Tim Wheeler
Practicing journalist and rambling writer.
Jack of a few trades.
I am a Northern California journalist completing the final semester of my Bachelor's Degree in Journalism at California State University, Sacramento. Samples of my work can be found on the sports technology news website SportTechie, with choice clips running on SI.com. I have an extensive background in baseball, including seven years playing professionally in the colorado rockies organization. I am grateful to have the support of my wife Melissa and son Sam.
LISNR Fires Back After Latest Lawsuit Accuses Indianapolis Colts App Of Eavesdropping
The Indianapolis Colts, mobile developer YinzCam and audio technology company LISNR were named in a class action lawsuit filed Oct. 14 in Pennsylvania alleging that features of the team’s official app allowed them to listen in to private conversations without consent.
Plaintiff Alan Rackemann, a citizen of Indiana pursuing punitive and statutory damages, lists San Francisco-based law firm Edelson PC as a member of his legal counsel in the case. The Golden State Warriors’ official team app was the focus of a similar lawsuit filed in August that saw Edelson PC also represent the plaintiff in that case, LaTisha Satchell.
“It’s a lot of things that are fishy,” LISNR CEO and founder Rodney Williams said in response to the allegations. “It’s a little bit of lawyers being opportunistic, and it’s a lot of false allegations and just bad information.”
Rackemann’s suit alleges that LISNR “utilizes a novel beacon technology called audio beacons,” and that for it to work, the defendants “surreptitiously” turn on smartphone microphones and unlawfully listen in. Powered by low-energy Bluetooth, beacon technology pinpoints user locations and uses the information received to push ad-related content. Williams passionately refuted LISNR’s association with beacon technology.
“We don’t have a beacon technology,” Williams said. “LISNR is not a beacon. We don’t make beacons.”
Earlier this month, Williams had spoken out in wake of the lawsuit related to the Warriors app on the growing issue of mobile privacy in a technology-centric world. Williams suggested transparency within tech companies as a strong tactic to gain the trust of consumers.
LISNR has created a technology that functions similar to that of the earliest of television remotes. The “clicker,” as Americans affectionately recall it, communicated with its TV counterpart through radio frequencies inaudible to the human ear. Audio was never recorded. In the same fashion LISNR technology wakes up only when a recognizable frequency is sent over the air, according to the company, and the majority of the time, “it’s not recording, it’s not listening, it’s not even active,” Williams said.
The gray area LISNR and future companies will have to address moving forward is how an interface can recognize a frequency without actively listening. Does recognizing constitute hearing, and if so, does hearing constitute listening?
“We know that we’re doing something right for the industry and the market and mobile,” Williams said while defending LISNR. “We understand that there’s challenges and we’ll work through them, but we definitely don’t want to be exploited.”
LISNR is considering a countersuit against Rackemann if the opportunity presents itself. “This is not something we’re just going to take lightly,” Williams said.
The Colts have not yet commented publicly on the lawsuit where some facts are being disputed.
Rackemann and his counsel claim the Colts partnered with LISNR in 2014, “in furtherance of the Colts’ desire to remain a technological leader among NFL organizations,” according to the lawsuit. Williams claims LISNR partnered with the Colts only as recently as August.
YinzCam founder and CEO Priya Narasimhan told the New York Post she expected the claims against her company to be dropped because the app YinzCam developed did not include the features in question and that it was the Colts app’s new developer that added those features.
Alabama student's software calls balls & strikes with a smartphone
University of Alabama senior Matt Bowen has created and released PA Software, an innovative pitch-analyzing protocol he hopes will bring big league K-Zone functionality to little league backyards.
Sports entertainment company Sportvision first introduced K-Zone, a sophisticated computer system that tracks the trajectory of a baseball relative to the strike zone, in 2001. The final product is a three-dimensional graphic overlay in the shape of the strike zone that ESPN broadcasts live.
PA’s capabilities, meanwhile, rely entirely on computer vision-based technology that is already built into smartphone cameras and many other handheld cameras like GoPros. Any camera that shoots in 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second meets the needs of the software, Bowen said.
The system tracks a pitch’s velocity, flight path and location in the strike zone. Accurately discerning a thrown pitch’s velocity was critical in the success of the rest of system’s functionality. “If the velocity’s not right, it’s crap,” Bowen said. “Having the velocity was essential.”
Beyond direct metrics, PA’s online database hosts user data and allows for quantitative analysis over an extended period of time.
Bowen partnered with computer science professor Jeff Gray in 2014 through an emerging scholars program sponsored by the university.
Since then, four collaborators have worked to polish a college project into the finished product that can serve as a virtual umpire. Bowen’s brother, Will, a Alabama aerospace engineering grad, manages the mathematics and physics that make the protocol tick. Two of Bowen’s computer science classmates, Jacob Zarobsky,and Andrew White, created and maintain PA’s web presence and online database. PA Software filed as a business entity in Feb. 2015 and officially released its first product to market this August.
PA’s initial product offering, Pitch Analyzer 2016R1, is a desktop application and sells for $29.99.
Some of the technology that tracks advanced data in the MLB and MILB is already available to the general public, but at a substantially higher price point. TrackMan, a Danish company established in 2003, created a system that uses 3D Doppler technology to track the velocity, trajectory, spin rate and other metrics of a baseball while it is in the field of play. TrackMan has not publicized the exact price of the baseball system on the company website, but its golf counterpart is advertised at nearly $20,000.
“Really what we’re doing is trying to take that multimillion-dollar K-Zone system and bring it down to the consumer level. That’s really what the goal was,” Bowen said. “Just seeing a kid in their backyard being able to see the flight path of the ball, that’s really what it’s all about.”
The company is in the alpha stages on an iOS application that will mimic the capabilities of its desktop counterpart, but require no external hardware. The team tentatively plans for a mid-December beta release, Bowen said.
Next steps include getting the PA system in use behind the plate in a real-game situation as well as using the software to benefit hitters, Bowen said. But before that can happen, PA will need to grow the company and most likely enlist some outside help.
“It’s way over our heads,” Bowen said, “but somehow we’re pulling it off.”