Hand eye coordination and faster reaction times often get credited as benefits to playing video games, but how about strategic thinking or even the way athletes play their games?  Chris Suellentrop from Wired explains on how the current generation of athletes, now college graduates who grew up playing sport video games, are changing the way sports, especially football, are changing.

Similar to the computer opponents in chess and online poker players, video games simulations of football, like the popular Madden series, have become so detailed and accurate, that athletes and their coaches are using these games to train for games and research possible plays and outcomes. Madden has even been used to correctly predict the winners of five of the last six Super Bowls and the AFC and NFC Championship winners within 3 points.

With years of basically computer training, athletes moving up from high school to college and then professional have a better understanding of the game – they can read the other team better and make faster decisions, requiring less apprenticeships. Wired goes into detail:

At the Pop Warner Super Bowl in 2006, the winning team had 30 offensive plays, which it had learned through Madden. (”I programmed our offense into Madden to help me memorize our plays,” one 11-year-old told Sports Illustrated. “It was easier than homework.”) Dezmon Briscoe, an all-conference wide receiver for the University of Kansas, credited Madden 2009 with teaching him how to read when defenses “roll their coverages” — move their defensive backs to disguise their strategy. Chuck Kyle, a high school coach who has won 10 state championships in football-mad Ohio, has programmed his team USA playbook into Madden and uses it to teach players their assignments. So have coaches at Colorado State, Penn State, and the University of Missouri, among other schools. An offensive lineman for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers used the videogame as a preparation tool for an entire season, scouting his opponents digitally. While even-more-sophisticated software is available for virtual sports training, coaches and players at all levels of football say that Madden’s off-the-shelf simulation is good enough.

It’s likely much of the next decade will have a lot of “now that the gaming generation” type stories (hell, I’ve done two is as many weeks) as we start seeing the next generation of gamer movie makers, marketers, and other areas we can’t even predict. And so far, these gaming influences were far from intended but open up exciting possibilities for what can games, and technology, do next.

Chess master Garry Kasparov pens a review of Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind, revealing how computers have changed the game.

Kasparov made headlines in 1997 when he lost to a computer.  IBM’s Deep Blue was a revolution in artificial intelligence, evaluating 200 million chess moves per second. Kasparov considered this inevitable, recognizing now that the average home PC has chess programs able to beat most grandmasters.

The fear of computers rising as chess masters meant few would be interested in the game, but the opposite is happening. With chess a standard program on most new computers, people and especially children can be exposed to the game even in areas where the game is rarely played. Moreover, the computer is influencing the style of the next generation of grandmasters, particularly that of no style (but lots of substance). Kasparov writes:

It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn’t good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn’t been done that way before. It’s simply good if it works and bad if it doesn’t. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers.

Grandmasters are getting younger and younger, likely thanks to the readily available computer partner.

In the pre-computer era, teenage grandmasters were rarities and almost always destined to play for the world championship. Bobby Fischer’s 1958 record of attaining the grandmaster title at fifteen was broken only in 1991. It has been broken twenty times since then, with the current record holder, Ukrainian Sergey Karjakin, having claimed the highest title at the nearly absurd age of twelve in 2002. Now twenty, Karjakin is among the world’s best, but like most of his modern wunderkind peers he’s no Fischer, who stood out head and shoulders above his peers—and soon enough above the rest of the chess world as well.

The growth of computer’s computational power is fascinating. As summarized by Kasparov, “Before 1994 and after 2004 these [computer versus human] duels held little interest. The computers quickly went from too weak to too strong.” A computer program is has broken down checkers to become unbeatable (either outright win or tie, but it will never lose) and it’s creator has now set his sights on poker. Chess’ complexity likely means an unbeatable computer is many years away, but that only makes the challenge more exciting.

Just to add another layer of analysis, several human/computer chess teams were pit against each other finding that a great chess player with a simple computer can best the best computer, but amateur chess players with an okay computer and an excellent process of analyzing that data can beat a great chess player with an even better computer. Computers, it seems, are yet to make the human mind obsolete, but rather can best supplement our reasoning skills to make us smarter or more efficient.

The internet is successfully ravaging almost every industry from music to real estate. Technology has, throughout history, caused the end of many industries, removing millions of jobs from the economy. What looks scary in the short term ends up being a long-term boon, with technology often replacing those jobs with better jobs, larger markets, and more efficient allocation of resources.

