Pixellot, the world’s leading provider of AI-Automated sports video and analytics solutions, today announced its collaboration with HomeTeam Live, a live streaming app for amateur sports leagues. Pixellot’s technology will provide high quality streaming for parents, coaches, and fans as well as open new revenue opportunities for the leagues. After the initial launch period, HomeTeam Live intends to increase its Pixellot-powered network from 40 to 150 venues by the end of 2022 as it seeks to further expand its network across Canada.
One of HomeTeam Live’s main objectives is to use technology to help grow league viewership and connect and grow local sports in communities so families can watch their loved ones participate in sports across cities, provinces, and countries. The partnership with Pixellot allows them to cover any team playing any sport anywhere.
Pixellot’s AI-Automated solution is revolutionizing the way teams play, coach, and share their games with family, friends, and fans by enabling them to easily capture their games, livestream them, and monetize through advertising and subscriptions. Pixellot’s multi-purpose technology platform empowers sports coverage and analysis with a range of cost-effective solutions for both media and coaching.
Founded in 2013, Pixellot is the world’s largest producer of live sports content. Pixellot pioneered the concept of automated sports production solutions as an affordable alternative to traditional video capture, production, and distribution systems for professional and semi-professional sports events. Their AI-Automated technology solutions streamline production workflow by fully automating live sports capture, distribution, and production of over 150,000 games per month from +70 countries across the globe.
Bell Media had a PR crisis on its hands last week when they fired LaFlamme. But with this report and the continued blowback, we’ve gone far beyond that now. I’m not sure what Bell Media’s strategy to deal with this is, or if they even have one. But I would say that they need one ASAP or this will get out of control and end very, very badly for them.
I think we might be seeing the start of that strategy. And it doesn’t look good. Wade Oosterman is the President of Bell Media and Vice Chair of Bell Canada Enterprises which is the parent company of Bell Media. For reasons I don’t fully understand, he just called out a prominent Canadian labour lawyer named Paul Champ on Twitter:
You’d think that given the fact that Paul Champ is a really prominent labour lawyer in Canada which makes him really easy to find, that Oosterman would just dial the guy up or email him. What’s up with doing this over Twitter? Is that truly the best that Bell Media can do?
Champ in his reply highlights that oddity:
I am representing a large group of CTV journalists who have expressed deep concerns about what has been happening in the CTV national newsroom. I appreciate the President of Bell Media responding to me, but was a bit surprised to see his letter hit social media before my inbox. https://t.co/FwScOZNuSv
If this is Bell Media’s strategy to deal with this PR mess, then they’re in bigger trouble than I thought as this is a strategy that is doomed to fail. And why would the clients of Champ reach out to Oosterman to share their concerns with him? If they’re so troubled by what’s going on in Bell Media that they’ve reached out a lawyer to represent them, there’s zero chance that they’ll talk to Bell Media.
Clearly, Bell Media is just swinging for the fences here to borrow a baseball term. What they need is a coherent strategy to address the accusations that have appeared over the last few days that gives the public confidence in them. But this isn’t it. And I suspect that this is only going to get worse for Bell Media.
By: Hank Schless, Senior Manager of Security Solutions at Lookout
Great news for student borrowers everywhere: the White House has announced a plan for student loan relief. There are currently 45 million borrowers in the U.S. with debt totaling over $1.6 trillion. Many borrowers are rejoicing at this news, and unfortunately, so are cybercriminals who see a new opportunity to exploit consumers. The Federal Trade Commission previously issued a warning about student loan scams because of the uptick in loan forgiveness scams during the pandemic and moratorium on payments.
Now that a student loan relief program has arrived, Lookout, the leader in delivering integrated Security, Privacy, and Identity Theft Protection solutions, has provided proactive safety steps borrowers can take to protect their identity, data, and bank accounts in anticipation of student loan forgiveness scams.
