I remember interviewing then-UCLA defensive lineman Brian Price before the 2010 NFL draft, where he was taken in the second round by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I remember thinking that this kid from the mean streets of Los Angeles had everything it took to succeed in the NFL — talent, work ethic and great intangibles.

What Price hasn’t had through his NFL career is good luck of any kind. He’s suffered many different injuries in the last three seasons, had a revolutionary surgery in which both of his hamstrings were re-attached to his pelvis, and has played in just 20 of a possible 32 games. But last season, he played 15 games, starting 14, and racked up three quarterback sacks.

Price’s personal life has been even more difficult. He had previously lost two brothers to shootings, and last week, his 30-year-old sister Bridget was killed in an auto accident in Inglewood, Calif. Price was so distressed, he eventually had to be hospitalized for dehydration.

“He physically broke down,” his agent, Chuck Price (no relation), told the Los Angeles Times. “He had a high fever, was dehydrated, and couldn’t hold anything down. That stress just plays a wicked role.”

Price, who took his sister’s 7- and 9-year-old children to a Dodgers game the night before their mother was killed, now plans to adopt the children.

Through all the difficulties of his life, Price has persisted and tried his best to get back in the game — now, he has even more inspiration to do so.

“This guy has been in pain for literally a year,” Buccaneers trainer Todd Toriscelli said in September of 2011, as Price tried to find his way back after injuries so severe, he couldn’t put on his shoes by himself. “I’m not talking about just mild discomfort. I’m talking about driving home he’s got to sit on those bones, laying in bed, you just can’t get away from it. Certainly trying to play professional football … it’s just an absolutely remarkable thing, and a compliment to his drive and motivation. He is a very special person, I can tell you that.”

When I talked to Brian Price, I thought he was pretty special, as well. If you have a few extra thoughts and prayers to send his way, I’m sure he’d appreciate it.

View full post on Shutdown Corner – NFL – Yahoo! Sports

There are people in or around the town of Oceanside, Calif., who just got an express trip to the place where the red guy with the horns and pitchfork does his business. There are few things more disgusting that a robbery that affects the family of a man who just died, but that’s what happened last week to the family of Junior Seau.

Just five days after the great linebacker took his own life, some sorry excuses for humanity broke into Seau’s home, went through cabinets in the garage, and stole a bicycle that belonged to a friend of Seau’s.

Oceanside police Lt. Leonard Mata said that the bike is gray with chrome fenders and a black seat, and there are 143 spokes in each wheel. Whoever broke in didn’t enter the house — just the garage. Nothing else was taken. The estimated value of the bike is approximately $500.

On May 7, at approximately 9:35 a.m., Seau’s girlfriend placed a 911 call indicating that she had found the body of the future Hall-of-Fame linebacker in a spare bedroom of his home. The death was suspected to be, and was later ruled, a suicide.

Seau, a 12-time Pro Bowler and 6-time First-Team All-Pro, was selected fifth overall in the 1990 NFL draft after an outstanding collegiate career at USC. He played with the San Diego Chargers through the 2002 season, spent 2003-2005 with the Miami Dolphins, and then signed with the New England Patriots in time for the 2006 season. In New England’s perfect regular season of 2007, he played in all 16 games and started four. Seau first retired after that season, only to come back and play in 2008 and 2009 before finally leaving the NFL for good.

“I’m going to go surf,” he told Showtime upon his January, 2010 retirement announcement. Whatever happens, I can honestly say, that that probably was my last game.”

Seau committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest, which is similar to the way former Chicago Bears great Dave Duerson ended his life. Duerson shot himself in the chest on February 17, 2011 — the method used so that his brain could be examined for symptoms of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a trauma-induced disease common to NFL players and others who have received repeated blows to the head. Seau’s family has considered, and reconsidered, donating Seau’s brain to science so that he can be examined for CTE symptoms.