This weekend, Thomas Friedman wrote about the “Do-It-Yourself” economy where, even in this Great Recession, companies with fewer dollars and less manpower are finding ways to do more. He highlights marketing firm Greer & Associates whose budget has been cut 20 percent. Using online collaborative tools, cheap stock photography, and crowd sourced voiceover work, they have been able to produce far more than they could with a full budget.

Greer paid far less for these services. Voice talent that once cost up to $500 was 10 percent its original cost. Thousands of dollars of stock photography could be had for a few dollars.

Friedman sadly doesn’t go far enough highlighting how amazing this ultra-efficiency is. While people will pay less for stock photography, more people can afford it now. It’s feasible for someone making a birthday card or personal website to spend a few dollars for really professional photography. The market is far larger – elastic pricing at work.

But what about the poor photographer you say? Focus only true scarce goods. Stock photography, especially in the age of cheap digital cameras and photo editing software, is a glutted market pushing the price down to zero. That’s competition and it’s a good thing. All this stock photography makes commissioned photography, long the bread and butter of any photographer, more valuable, especially when they can show samples of their work in active use.

With more efficiency and less costs, Greer can put more resources into creativity and making actual marketing products. It’s so cheap and easy to distribute music, musicians can save those resources to engage with fans and sell scarce goods (like time, concert tickets, etc.) to those fans. Greer’s clients and a musicians fans save money they once spent on high-priced voice-overs or CDs can put that money to other areas of the economy, creating other jobs.

Look at 15-20 years ago how many jobs didn’t exist before the internet and computers become ubiquitous. There are search engines, SEO specialists, social media sites, online gaming, life streaming, GPS, cell phone data plans, and more. All of these provide more jobs even if they replace others. It’s like the automobile industry replacing horses and buggies or phones replacing the telegraph. Agriculture is my favorite example, as the majority of the U.S.’s jobs used to be in agriculture, replaced by manufacturing because agriculture became so efficient. Now manufacturing is more efficient, those jobs are disappearing. They will be replaced by new jobs, whether online or in other areas not yet discovered.

Companies need to stop fearing the changing marketplace and embrace the new opportunities, even if it means radically changing your business model. The market makes the decisions and companies just come along for the ride.

Several fiber optic companies in Amsterdam are testing 1 gigabit connections, internet speeds fast enough for four simultaneous HD movies at once.

The U.S. has been crawling behind Europe, Asia, and even Canada in broadband speeds and penetration.  Instead of rolling out fiber optic connections like Japan and Amsterdam, U.S. cable providers are imposing bandwidth caps.  Only Verizon offers high speed fiber optics in the U.S., which only gives speeds of 50 Mb/s, can cost almost $150, and is only available in a few major cities.

The U.S. suffers from a technological disconnect, only one part of our suffering infrastructure.  As more and more business and information moves online, countries with strong broadband infrastructures will have a competitive edge.  The Baller Herbst Law Group wrote a report on how the U.S. needs universal gigabits speeds by 2015 to stay economically competitive. But the U.S. lacks a broadband strategy like the successful seven year rollout in Japan.

In 2001, when the United States ranked 4th in the world, Japan had only a small handful of broadband lines. Spurred by the “broadband miracle” under way in nearby South Korea, Japan’s top government and private-sector leaders decided to make Japan the world’s leading broadband nation. They then developed and executed an all-hands-on-deck action plan to achieve that goal, including aggressive federal subsidies, low-interest and no-interest loans, loan guarantees, tax breaks, grants-in-aid to municipalities, targeted government purchases of services, a concerted national public education campaign, and a wide range of private-sector initiatives driven by a sense of national purpose and long-term thinking.

Today, Japan has the fastest and cheapest broadband in the world. Consumers in Japan can get broadband that is 10 times faster than the speeds available to average Americans, for prices that are less than a quarter of the prices that Americans must pay. Broadband providers currently compete at 1 Gbps, and this is expected to increase to 10 Gbps by 2010. Broadband is now available almost ubiquitously throughout Japan, and the “almost” will be removed by 2010. Today, 85 percent of households have access to fiber connectivity, and more than 35 percent of households have adopted it. Availability of fiber connective it will increase to 90 percent by 2010.