Check the “sent from” email address: Real loan servicers will send emails from their own domain. One easy way to check for authenticity is to make sure a company email isn’t coming from an address ending in “@gmail.com” or “@yahoo.com”.
Go directly to the source: If you receive a phone call or email requiring action from you, usually involving private information like a social security number, birthday, bank information, or more, immediately go directly to the validated website of the company or organization the message is reportedly from to locate a valid phone number or email to contact. When in doubt, go directly to the official loan forgiveness website: www.studentaid.gov.
Beware of urgency: Be wary of urgent demand via phone calls or emails that require immediate action and divulgence of personal information. “Emergencies” can sometimes cause people to act without fully understanding the request or the implications of them, which make them a common tool for cybercriminals.
Install security software on your devices: Security protection, like Lookout, will automatically monitor and identify scam URLs in email, text messages, and on the web and block you from threats that can do harm. The security software will also track if your information is compromised in a data breach.
The last tweet was especially biting as Rogers social media team really overuses phrases like “outages are the worst” when talking to customers. They really need to stop saying stuff like that as it is patronizing.
In any case, that surprisingly the least of Rogers issues. In a major blow to the troubled telco, the Rogers outage in July is now relevant to Rogers attempt to take over Shaw says the Competition Tribunal:
Canada’s Competition Tribunal has ruled that the Rogers Communications Inc. July 8 service outage is relevant to the upcoming hearings on the telecom giant’s $26-billion takeover of Shaw Communications Inc.
The outage affected millions of Canadians, and to make sure it doesn’t happen again, Rogers is committing $10 billion over three years on network upgrades and will spend $150 million on customer credits.
The ruling comes after Rogers released a commercial last week outlining what it is doing to earn back the trust of Canadians.
And the bad news continues for Rogers. There’s also this bad news for the troubled telco:
In a separate court document filed on Aug. 15 and made available to the public Monday, the tribunal says the proposed sale of Shaw-owned wireless carrier Freedom Mobile to Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron Ltd. is not an “effective remedy” as it “fails to eliminate the substantial lessening and prevention of competition” the transaction could cause.
The suits at One Mount Pleasant which is where Rogers HQ is must really be thinking what else can go wrong for them. Because they’re taking hits on all fronts, and you have to wonder if they can recover from these hits that they’re taking.
Posted in Commentary with tags Google on August 30, 2022 by itnerd
Building on Google’s support for underrepresented founders in the startup community, we’re pleased to announce that 12 Black-led North American startups will be joining our class of 2022 for the Google for Startups Accelerator: Black Founders program. This year’s cohort welcomes three incredible Canadian Black-led startups includingBeam.city DNA, HumanSquad Inc.and Node App. This news comes off the heels of their recent announcement of the Google for Startups Accelerator: Womens Founders 2022 cohort last week.
Research highlights ongoing systemic challenges faced by Black-led businesses along the journey to grow their business including a lack of equitable access to funding, personal development and mentorship opportunities – with these barriers to entry perpetuating the lack of underrepresentation in the startup community.
Now in its third year, the 10-week digital accelerator program is designed to provide access to vital resources including the best of Google’s programs, products, people and technology–fostering an inclusive environment to help black-led startups scale and grow their businesses.
Please see the full blog post with additional details here. Here’s more on the participating North American startups below.
Beam.city DNA (Toronto, Ontario): Beam.city DNA is a growth coordination AI Platform helping businesses maximize growth using ads, email and social.
Ed.Light (Melrose, Massachusetts): EdLight is a platform using AI to better read, interpret and digitize handwritten student work, reducing misconceptions and increasing equity amongst students, teachers and families.
HumanSquad Inc. (Toronto, Ontario): HumanSquad is an immigration technology company simplifying the immigration & study abroad system by empowering immigrants everywhere with the resources, products and personalized support to immigrate conveniently and affordably.
Innovare (Chicago, Illinois): Innovare’s app aggregates and displays data from a variety of systems to empower education leaders to make data-driven decisions that positively impact students and communities.
