will do their best to explicate Best Buy's new venture. [Thanks, Jeff and John]
Super Bowl XLV Media Day: Packers split on iOS / Android, Cowboys CIO talks mobility
We woke up this morning in Dallas to 20 degree temperatures and a parking lot covered in ice. Not exactly the kind of weather the NFL was hoping for when it selected the new Cowboys Stadium to host Super Bowl XLV, but it didn't stop both teams and media from making their way -- however slowly -- to Arlington for Super Bowl Media Day. Naturally, the likes of ESPN were there in full force, but rather than picking apart defensive schemes and seeing who could outgun Troy Polamalu for the longest mane in North Texas, we spent our time asking about mobile OS preferences and soaking up knowledge from Cowboys CIO Pete Walsh. With a price tag well north of $1 billion on the new Cowboys Stadium, the home to the world's largest HD display is certainly one of the most technologically advanced in the world. It's packing 884 wireless access points throughout (not to mention an internal network operations center that constantly monitors activity on each one), 260 miles of fiber optic cabling, capacity to handle over 100,000 simultaneous wireless connections, over 3,100 IPTVs and micro cell towers for each major carrier within -- you know, so that kickoff video that just can't wait actually sees its way onto YouTube prior to the start of the second half. Head on past the break to catch of a video of us talking smartphone platforms with Green Bay Packers center Scott Wells, as well as a lengthy (and insightful) interview with the Chief Information Officer of the Dallas Cowboys. Everything from the Cowboys' rejection of FanVision to their hopes to blanket the stadium with gratis WiFi is covered, and we're even given a hint that contactless payments and mobile food ordering systems could be just a season or so away. %Gallery-115523%
Steelers win Madden 11 Super Bowl simulation
Computers can be used to calculate all sorts of truly helpful data ... or they can be used to simulate the Super Bowl. If you're going to use processing power to predict the outcome of a sporting event, then you'd better be pretty darned accurate if you hope to maintain any semblance of a reasonable use of life (it still takes human people to run, recap and even report on -- hi there! -- the simulation). EA Sports' Madden games have at least been that, accurately calling the winner of six of the last seven Super Bowls. This year, Madden 11 sees the Pittsburgh Steelers defeating the Green Bay Packers 24-20 in Super Bowl XLV, which sounds like a good enough guess. But now, do you put money on that? (After the break, delve into the video highlights and box score ... of the simulated game.) Also vying for "reasonability" will be this Thursday's Madden Bowl XVII (wait -- there have already been sixteen of these?). The annual tournament of NFL players gamers whose seasons have been reduced to playing as themselves will be broadcast live on ESPN3 (on your Xbox Dashboard) at 9PM ET, February 3. Hey Niners fans, did you know Alex Smith* has won a record two Madden Bowls? That's the same number of Super Bowl rings that Roethlisberger has -- well, until Sunday's victory, according to Madden. [*Update: Oops! Sorry to get your hopes up San Francisco faithful -- it's Alex Smith the tight end (currently playing for the Cleveland Browns) who holds the Madden Bowl record. Alex Smith the quarterback has never participated in the event.] %Gallery-115477%
Totally blow out the big game! Super Bowl XLV
It's been confirmed, Super Bowl XLV will not be the first one with a full HD 3D broadcast (no gimmicky 3D commercials this year either, you can put the paper glasses away) despite featuring a halftime show by James Cameron's BFFs, the Black Eyed Peas. Still, considering what happened the last time they tried 3D at the House That Jerry Jones Built it's probably for the best. Still, just because you don't have one of Cowboys Stadium's record breaking HD screens you should still enjoy the game in style. In 2011 that means going beyond just the screen, the sounds and the seats -- we'll tell you how after the break.
Motorola teases Xoom Super Bowl ad: '2011 looks a lot like 1984'
Moto hasn't been shying away from the Apple jabs this year, and it's got another one in store for the Super Bowl this week with a commercial that'll poke fun at Cupertino's 1984 Macintosh ad, perhaps the most famous Super Bowl spot of all time. In it, the company says that "2011 looks a lot like 1984" with "one authority, one design, one way to work" while showing Planet Earth wearing a pair of shiny white iPod / iPhone buds. Boom, here comes a new planet -- a red, gaseous one with an "M" logo on it -- that pimps a bunch of wild features we'll be seeing in the Xoom like a dual-core processor, upgradeable 4G, and Honeycomb out of the box. In closing, Moto says "it's time to live a free life." We would've liked to have seen Motorola follow a format closer to that 1984 commercial, but it's a pretty well-played jab nonetheless -- and it's conceivable that this is just a teaser for the actual ad that'll air next weekend. Follow the break to check it out.