The U.S. ranks 15th in median broadband speeds at 2.35 megabits per second, behind Japan’s 63 mb/s.

To say the U.S. does nothing isn’t true.  Much of U.S. policy has hurt broadband penetration and competition.  The FCC uses provenly false methods of tracking cable competition and still pushes a 30 percent limit on cable company subscriber base.

While penalizing cable companies, the FCC lets telecommunication companies consolidate while doing away with common carrier requirements that have been vital to Japan’s success and would help increase competition.

The U.S. needs a broadband strategy that includes federal subsides and low-interest loans to encourage development.  These incentives ensure broadband will reach even the poorest areas and keep the United States competitive with the rest of the world. It will be expensive to full deploy fiber connections country wide.  Estimates in the U.K. are between $9 and $50 billion. As Japan (and Australia) have shown, results can be seen within a few years to the benefit of companies and citizens.

This is an issue unfortunately being ignored this election year.  When the next generation of Microsofts, Googles, and Apples originate in South Korea and Denmark, then the U.S. may get a clue.  But by then we might be too far behind to play catch up.

Just as I praise 3rd-party innovation on other mobile systems, Apple shows itself less willing to host an open environment.  A developer released a $999.99 iPhone application called “I Am Rich” that did nothing but show a red screen. Some bloggers called for Apple to takedown the program for no reason other than it was significantly over-priced.

Why remove the app? Yes it’s stupid and the eight people who bought it are weird to say the least, but if people want to spend $1,000 on a red screen, who is Apple to say they can’t? MG Siegler of Venture Beat says since the App Store isn’t completely open, Apple shouldn’t have approved it in the first place.  But why? “I Am Rich” doesn’t violate any of the rules Apple laid out: no pornography, bandwidth abuse, or threat to privacy.  The program specifically states there are no hidden features. Anyone who buys the program knows exactly what they’re getting.

By de-listing the program, Apple is expanding its control over what is allowed on the iPhone, proving if it doesn’t like your program, it can and will remove it. Apple also removed BoxOffice, a movie showtime search engine, without notice or justification. Without standard rules on what is allowed on the iPhone, developers may be scared away from getting on Apple’s bad side. Further, it scares away innovation that expands usage and value for the iPhone - no one wants to risk time and money to get banned.

Apple keeps fighting open standards for the iPhone which works now amid the hype. But competition from open systems like Google Android (if it’s ever released) and Symbian will challenge Apple’s concept of top-down control.  The reason Windows Mobile has full flash support in the Skyfire browser is thanks to 3rd-party developers given free-reign to do as they wish on a platform.  If Apple wants the iPhone to really change the mobile space, it needs to let developers do what they do best - develop.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has been open about his lack of computer knowledge, saying “I am an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance that I can get.” He adds he’s “learning to get online” and “will have that down fairly soon.” He doesn’t read email and won’t blog. McCain’s aide Mark Soohoo added “you don’t have to use a computer to understand how it shapes the country.”

Is that true? With so many technology issues going unaddressed or made worse with bad legislation, can we support a politician who isn’t fully informed.

Politicians, especially presidential candidates, should have a familiarity with the major technology trends, issues, and debates much like they would any other field from energy to foreign policy. I don’t expect candidates to design their own web pages or develop PHP applications, but using email and and search engines should be second nature.

The United States has no broadband policy, an out-of-date legal system unable to cope with online issues, and a steam of misinformation about security and privacy risks all likely do to a legislative body uneducated on the driving force of the world economy.  Politicians should know more than the average person because they have to make decisions that affect everyone else. Advisors are there to help filter the information, but some knowledge needs to come from the politicians, otherwise how can we trust they’ll make good decisions.

And admitting you don’t know something 73 percent of Americans use regular isn’t a good decision.

7. Vespa

These cute motored scooters seem innocent, but an imaginative geek can turn the modest exterior into an exciting ride of their life.  We might not all pull a Jason Bourne, but it’s worth a try.

6. Segway

The anti-climatic revoutionizer of personal transportation might not have changed the world, but it’s still damn fun to ride.

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The judge presiding over the Viacom vs. YouTube case has ruled Google must hand over IP addresses and user names of its users and a list of the videos they watched, whether on YouTube or embedded on other sites (an estimated 12 terabytes).  Viacom is asking for this information to prove YouTube deals the majority in infringing material.

