Soccer fans eager to stay in the loop and follow their favorite teams and players during the FIFA World Cup in Brazil can keep up with the action on their smartphones using apps created for the tournament.
Thirty-two national teams are to compete in the World Cup, organized by the world soccer body FIFA, in 12 host cities during the competition to open tomorrow and run to July 13.
“Brazil is known for being the land of soccer and now we host the biggest sporting event on the planet. The benefits are already being felt,” said a spokesman for the Special Secretariat of the World Cup (SECOPA), which is coordinating the competition in the state of Ceara in northeastern Brazil.
The new apps join a cornucopia of ways to follow the Cup, including television and the Internet.
OneFootball Brasil, a company based in Berlin, has developed an app for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone devices that provides scores and game news about fans’ favorite teams and players.
“Soccer fans have a strong attachment to their teams and countries and want to be there to cheer for them and feel like they’ve actually had a part in making their team win,” said Jonathan Lavigne, the company’s chief technology officer.
When users pick a team, the app creates a feed of news, statistics and scores, along with push notifications for real-time updates.
The free app, which is available worldwide in 15 languages, also includes real-time game commentary, match schedules, data on each player, and news and commentary on games and teams.
“Recently, our key player got injured and won’t play in the World Cup, for example. This is addictive and emotional information that I need to know as a fan right when it happens,” Lavigne said.
Fans in the US with a cable subscription can stream all 64 games live on their smartphones with WatchESPN for Android, iOS and Windows 8, and for free in Canada with the CBC 2014 FIFA World Cup app for iPhone and Android.
FIFA also has a free, official app, called FIFA, for iOS and Android. It provides scores, game schedules, headlines, photos and videos.
“The World Cup is the premier sporting event in the world, even bigger than the Olympics,” said Jonathan Savage, senior vice president at TheScore, based in Toronto.
The TheScore app is available on iPhone, Android and Blackberry 10 devices worldwide in English. It enables soccer fans to track teams and players in a real-time personalized feed.
Users can follow the World Cup League and customize the notifications they receive, including goals, red cards, half-time scores and match start and end times.
A total of 204 teams across six continents competed for a spot at the World Cup. Brazil has won the competition, which is held every four years, five times, according to FIFA.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to