View full post on Shutdown Corner – NFL – Yahoo! Sports

Browns defensive tackle Phil Taylor tore his left pectoral muscle and will undergo surgery next week, coach Pat Shurmur said Friday, meaning it will be almost a for sure his season will be over before it even gets started.

Shurmur acknowledged that the injury “could be” season ending.

Taylor suffered the injury while lifting weights at the Browns training facility Thursday.

“He’s going to miss a significant amount of time … more months than weeks,” Shurmur said this morning as the Browns opened their rookie minicamp. “It’s too early to speculate how long that will be. It’s just one of those things that happened.

Injuries of this nature often take at least six months to heal from. Linebacker D’Qwell Jackson underwent season-ending surgery in each of the past two seasons for two separate torn pectorals. In 2010, Jackson suffered the injury in training camp and missed the entire season. In 2009, he suffered it six games into the season and missed the final 10 games.

“Everybody recovers at a different rate,” said Shurmur. “Our guess is he’ll be a fast healer. It’s unfortunate. We feel bad for Phil. But he’s in good spirits and he’s going to come back from this thing stronger than ever.”

View full post on NFL Gridiron Gab

Rovio on Wednesday announced that its immensely popular Angry Birds franchise had reached 1 billion downloads, and the Finnish game developer celebrated the achievement with a short video that concluded with a teaser of the company’s new upcoming game. Rovio has now confirmed that bought the IP for the game Casey’s Contraptions, which was originally developed by Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut, though it is no longer available. “Working with [developers] Noel and Miguel has been fantastic, and this is a game that we all fell in love with from the first play,”  Rovio’s Ville Heijari, VP of franchise development said to TechCrunch. “The gameplay is a perfect fit in our arsenal with its approachable, fun and highly addictive take on the physics puzzler genre.” The executive added that Rovio is currently reworking on rebranding the title, and “getting ready to re-introduce it in a true ‘expect the unexpected’ Rovio-style launch to an even larger audience.” The game is scheduled to be released this summer on iOS and Android, then “extending to further platforms rapidly after that.”

Read

View full post on BGR: The Three Biggest Letters In Tech

Toyota says profits for the last year stalled due to a strong yen and the effects of the devastating earthquake and tsunami on its supply chain.

In a statement Wednesday, the Japanese automaker revealed net profit for the year ending March 31 had dropped by 30.5% to 283.56 billion yen ($3.56 billion).

The company also ceded its number one spot in the global carmakers' league last year, as the twin disasters in Japan on March 11 followed by flooding in Thailand a few months later curtailed supplies of auto parts and reduced its output by about 400,000 vehicles, the Financial Times reported.

But Toyota predicted a sharp rebound in fortunes for 2013 off the back of strong car and truck sales, with an expected net income of 760 billion yen ($9.5 billion).

“Certainly the last fiscal year was extremely challenging due to the natural disasters in Japan and Thailand, plus the unprecedented strength of the yen,” said Toyota President Akio Toyoda.

“But, thanks to the concerted efforts of our employees, suppliers, and dealers, we were able to recover production and sales faster than anticipated and achieved a strong result.

“I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude for their efforts to improve our business structure. Thanks to their hard work, we were able to remain profitable, even in such a challenging environment. And special thanks, of course, go to our customers, who continue to demonstrate their loyalty in choosing Toyota and Lexus vehicles.”

Last month fellow Japanese automaker, Honda, reported a 61% jump in its net profit as it continued its own recovery from last year's national crisis. It also expects record global sales of 4.3 million vehicles for this fiscal year.

Analysts believe Nissan will join its local rivals in forecasting a positive profit outlook when it releases first quarter results and its projection for the year on May 11.

View full post on Business 360

The news has the same surprise quotient you’d expect from Andrew Luck getting all the reps right away with the Indianapolis Colts, or the idea that the Denver Broncos will be doing pretty much whatever the heck Peyton Manning wants. That said, you Rex Grossman and Kirk Cousins fans will have to shine it on. At the end of the Washington Redskins’ rookie minicamp on Sunday, head coach Mike Shanahan made it clear that Robert Griffin III, the Baylor quarterback selected second overall in the 2012 NFL draft, will be his starting quarterback from his first official professional snap.