CBS Sports updates pro football iPad app for playoffs
I may not be happy about what happened to my New England Patriots on Sunday, but that won't stop me from following the last four teams on their road to the Super Bowl this year. For those of you who may feel the same way, 148Apps is reporting that CBS Sports has updated their free CBS Sports Pro Football iPad app right in time for the rest of the playoffs. iPad owners get play-by-play action, scoring updates, streaming video, lineups, and even control over their CBS Sports fantasy football teams. While one may think it's a little late in the season to update an app, these last three matches are a very important group of games. We'll be sure to have more coverage here of football apps just in time for the Super Bowl, but in the meantime, maybe football fanatics can pass some time with a little Madden 2011 for the iPad and iPhone? Football fans can download the free app from the Apple App Store but remember -- if you are at someone else's house for the remaining games, please be sure to wash the Doritos off your fingers before bogarting their iPad. Don't own an iPad? No need to fret, as CBS Sports also has an iPhone/iPod touch version of the app that you can download as well. [via 148Apps]
Found Footage: Google's ad, Mac style
Happy weekend! Google may have won some hearts with its Super Bowl ad a little while back, but we all know that Apple is the king of advertising when it comes to technology, so YouTuber allenmonroeiii decided to make a little parody of the Google ad and promote the Mac instead. Strangely, it actually works -- while the audio is straight from the Google ad (which tells the story of a guy who finds love in Paris by searching on Google), the music serves just as well to tell the story of someone frustrated by a Windows PC purchase. No, this probably won't sell any computers (it's for us Mac heads to laugh at, considering that it was made in about an hour), but go ahead and enjoy it for what it is, and enjoy your weekend.
Breakfast Topic: Are You Ready for Some Football?
It was sort of lost in the shuffle between Love Is in the Air and the fact that we're technically not a sports blog, but this weekend featured one of the biggest events in American sporting, the Super Bowl. Believe it or not, even some of us uber geeks here at WoW.com's world headquarters like sports. Some of us even watched the Super Bowl. Some of us even watched it for a reason other than the commercials. (And honestly, the commercials sucked this year. Except the Google one. That made me melt and go all gooey and squeal with warm fuzzies.) Anyhow, it was a good game, if not the best Super Bowl I've seen in years. But what it really got me thinking of was Warcraft football. Believe it or not, football in Warcraft is totally canon. If you don't believe me, you should watch the end credits for Warcraft III. With that in mind, I got to thinking about what an Azerothian football league might look like, what cities and villages would field teams, and who'd win the superbowl.
VIZIO Super Bowl ad pushes internet connected HDTVs in a big way
We weren't sure exactly what Beyonce, David Goes to the Dentist and Chocolate Rain all had in common, but VIZIO squeezed them all into its Super Bowl ad. Still striving to remake its reputation from being merely a cheap HDTV manufacturer to a premium one offering lots of features, the ad (embedded after the break) shows how it's bringing "the best of the internet" with VIZIO Internet Apps. We still need to see if its picture quality will measure up and whether the widget experience has gotten any better (read: faster) in 2010 to be truly convinced, but a slick ad never hurt.
Play The Who's Super Bowl halftime performance in Rock Band [update]
[NFL] If you want to play a bunch of songs by The Who in Rock Band in a manner that satisfies your minute attention span, and do so soon, MTV and Harmonix just made an announcement that will delight you (however briefly). Alternately, you're going to be thrilled if you want to capture some Super Bowl magic in your living room. On Sunday, February 7, The Who will play a 15-song medley during the Super Bowl's halftime show, and Rock Band will feature that same medley as a $2 download the same day (on Xbox 360 and Wii, anyway -- the PS3 version will arrive later). The identities of the songs contained in the medley will be unknown until the Super Bowl performance, but, really, they're all good. Yeaahhhhhhhhh! [Update: We mistakenly identified the "S-mashup" as consisting of the 15 songs listed in the press release. It is actually a medley of unannounced songs. We apologize for the error.]
Madden predicts Saints win Super Bowl XLIV
If the "Madden Curse" is the unflapping revenge exacted by the fowl spirit of the Great Turducken, its devoured body unceremoniously carved up by the bare hands of John Madden on national television those many years ago (seriously, go wikipedia that joint), then the annual "Madden NFL Super Bowl Simulation" is just ... plain math. In the latest case of crunching the numbers, Madden 10 has predicted the New Orleans Saints to be winners of this Sunday's Super Bowl XLIV over the Indianapolis Colts. It was a real nail biter, EA recalls: "with minutes left in the game the duo of Joseph Addai and Peyton Manning put the Colts back on top with a go-ahead touchdown pass. With the game hanging in the balance, Drew Brees hits David Thomas for an 11-yard touchdown and the game winning score." The final: 35-31. But more intriguing than the projected outcome of a mere sporting event is EA Sports' coveted simulation formula, which has become scary good. Not only did it correctly predict the winners of the conference championship games a few Sundays ago within a three-point margin of error, according to EA Sports, the formula accurately played out last year's Super Bowl down to the final score and individual player stats, which begs the question: What can't it predict? We'd like to put a request in to EA to simulate next week's retail showdown: BioShock 2 vs. Dante's Inferno. Place your bets now! %Gallery-84606%
Ask Engadget HD: Is this the best time to buy a new HDTV?