Mozaic (Chicago, Illinois): Mozaic is an API-first global payment platform built for co-creators on any project, anywhere. Mozaic provides smart contracts that automate split income among creative teams.
Node App (Toronto, Ontario): Node is a gig marketplace that lets small businesses hire local influencers in their neighbourhood.
Onramp (Oakland, California): Onramp is a workforce development platform helping companies build more diverse candidate pipelines by providing them with a mechanism to invest in skills development for current and future candidates.
Paerpay (Boston, Massachusetts): Paerpay is a contactless payment and loyalty experience for restaurants and their guests that doesn’t require a new POS system.
SmartAlto (Brimingham, Alabama): Smart Alto is a conversational sales platform for local service providers, enabling them to set meetings with clients without cold calling.
TurnSignl (Minneapolis, Minnesota): TurnSignl is a mobile platform that provides real-time, on-demand legal guidance from an attorney to drivers, all while their camera records the interaction.
WearWorks (Brooklyn, New York): WearWorks is a company that uses the skin as a communications channel to deliver information. Their product, Wayband, is a Haptic navigation app and wristband that gently guides users to a destination using vibration. without visual or audio cues.
XPressRun (Louisville, Kentucky): XpressRun is a platform that enables Same Day & Next Day delivery at competitive rates for Direct-to-Consumer brands who maintain their brand identity throughout.
Nuspire, a leading managed security services provider (MSSP), today announced the appointment of industry veteran, Pete Shah, as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). In this role, Shah will be responsible for driving Nuspire’s growth strategy by leading all aspects of field operations, which include sales, partnerships, client success and support.
Shah joins Nuspire with over 25 years of notable achievements within the global enterprise security software and services domains, where he has excelled at driving customer success, revenue, profitability and enterprise value.
Shah most recently served as CRO for Fishtech Group/Cyderes (MSSP), yielding a successful exit and merger with Herjavec Group. In addition, over the past 15 years, he has held senior executive leadership roles with cybersecurity and network performance management companies including Haystax, Cyren and Infovista.
Laurentian Bank of Canada and Kyndryl, the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider, today announced the availability of a new cloud landing zone for the Bank leveraging cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure. Laurentian Bank now benefits from a strong and proven foundation to deploy its next-generation hybrid multicloud environment, allowing the Bank to deliver engaging customer experiences and innovative digital capabilities.
This new environment, executed through the Bank’s strategic collaboration with Kyndryl, ultimately enables its digital services to function efficiently and securely, so customers can enjoy an optimal and seamless experience at all interaction touchpoints. It also allows the Bank to accelerate the introduction of its digital onboarding solution and deliver on its reimagined and more customer-centric VISA experience.
Kyndryl’s expertise in integrating across vendors was central to the Bank’s progress in its cloud transformation journey. Kyndryl has a deep understanding of mission-critical systems, including many years of managed services support to the Bank, bringing innovation and differentiated capabilities tailored to the Bank’s needs. Additionally, Kyndryl has the unique flexibility to tap into a broad set of technologies and skills, including its own global strategic alliances, along with Microsoft Azure to support the Bank’s specific transformation goals to deliver more efficient and improved services to customers.
Posted in Commentary with tags Bell on August 29, 2022 by itnerd
When it comes to Bell Media and the fallout from the Lisa LaFlamme firing, things have gone from worse to even more worse. The Globe And Mail has come out with a bombshell report (unfortunately it’s behind their paywall) by Robin Doolittle who was one of the reporters who broke the Rob Ford Crack Video story. I read it on Apple News for free. So if you’re in the Apple ecosystem, there’s that option to read it. But I did snag this thread of Tweets from Doolittle that will give you a really good idea of what is in the story:
There have been at least three formal reviews involving Bell Media newsrooms, in response to complaints over incidents that included alleged bullying by managers, sexual harassment, and the use of the N-word during an inclusive-leadership training session. https://t.co/0b7TEkPwNi
I encourage you to read the entire thread as it paints a picture that Bell Media has been an incredibly toxic workplace for a very long time. Or put another way, Lisa LaFlamme’s firing is just symptomatic of larger issues with Bell Media.