Shanahan watched Griffin in five practices over three days, and saw enough to put it as simply as possible: “He’s the starter. Period,”

So there.

“Any time you pick a player with the second pick of the draft and you give up another two No. 1′s and No. 2 and you move up four spots, you’ve got a gameplan in mind,” Shanahan said. “We’re going to adjust our system to what he feels comfortable with, and we’ll watch him grow, and we’ll do what we feel like he does the best.”

Griffin, the Heisman Trophy winner and consensus second-best player in this draft class behind Luck (actually, we tend to think he’ll be the main man over time), was originally thought to be an eventual starter on a progressive plan as he transitioned to a West Coast offense after the spread/three-digit system he excelled with in college. But it didn’t take Shanahan long to see and know: The kid is ready — or, at least, ready to learn the ropes at the highest level.

The more teams got to know Griffin through the pre-draft evaluation process, the more they were impressed with his overall intelligence and ability to pick up different schemes at an accelerated pace. To that end, when the Redskins return to the practice field for OTAs on May 21, the coaching staff will have a plan in place around RG3 as the top kick.

“We’re going to put him with the first team when we come back … We’ll have our first team on one field, working against our second defense, and we’ll have our second team on the other field, working against our first defense,” Shanahan said. “I thought it very important to start with Robert with our first unit. He’s able to do it and pick up the system as quick as he has, which is always good, to go out there and be able to call plays and feel good with what you’re doing, and I’ve seen that over the last five practices.”

The “live fire” aspect of practice can only help a player the Redskins traded some serious bank to acquire. Originally set with the sixth overall pick in this draft, the ‘Skins moved up and took the St. Louis Rams’ second overall pick by giving their first-round pick this year, as well as their first-rounders in 2013 and 2014 … AND a second-round pick in last week’s draft. It’s the kind of “desperate” move one would attribute to the comedy stylings of former Redskins general manager Vinny Cerrrato, but if Griffin is everything he’s cracked up to be, the validity of the deal won’t be questioned. It’s a passing league, and you don’t win Super Bowls these days without an elite quarterback.

Shanahan, who’s been mentoring quarterbacks for decades, has struggled to find his next franchise guy since John Elway retired in the late 1990s after two straight Super Bowl wins for the Denver Broncos. So far, so good — Shanahan expected to be impressed with RGIII’s athleticism, but it’s the ability to put things together in a playbook sense that has the coach at ease. Grossman is the veteran backup, and Cousins (taken in the fourth round of this year’s draft in a move that many found vexing) is the long-term project. That leaves room at the top for one man.

“He’s great. You can see what an incredible athlete he is,” Shanahan said of Griffin. “I was impressed with the first day. He didn’t have one bust on a formation or a play call, and I’ve never had that in all the minicamps I’ve been involved with.”

View full post on Shutdown Corner – NFL – Yahoo! Sports

The news has the same surprise quotient you’d expect from Andrew Luck getting all the reps right away with the Indianapolis Colts, or the idea that the Denver Broncos will be doing pretty much whatever the heck Peyton Manning wants. That said, you Rex Grossman and Kirk Cousins fans will have to shine it on. At the end of the Washington Redskins’ rookie minicamp on Sunday, head coach Mike Shanahan made it clear that Robert Griffin III, the Baylor quarterback selected second overall in the 2012 NFL draft, will be his starting quarterback from his first official professional snap.

Shanahan watched Griffin in five practices over three days, and saw enough to put it as simply as possible: “He’s the starter. Period,”

So there.

“Any time you pick a player with the second pick of the draft and you give up another two No. 1′s and No. 2 and you move up four spots, you’ve got a gameplan in mind,” Shanahan said. “We’re going to adjust our system to what he feels comfortable with, and we’ll watch him grow, and we’ll do what we feel like he does the best.”