The result of this ruling is a privacy nightmare.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation has argued the judge’s ruing violates, ironically, the Videotape Privacy Protection Act that says the government can’t snoop your rental history (library books are fair game).  Google, however, has argued before that IP addresses aren’t personal data because they aren’t attached to a single person, says Google “in most cases, an IP address without additional information cannot [identify a user].”

Unfortunately, the IP address can get you pretty close.  It identifies the computer and location, including households and laptops.  The result isn’t just embarrassing users who watched far too much Dog on Skateboard videos.  It’s what does Viacom, the RIAA, and MPAA do with this list once its public.  Most of their effort in suing customers was finding the IP addresses.  Now Google’s handing them over on a silver hard drive.

Viacom obviously wants to analyze Google’s data itself, ignoring a study by Vidmeter.com that found copyrighted materials accounting for a fraction of YouTube viewership.  Based on their sample of more than 1.5 billion views of 6,725 videos, 9.23 percent were taken down.  Those remove videos accounted for only 5.93 percent of views.  You can read the full study here.  Viacom itself accounted for 2.37 percent of of views, the highest of for all content owners.  How they monetize that to $1 billion would be magic.

[Via Mathew Ingram}

Forbes provided some hyped linkbaiting today with an article on why Apple’s iPhone could kill, not compete with, but kill the Nintendo DS. I’m taking the bait to quash Apple’s gaming might once and for now.

Tech pundits love finding that new “killer” app to quash the incumbent which, in recent memory, always seems to be something Apple related: iPod “killer”, iPhone “killer”, and even Apple TV “killer” (do you need to kill something that isn’t even selling?).

Nintendo’s DS is the powerhouse of handheld gaming, the benefit of almost 20 years and more than half-a-dozen hardware generations. Sony launched its first handheld competitor, the PSP, barely clutching to 30 percent of the market, a credit to the system’s power and Sony’s well-established Playstation brand. Apple comes to the gaming world with no experience (except the tragic Pippin), no game studio, no retail presence or expandable memory, and most importantly, no interest in killing Nintendo.

Forbes writes its article ahead of Apple’s release of 3rd-party software include, presumably, an assortment of games. When Apple announced its developer’s kit for 3rd-parties, major game publishers Sega and EA were there to show off the first games for the platform. These high-profile releases led blogs to speculate on the iPhone’s potential as an actual handheld gaming platform.

This assumes Apple wants to be a handheld platform. The recently announced $25 for games sales Apple has other priorities. Gaming platforms have relied on low priced hardware subsidized by royalties from game sales. Sony’s PSP struggled initially at its $200 price point - how can Apple’s $400 iPhone think to fare better.

The other point against Apple’s gaming interests are its lack of actual gaming. EA’s cute flOw clone, if holding to Apple’s aforementioned price, costs $8 on the PS3. A rare $20 game on the PSP, Patapon, featured dozens of hours of gameplay. The DS offers assorted casual games like those likely to dominate on the iPhone, but also offers a varied library of epic stories and varied genres. Casual gaming is big business, yes, but hard core gaming is still bigger. The Wii sells amazingly, but software beyond Nintendo (first-party) fails to sell like games on the Xbox 360 and PS3.

Games will never sell the iPhone. The iPhone sells itself because of its variety of features and solid casual gaming will appeal to that user base in ways even the Nintendo DS can’t. The result will be different markets, not competitors.

Stan “The Man” Lee made his career helping create the Marvel Universe, but in his twilight years, Stan has gotten a second career in movie cameos. Stan Lee has appeared in almost all Marvel Comics movies and makes surprise appearances in TV shows, cartoons, and the occasional DC property. This list ranks the geekiest, most comic book friendly Stan Lee cameos with no bearing on the actual quality of the movie (it’s almost an inverse relationship).

7. The Hulk as security guard with Lou Ferrigno

Not only was this Stan Lee’s first speaking role in a Marvel movie, but “The Man” got to work security with the original Hulk, Lou Ferrigno in a double whammy of geekery.

6. Fantastic Four 2 as rejected wedding guest

Poor Stan Lee. He co-creates almost the entire Marvel Universe, but he not one even sends him a wedding invitation. Stan Lee arrives assuming it was an over sight only to be not only turned away, but not even recognizes. How shameful.

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