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).