Griffin, the Heisman Trophy winner and consensus second-best player in this draft class behind Luck (actually, we tend to think he’ll be the main man over time), was originally thought to be an eventual starter on a progressive plan as he transitioned to a West Coast offense after the spread/three-digit system he excelled with in college. But it didn’t take Shanahan long to see and know: The kid is ready — or, at least, ready to learn the ropes at the highest level.

The more teams got to know Griffin through the pre-draft evaluation process, the more they were impressed with his overall intelligence and ability to pick up different schemes at an accelerated pace. To that end, when the Redskins return to the practice field for OTAs on May 21, the coaching staff will have a plan in place around RG3 as the top kick.

“We’re going to put him with the first team when we come back … We’ll have our first team on one field, working against our second defense, and we’ll have our second team on the other field, working against our first defense,” Shanahan said. “I thought it very important to start with Robert with our first unit. He’s able to do it and pick up the system as quick as he has, which is always good, to go out there and be able to call plays and feel good with what you’re doing, and I’ve seen that over the last five practices.”

The “live fire” aspect of practice can only help a player the Redskins traded some serious bank to acquire. Originally set with the sixth overall pick in this draft, the ‘Skins moved up and took the St. Louis Rams’ second overall pick by giving their first-round pick this year, as well as their first-rounders in 2013 and 2014 … AND a second-round pick in last week’s draft. It’s the kind of “desperate” move one would attribute to the comedy stylings of former Redskins general manager Vinny Cerrrato, but if Griffin is everything he’s cracked up to be, the validity of the deal won’t be questioned. It’s a passing league, and you don’t win Super Bowls these days without an elite quarterback.

Shanahan, who’s been mentoring quarterbacks for decades, has struggled to find his next franchise guy since John Elway retired in the late 1990s after two straight Super Bowl wins for the Denver Broncos. So far, so good — Shanahan expected to be impressed with RGIII’s athleticism, but it’s the ability to put things together in a playbook sense that has the coach at ease. Grossman is the veteran backup, and Cousins (taken in the fourth round of this year’s draft in a move that many found vexing) is the long-term project. That leaves room at the top for one man.

“He’s great. You can see what an incredible athlete he is,” Shanahan said of Griffin. “I was impressed with the first day. He didn’t have one bust on a formation or a play call, and I’ve never had that in all the minicamps I’ve been involved with.”

View full post on Shutdown Corner – NFL – Yahoo! Sports

The media tracking firm Nielsen had an interesting idea – it decided to track the social reach of Activision’s Call of Duty franchise before and after the company announced its latest title, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. It found that in just the span of two days, the amount of tweets, Facebook messages, YouTube videos, blog postings, and message board postings related to Call of Duty increased four-fold.

Of course, in between those two days was the Black Ops 2 announcement. On April 30, the number of social messages about Call of Duty was 4,911. On May 2, that number was 21,454. The official launch trailer video on YouTube has already been viewed more than 7.1 million times. Retailers also began accepting pre-orders for the title yesterday, and it has already scored its first record – Activision claims it is the fastest-selling pre-order game ever.

When its predecessor launched, Blacks Ops quickly added a bunch of sales records to its resume, including the biggest launch in the history of video games and various marks (e.g., first-week sales) that placed it as the fastest-selling game as well. Interestingly enough, the previous record holders in these instances were earlier installments in the Call of Duty franchise. Activision continues to set new records and Black Ops 2 could very well be a new notch in that trend.

[via VentureBeat]

Nielsen finds Call of Duty’s social presence swells 4X after Black Ops II is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

View full post on SlashGear

As much as we’ve covered the news of Junior Seau’s passing, it’s probably best to step aside and let the men who knew him, played with him, and considered him a mentor and friend do the talking. This is just a sample of the avalanche of emotion coming from the league Wednesday. In this spirit, please feel free to leave your thoughts and comments below.

Drew Brees: So sad to hear about Jr. Seau. Junebug. Buddy. The greatest teammate a young guy could ask for. This is a sad day. He will be missed greatly.

