SportsTap: Because Sometimes You Want BIRG

Product Category: Sports-Tracking Software

Manufacturer: Mobile1Sports

Price: Free

System Requirements: Data connection, even just occasional WiFi

Pros:

• Vast selection of teams & sports;
• Provides standings and other stats;
• It's FREE!

Cons:

• Notifications are a bit wonky;
• Notifications after each score in certain sports (e.g., basketball) pretty much useless;
• Ads.

Summary: BIRG'ing, or Basking in Reflected Glory can only be done if you know when your team is reflecting glory in which to bask. Way back in the day I had a Yahoo! Sports alert sent to my phone via SMS after every game my favorite teams played in. Then one summer it went crazy and started sending me the same score report 10 times in a row. Since then I'd been searching for a good sports score reporting program, and on Android, I found SportsTap. The price was right, Free, but how about the quality?

Information Availability

Sometimes you just want to know the score. Other times you want to sit around and read about the game. And still other times you want to find out how other teams (e.g., competitors) are doing or who is playing tomorrow. SportsTap has you covered in all three of these situations.

Figure 1: Tapping "NBA" gives you today's match-ups, photos and top stories. Scrolling down shows News, Standings, Transactions, Season Leaders, and Team Schedules

The first thing you'll notice on the screen in Figure 1 is the Bank of America banner ad at the top (OK, it's the first thing I noticed, perhaps you won't). It's not too obtrusive (it doesn't have animation or rotate), but it does remind you how Mobile1Soft pays their bills. Easily ignoring that we find today's match-ups, and a wealth of information. While this page is specific to NBA, all other sports covered by SportsTap have similar splash screens. Drilling down lets you find things such as standings.

Figure 2: Hey, we switched to Baseball, and those darn Indians are off to a slow start...

You'll notice in Figure 2, Cleveland is highlighted. As a native Clevelander, I like to keep tabs on the Indians, the Cavs, and yes, even the Browns. SportsTap makes it easy to select my teams and highlights them so I can see just how little BIRG'ing I'll be doing. In my experience these standings get updated fairly quickly - unlike the day lag that sites like Yahoo! Sports used to have (they seem to have gotten better at updating in real-time this year).

Alerts & Notifications

Figure 3: Alert types.

SportsTap is great for browsing, but what I really want to know is when are games starting, when are they ending, and what's going on in them. As seen in Figure 3, SportsTap lets you get a notification-bar alert (which includes the score, a great feature - you don't need to open the app just to know what the score is!) at pre-determined times. You can also select how often SportsTap updates this information, allowing you to control the strain on the battery during the day (especially helpful if you have multiple teams to follow that play around the clock).

Figure 4: Frequency of updates.

I found that 30 minutes is fine for me, although I wish there was a bit more granularity in these settings - perhaps 25 minutes or even 45 depending on the sport/season. As noted in the Cons, one option that sounds great in these alerts but quickly gets annoying is the alert on score change option. For some sports, such as Hockey or even Baseball, this might be a great thing. But for others, it's terrible. I don't need to be alerted, audibly, every 5 minutes during a basketball game! It would be great if future versions let you change the notifications and update frequency per sport as well.

Quirks and Annoyances

One thing I've noticed about SportsTap that can get annoying is the tendency of a particular update to not clear properly. The notification will appear in the bar, I'll view it and hit the "Clear" button and while all of my other notifications go away (e.g., e-mail, market download, etc.). SportsTap refuses to leave until I tap on it, opening the application. This seems to be a bug, hopefully one fixed in future releases.

Since SportsTap is a data-driven application, I've also found it to be a bit sluggish if my data connection is shaky. This is understandable, but it can be confusing for first-time users, wondering why a page isn't popping as quickly as it did earlier.

Lastly, if you want to check out SportsTap's interface but not actually install the software, their mobile page contains exactly the same information their app does - after all, the app is really just a wrapper with notifications. The mobile page is also nice if you're on another person's device and want a familiar interface.

Conclusion

SportsTap's notifications and information are more reliable than the alternatives I've found, and you can't beat the price. It would be great if we'd see a full application in the future, rather than a web-app wrapper, however for now, it's a great little tool to keep track on the wins (and for me, losses) of one's favorite sports teams!

Jon Westfall is the Executive Editor of Android Thoughts, a member of the Thoughts Media Network. He works in New York City as the Associate Director for Research & Technology for the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia Business School.

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