It's the week of the Super Bowl and with the sales pages full of shiny new HDTVs one of the most frequent questions has risen again - is this the right time to buy a new HDTV? We'll let Manu put this one in the atmosphere: "With the Super Bowl coming up, it got me thinking - what's the best time to buy an HDTV with regards to price? I'm assuming right before the new ones come out, but when exactly is that? Or is that not even the right time?" There it is, simple and plain. Is this the time to buy, do you wait a few months for 2009's HDTVs to thin out and the new 2010 models to hit, or are you bargain hunting on Black Friday? Of course, if anyone has spotted a particularly sweet deal, feel free to let us all know where in the comments. Got a burning question that you'd love to toss out for Engadget HD (or its readers) to take a look at? Tired of Google's blank stares when you ask for real-world experiences? Hit us up at ask at engadgethd dawt com and keep an eye on this space -- your inquiry could be next.
Report: CBS rejects Dante's inferno ad over tagline
According to The Hollywood Reporter, CBS required some editing to EA's Super Bowl ad for Dante's Inferno before it would expose America's fragile hive mind to it. No, it's not because of all the demons and the brimstone and stuff, but rather due to the game's widely-used tag line "Go to Hell." As you can seen in the clip after the jump, it's replaced by "Hell Awaits." The change is likely because of worries about offending conservative viewers, but we're secretly hoping that Doritos is launching a new super spicy chip during the big game and it just didn't want Dante copying its line. [Via Eurogamer]
Level 3 to deliver uncompressed HD broadcast from Super Bowl XLIV
We're still not sure if this has any noticeable result on picture quality, but Level 3 has announced its going to assist in delivering Super Bowl XLIV's feed uncompressed from the site back to CBS headquarters in New York. Instead of being compressed onsite in a production truck then sent to the studio and stations where it's compressed again, this could help CBS bring a more high quality signal home. If you've been watching Denver Broncos home games, you've seen Level 3's Vyvx broadcast network at work, we'll see how beautiful it keeps things looking in Miami on Sunday.
Poll: Best HD sporting event this month?
Yeah we know March has laid claim to the Madness title, but for such a short month the sports lineup for February is out of control. Kicking off with Winter X Games 14 this weekend and leading into the Super Bowl, Daytona 500 and Winter Olympics there's more than enough reasons for us to stay inside and out of the cold than ever. So which event are you most excited to see? %Poll-41022%
Totally blow out the big game! Part V: Super Bowl XLIV
Sure, the Wall Street Journal says there's only 11 minutes of actual action in every NFL game, but on Super Bowl Sunday we'll be prepped to catch every one of them -- and all the commercials, play stoppages and halftime shows in between -- in the best quality possible. The Colts and Saints both came close to racking up undefeated regular season records but missed, due either to lackluster play and late season injuries or just a decision to play Curtis Painter. While that means the '72 Dolphins get to hang onto a glorious past for one more year, these pass-happy offenses of the future are expected to light up the scoreboard all night and we'll need to make sure our equipment is up to par for a 2010 Super Bowl experience.
Report: EA buys Super Bowl ad time for Dante's Inferno
Because the Dante's Inferno marketing department obviously knows what it's doing, IndustryGamers reports that EA bought up some ad time during next month's Super Bowl, presumably in the hopes that some of the people watching will care enough to pick up the game when it's releases two days later. We have to wonder how many of these sports-watching people -- who are ostensibly not as interested in 14th century epic poetry -- will care about a guy with a self-inflicted sewing nightmare on his chest waging war through Hell. So, here's ample warning. When your parents inevitably drag you over to your uncle's house to watch the San Bernardino Flim-Flams take on the Texarkana Whatsits, and your little cousin -- you know, the one way too into Dashboard Confessional with the closet full of long-sleeve shirts with thumb holes cut out -- sees the ad and goes bananas, know that Joystiq gave you the heads up. We love you like that.
CBS lays out its HD broadcast plan for Super Bowl XLIV
We're still working out our attack plan for the Super Bowl but CBS is more than ready for the big game with a significantly larger outlay of cameras and equipment than it brings to regular season games. Broadcasting & Cable learned from VP of engineering, operations and production services Ken Aagaard that its setup is "eerily similar" to the one CBS used for SB XLI two years ago, upping the number of HD cameras to 50 from 48 including a healthy mix of manned, unmanned handheld, fixed, RF and super-slo-mo setups among them. New for 2010 are cameras capable of up to 450 fps for replays, plus "HyperZoom" graphics tracking to magnify the smallest details of a play -- like whether or not Meachem made that catch in overtime -- a new virtual system to extend the goalposts upwards on field goals and an impressive network of servers for replays.