Bell Media had a PR crisis on its hands last week when they fired LaFlamme. But with this report and the continued blowback, we’ve gone far beyond that now. I’m not sure what Bell Media’s strategy to deal with this is, or if they even have one. But I would say that they need one ASAP or this will get out of control and end very, very badly for them.
A year ago, LastPass appeared to have been pwned by hackers. But the company denied it and that really clouded the issue. Personally I think they were pwned. But there’s no smoking gun to speak of. However as of this morning, I can say that LastPass has absolutely been pwned by hackers last week:
Earlier this week, LastPass started notifying its users of a “recent security incident” where an “unauthorized party” used a compromised developer account to access parts of its password manager’s source code and “some proprietary LastPass technical information.” In a letter to its users, the company’s CEO Karim Toubba explains that its investigation hasn’t turned up evidence that any user data or encrypted passwords were accessed.
Toubba continues on to explain that the company has “implemented additional enhanced security measures” after containing the breach, which it detected two weeks ago. The company wouldn’t comment on how long the breach had been going on before it was detected.
Well, this is not a good look for a company that is responsible for securing your passwords. And while grabbing source code doesn’t mean that everyone is in deep trouble immediately, it may mean potential problems for LastPass down the road.
Posted in Commentary with tags TCL on August 29, 2022 by itnerd
Early this week my 43″ TCL Roku TV decided to misbehave. Specifically, half the backlight decided to die. Since the TV in question is 4 years old, I wasn’t surprised. So I took it out of service and I’m reaching out to TCL to see where I can get it looked at and how much it would cost to repair. Assuming of course it can be repaired. But due to the fact that I don’t know how long that will take, I decided to just replace it. And if it cannot be repaired, I will dispose of it responsibly. My requirements were simple, I wanted a Roku TV as my wife and I like what that platform offers. Plus I wanted some form of HDR beyond the edge lit HDR that the 43″ TCL TV had. So after looking around for a bit and a trip to Walmart, I got this:
This is the TCL 50″ Class 5-Series 4K QLED Dolby Vision HDR Smart Roku TV – Model 50S535-CA. That’s a mouthful. And in case you’re wondering what you’re looking at, I was watching a race bike build video when I took this picture. You can watch the video in question here if you’re interested as I find these bike build videos oddly satisfying to watch. This is a 50″ TV with a full array local dimming LCD panel. That’s important because on paper, it should give you a decent level of HDR because it can adjust the light levels of specific zones of the LCD panel to display darker blacks and brighter colours. More on that later. This TV is advertised as an “edge to edge” panel. But as you can see from the picture, it isn’t “edge to edge” as there are clearly bezels that you can’t miss. What I think TCL has done to make the “edge to edge” argument is extended the display glass to the edge of the display and is using that to call the display “edge to edge”. Which is a #fail as there are some people who will expect an “edge to edge” display, and get this home and be disappointed when they see it for the first time. I say that because there are TVs that can legitimately say that they are “edge to edge” and this is clearly not one of them. Thus I would suggest that TCL should yank those words from their marketing for this TV for that reason.