Chad Ochocinco: My prayers and condolences to the family of one of the NFL’s greatest linebackers to ever play the game.. Junior Seau.. R.I.P.

Clay Matthews: Tragic news regarding the passing of Junior Seau. His passion for the game was unparalleled. One of the great LB’s of our time. #fighton

Terrell Owens: God Bless Junior Seau & his family! My heart & condolences go out 2 his family. May u RIP!

John Elway: Junior was a true competitor and a special player. My heartfelt condolences go out to the Seau family.

Deion Sanders: Junior Seau will certainly be missed. A great football player but a better man. He was classy, caring & courageous. God bless the Seau family

Wade Phillips: Sad day for all of us who loved and /or were touched by Junior Seau

Ryan Clark: Junior Seau was a phenomenal player. This is such a tragedy. May God be with his family. Hope he found peace.

LaMarr Woodley: RIP 2 junior seau… 1 of the best LB’s to ever play the game

Michael Strahan: #RIP Junior Seau. Great friend and competitor….. Had great times together. Will be missed.

Mohamed Massaquoi: RIP Junior Seau. Life is so precious. Cherish every moment of it.

Calais Campbell: It hurts me to hear we lost a legend to the game today. R.I.P. Junior Seau you will be missed. Prayers go out to him and his family.

Doug Flutie: Junior Seau was one of the most inspirational people I have ever met. He was a great leader, teammate, and friend. He will be missed.

Reggie Bush: Damn this one hurts San Diego! One of the greatest to to come from the city.

San Diego Chargers: RIP Junior Seau – 1969-2012 http://instagr.am/p/KIz9D8MuYA/

Miami Dolphins: The entire Dolphins family sends condolences to the family, friends and former teammates of Junior Seau.

New England Patriots: Our heartfelt thoughts & prayers go out to Junior’s family & his many friends who will mourn this loss

View full post on Shutdown Corner – NFL – Yahoo! Sports

It looks like the brand-new shininess of millions of new iPhones has lost a little luster since the holidays. After months of steadily increasing activity in the iTunes App Store, post-iPhone 4S launch, the number of daily app downloads in the U.S. took a big nosedive in March, falling 30 percent from February, according to mobile app marketing firm Fiksu.

Fiksu tracks the daily U.S. traffic of the top 200 free apps in the App Store, and found that starting with the iPhone 4S smartphone’s launch last fall, download activity ramped up from 3.8 million daily downloads in September to peak at 6.79 million downloads in January, driven by the holiday boom in iPhone sales. Downloads fell slightly in February to 6.35 million and then plummeted by nearly 2 million to 4.45 million total downloads in March.

“With the novelty factor of the iPhone 4S launch and the holidays well behind us, and no other events in March to spark discovery, March’s download dip was expected,” Fiksu CEO Micah Adler said in a statement. “An unexpected contributing factor could be the decline in the use of robotic install tactics by app marketers responding to Apple’s new policy.”

It’s also worth noting that Fisku only tracks U.S. numbers, so international downloads could still be high. While Verizon Wireless and AT&T saw their iPhone sales dip in the first quarter, Apple more than made up for it with strong international smartphone sales.

Though U.S. iPhone owners may be downloading fewer apps, that doesn’t mean they’re using their phones less. Fiksu also tracks a metric it calls the Cost per Loyal User Index, which measures the marketing costs developers spend to secure a loyal customer – one who opens their apps at least three times a month. In December, that cost reached $1.81 per user, but it dipped down to $1.14 in January and held steady at about $1.30 in the previous two months. So while iPhone customers may not be downloading as many new apps today, they look to be spending more time with the apps they already have.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Updated: Forecast: global mobile subscribers, 2010–2015
• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust
• The mobile backhaul market, 2011-2012: more innovation, greater competition

src='http://ads.gigaom.com/show/rss/'
alt=''
border='0'
/>

View full post on Apple