Let’s look at the connectivity that you get:
You get four HDMI ports. The fourth one is a eARC port which is where I plugged my TCL soundbar into. I plugged my computer that I use for Zwift into port number one and have two HDMI ports left over. You an Ethernet port, a cable/antenna port, a USB port, a analog AV in port for devices that connect using composite connectors. It does require a 3.5mm cable that was included in previous TCL TV’s, but is not included on this one for some reason. Finally you also get a headphone jack and a SPDIF digital audio optical cable connection. In terms of mounting options, it supports 200mm x 200mm VESA mounting options which is what I use. And there are additional screws for that in the box (though I used the one that came with my stand as they are longer). You can also use the included feet if VESA mounting isn’t an option for you. In terms of connectivity beyond Ethernet, it also comes with WiFi 5 (802.11ac) which is a shame because WiFi 6 (802.11ax) is the new hotness and all devices in 2022 should have WiFi 6 as far as I am concerned and it would future proof this TV to a degree. Having said that, WiFi 5 still works just fine for this TV for your streaming purposes. I’ll also note that there’s a Roku remote in the box. But you can also pair it with a Roku voice remote as well to give yourself some extra functionality. But keep the remote that comes with the TV as you’ll need it if you reset the TV back to factory defaults.
In terms of audio, this TV supports Dolby Digital Plus and has two built in speakers that utilize that. However while the built in speakers have decent audio quality, I will say that they’re really intended for those who want to make do with them until they get a soundbar or surround sound system as that will give the best possible audio. Speaking of which, this TV is able to route Dolby Digital Plus through my my TCL soundbar and I got great audio that way.
The real star of the show is the display. This is a 4K full array local dimming panel that supports a wide colour gamut (1.07 billion colours) which results in the panel having HDR10 (meaning it can hit 1000 nits of brightness) and Dolby Vision certification. The big difference between Dolby Vision and the HDR10 standard is that Dolby Vision uses dynamic metadata to tone-map the image on a per-scene or per-frame basis. This means that Dolby Vision content can adjust the brightness, color, and sharpness to better conform with the capabilities of the display. This results in a more “accurate” image that better preserves the creator’s intent compared with competing technologies like HDR10. Dolby Vision has a few other benefits, like support for up to 12-bit video at a peak brightness of up to 10,000 nits, although no displays are currently capable of such levels of brightness.
Now all of that sounds great, but let’s go into the weeds a bit with this specific TV. If you read this story on HDR panels, I said this about full array local dimming panels:
This is the next best option as this technology is much cheaper than OLED and produces great HDR visuals. It does that by having a number of “zones” for the backlighting system that can individually adjust to give you the level of light required to display the content as dark or bright as required. And the number of “zones” is what you need to pay attention to. I would say that if a display doesn’t have something north of 500 zones, you won’t get the same level of HDR quality as OLED. Or put another way, the more zones, the better the HDR performance.
Now TCL on their website only mentions that this class of TV has “up to 80 zones” which I assume you get 80 zones if you spend the bucks to get their 75″ TV which is the top end model for this class of TV. Or put another way, there are less zones in play here on this 50″ TV. I am guessing that they don’t want to get called out on having less zones in their smaller TVs. Having said that, while this doesn’t reach anywhere near the levels of contrast of an OLED panel, it destroys edge lit panels rather easily and produces surprisingly good levels of contrast and brightness with minimal levels of blooming. By that I mean that you would have to find something like a space scene from a movie like Star Wars or something like that to find blooming, and you would have to look for it. But the bottom line is that anything that I tossed at it looked better than what I was expecting. Which given the fact that the panel has less than 80 zones to work with is impressive. For those of you who are control enthusiasts, you can download the Roku app and get into the settings of the TV to really tweak the picture the way you want. I’m not that guy so I didn’t do that.
Then there’s the motion clarity. Given that this is a 60Hz panel, it was surprisingly good as I couldn’t find any sort of tearing or motion blur. That’s likely due to TCL’s AiPQ Engine which “optimizes color, contrast, and stunning clarity for an unrivaled 4K HDR experience.” Thus movies and TV shows look great on this panel based on my testing. Having said that, even though this panel has a game mode, PS5 and Xbox One users should really look elsewhere as you want a 4K 120Hz panel with adaptive refresh rate support for the best possible game experience on those consoles. Ditto for PC gamers who care about high refresh rates.
Speaking of that game experience, my wife did an indoor ride on the Zwift platform to test that game experience out as this TV is connected to a Windows 10 PC with a Nvidia 1060 video card. She reported that the game looked even more realistic than before. So much so that on rolling hills within the game gave her video game related motion sickness much faster than with the old TV. A testament to the quality of the picture I suppose. For the record, we run Zwift at 1440p @ 60 Hz.
The TV uses the Roku platform and there’s really not much to say about it because it’s a relatively stable and easy to use smart TV platform that has a ton of streaming options including their own Roku Channel which has free watch on demand and live broadcast options. On top of that, this TV also supports HomeKit so that those of us in the Apple ecosystem like yours truly can leverage this within the home app to do things like turn off the TV automatically when everyone leaves home. There’s also AirPlay 2 support which my wife and I leverage to do Apple’s Fitness+. I will note that the implementation of HomeKit by Roku still has some rough edges around it. The most visible rough edge is that you can turn off the TV and it will show as “off” in the Home app. If you look at the Home app an hour or two later, the TV will show as on and being at the home screen. But the TV actually isn’t on if you physically look at it. In other words, the TV doesn’t always report its status to HomeKit properly. This issue has been around since Roku first rolled out HomeKit and they really need to clean that up as other TV’s with HomeKit support that I’ve seen don’t do that. Other than that setup was insanely easy as all your Roku selections are stored in the cloud, and HomeKit setup is just like any other HomeKit device. The total time for me to set this TV up was less than an hour which included mounting the VESA bracket for my stand to the TV.
Now, before I wrap things up, I’d like to point out one thing about TCL. Their support in my experience has tended to not be that good based on my previous interactions with them. Though that was about 18 months ago and maybe they have improved things since then. I guess I am about to find out as I have a request into them to get my old TV repaired. But the reason why I am pointing this out is that a company who makes a product adds value to it by having good support so that if you need it, they can help you. Conversely, if a company doesn’t provide good support, it detracts from the value of the product. And because of that, I feel I feel it is important to let you know how a company is going to treat you before you put down your hard earned money.
The TCL 50″ Class 5-Series 4K QLED Dolby Vision HDR Smart Roku TV – Model 50S535-CA goes for $589 CDN which is a good value given what you get. Sure it still isn’t as good as an OLED TV from a picture quality standard, but it beats anything it competes with. Thus keeping the quality of their support in mind, and a couple of the ways that this TV is marketed, I would consider this TV or one of its bigger siblings if you are in the market for a 4K TV with HDR support that doesn’t break the bank.
Pixellot Deal To Expand AI-Automated Live Sports Coverage Across Canada
Posted in Commentary with tags Pixellot on August 30, 2022 by itnerdPixellot, the world’s leading provider of AI-Automated sports video and analytics solutions, today announced its collaboration with HomeTeam Live, a live streaming app for amateur sports leagues. Pixellot’s technology will provide high quality streaming for parents, coaches, and fans as well as open new revenue opportunities for the leagues. After the initial launch period, HomeTeam Live intends to increase its Pixellot-powered network from 40 to 150 venues by the end of 2022 as it seeks to further expand its network across Canada.
One of HomeTeam Live’s main objectives is to use technology to help grow league viewership and connect and grow local sports in communities so families can watch their loved ones participate in sports across cities, provinces, and countries. The partnership with Pixellot allows them to cover any team playing any sport anywhere.
Pixellot’s AI-Automated solution is revolutionizing the way teams play, coach, and share their games with family, friends, and fans by enabling them to easily capture their games, livestream them, and monetize through advertising and subscriptions. Pixellot’s multi-purpose technology platform empowers sports coverage and analysis with a range of cost-effective solutions for both media and coaching.
Founded in 2013, Pixellot is the world’s largest producer of live sports content. Pixellot pioneered the concept of automated sports production solutions as an affordable alternative to traditional video capture, production, and distribution systems for professional and semi-professional sports events. Their AI-Automated technology solutions streamline production workflow by fully automating live sports capture, distribution, and production of over 150,000 games per month from +70 countries across the globe.
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